The "zero-barrier moment" for AI games has truly arrived.
Google's Project Genie, a public beta version of its world model Genie 3, caused a sharp drop in US gaming stocks on Friday.
Unity plummeted 24%, Roblox fell 13%, and Take-Two Interactive (GTA's parent company) dropped 10%.
What happened?
Simply put, you type a line of text, and AI generates a 3D world that you can walk into and explore.
Because it's inaccessible to non-US users, I tried using a VPN with a US IP address but couldn't access it either.
So I looked for feedback from some American users.
It's true that you can control a character to run around, drive, fly, and interact.
It's like entering a game, but this game is created by AI as it runs; as you move forward, it generates the path ahead in real time.
I see that US users on Twitter are going crazy for it.
Someone created a recursive world in the style of *Doom*, with walls entirely composed of screens displaying the game; someone made otter pilots traverse gothic cities; and someone else discovered that AI-generated characters' car door opening animations were incredibly natural—it's breathtaking.
Wall Street should be panicking.
Previously, game development required specialized engines, a large workforce, years of development, and hundreds of millions of dollars.
Now, a single sentence can create a world. How much of Unity and Roblox's competitive advantage remains?
Creating an interactive virtual world no longer requires specialized skills and massive capital.
However, there are still major flaws. From what I've seen, it's only playable for 60 seconds, there's a lag in controls, and physics occasionally has bugs. Also, IP detection is extremely strict.
Of course, it's clear that the trend of AI-generated games is irreversible.
Google, Fei-Fei Li's World Labs, and Ant Financial's Lingbo are all relentlessly working on world models.
2026 will be the year of world model creation.
