Microsoft releases AI-generated Quake II demo, but admits ‘limitations’

Microsoft has released a browser-based playable level of the classic video game Quake II. This functions as a tech demo for the gaming capabilities of Microsoft’s Copilot AI platform — though by the company’s own admission, the experience isn’t quite the same as playing a well-made game.

You can try it out for yourself, using your keyboard to navigate a single level of Quake II for a couple minutes before you hit the time limit.

In a blog post describing their work, Microsoft researchers said their Muse family of AI models for video games allows users to “interact with the model through keyboard/controller actions and see the effects of your actions immediately, essentially allowing you to play inside the model.”

To show off these capabilities, the researchers trained their model on a Quake II level (which Microsoft owns through its acquisition of ZeniMax).

“Much to our initial delight we were able to play inside the world that the model was simulating,” they wrote. “We could wander around, move the camera, jump, crouch, shoot, and even blow-up barrels similar to the original game.”

At the same time, the researchers emphasized that this is meant to be “a research exploration” and should be thought of as “playing the model as opposed to playing the game.”

More specifically, they acknowledged “limitations and shortcomings,” like the fact that enemies are fuzzy, the damage and health counters can be inaccurate, and, most strikingly, the model struggles with object permanence, frequently forgetting about things that are out of view for 0.9 seconds or longer.

In the researchers’ view, this can “also be a source of fun, whereby you can defeat or spawn enemies by looking at the floor for a second and then looking back up,” or even “teleport around the map by looking up at the sky and then back down.”

Writer and game designer Austin Walker was less impressed by this approach, posting a gameplay video in which he spent most of his time trapped in a dark room. (This also happened to me both times I tried to play the demo, though I’ll admit I’m extremely bad at first-person shooters.)

Referring to Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer’s recent statement that AI models could help with game preservation by making classic games “portable to any platform,” Walker argued this reveals “a fundamental misunderstanding of not only this tech but how games WORK.”

“The internal workings of games like Quake — code, design, 3d art, audio — produce specific cases of play, including surprising edge cases,” Walker wrote. “That is a big part of what makes games good. If you aren’t actually able to rebuild the key inner workings, then you lose access to those unpredictable edge cases.”