There’s a lot of AI-generated slop out there these days. You might wonder, “Who even wants this?” Well, apparently, millions of people do, according to the folks behind Astrocade, a free online website and platform built around AI-generated games and experiences that now boasts 10 million monthly users.
In an interview with Gamesbeat, Astrocade CEO Amir Sadeghian told the outlet that the platform has grown rapidly, going from around five million monthly users to 10 million in just the last four months. Astrocade lets anyone create games and interactive experiences using AI tools, and then those games can be played by any other user, similar to Roblox.
“The whole reason we exist as a platform is the AI creation tools, which enables everyone to create,” said Sadeghian. “And I think the advantage of Astrocade is we have a lot of data to be able to train our models and improve our models. To be able to basically train models that are built for generating fun stuff for the audience because we have the end-to-end signal all the way to fun. We have the distribution, we have the creation, we have recommendation, and I think that is the biggest advantage for Astrocade.”
The company is preparing to launch an iOS app and is marketing heavily in the United States, though according to the CEO, Astrocade is already very popular in the U.S. despite the platform not yet making a big push to grow its audience in that part of the world.
Taking a look at some of the most popular games, you’ll quickly notice a bunch of Minecraft clones, games featuring copyrighted characters, and knock-offs of popular Roblox games like Steal a Brainrot. All of these were built using Astrocade’s AI tools and feature AI slop artwork. That hasn’t stopped people from enjoying them, with some of Astrocade’s most popular games having hundreds of thousands or even millions of plays. And like TikTok and other vertical video apps, Astrocade’s games are completely vertical experiences, and you can scroll through them via a never-ending feed that is powered by an algorithm.
Oh, sorry, these aren’t games, actually. According to Sadeghian, Astrocade offers “playables” that people can scroll through as they do on social media and other online feeds. The plan is for Astrocade to offer educational content, AI companions, and interactive stories, too. However, the future of Astrocade’s content will depend on what creators actually “make” with its AI tools. And with the platform paying people more money for creating popular content, I imagine there will be a lot of knock-offs of famous games and not many interactive experiences that teach you about Ancient Egypt.
“The technology has become so good on our creation side that it’s very hard to also know that these are made with AI,” said the CEO. “AI is now like writing code better than a lot of engineers. So that part is actually better. And even some of these 3D assets are getting to a point that it’s like very hard to distinguish.”
