Microsoft has released a browser-based playable level for the classic video game Quake II. This serves as a technical demo of the gaming capabilities of Microsoft’s Copilot AI platform, but with the company’s own admission, the experience is not exactly the same as playing a well-made game.
You can use the keyboard to navigate a single level of Quake II for a few minutes before reaching the time limit.
In a blog post explaining their work, Microsoft researchers said that using the Muse Family of AI model of video games allows users to “interact with the model via keyboard/controller actions, quickly see the effect of the action, and essentially allow them to play within the model.
To show off these capabilities, researchers trained the models at the Quake II level (owned by Microsoft through the acquisition of Zenimax).
“Our initial joy allowed us to play in the world the models were simulating,” they wrote. “We were able to walk around Wonder, move the camera, jump, squat, shoot, and blow up barrels similar to the original game.”
At the same time, researchers emphasized that this was intended to be a “research exploration” and should be considered “playing models rather than playing games.”
More specifically, like the fact that the enemy is ambiguous, they acknowledge “limitations and shortcomings”, but the counters of damage and health are inaccurate, and most surprisingly, the model wrestles with the persistence of the object, forgetting vision for over 0.9 seconds.
In the researcher’s view, this is “a source of fun too. This allows you to watch the floor for a second and defeat or lay enemies.
Author and game designer Austin Walker wasn’t too impressed with this approach and posted a gameplay video that he locked in a dark room for most of his time. (This also tried to play the demo, but I admitted it was very bad for first-person shooters.)
Referring to a recent statement from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, the AI model argued that making classic games “portable to any platform” could help save games, revealing “a fundamental misconception of not only this technology but the game’s mechanics.”
“Internal work in games like Quake, Code, Design, 3D Art, Audio and more create specific play cases with amazing edge cases,” Walker writes. “That’s a big part of what makes the game good. If you can’t actually rebuild the important internal mechanics, you’ll lose access to unpredictable edge cases.”
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