ChatGPT was asked to develop a video game

For several months now, ChatGPT has imposed itself in the collective unconscious, and many people seek to integrate it into their working methods. From simple email writing to IT development, what can stop that famous ChatGPT?

The question arises today, since we asked him to help us develop a video game!

Video game development yes, but not just any game

We first specify that all the following tests were carried out with GPT-3, the version available to all of ChatGPT. In this attempt to create a video game, we are going to keep it very simple and assume that we don’t know the capabilities of the chatbot. The questions may therefore seem basic and not at all written correctly for generative AI. We are going to be ambitious by first asking her if she is capable of developing a 3D video game under Unreal Engine. For the uninitiated, this is a widely used, 3D-oriented game engine. It is therefore the basis for creating very complex and captivating games. Ark II is notably in development under this game engine.

Nevertheless, we quickly understand that we will have to lower our ambitions, ChatGPT is not able to develop a video game under Unreal Engine 5. As he says, many skills are necessary and require real teamwork. Moreover, the chatbot does not specify it, but it would have to be provided with all the 3D models, although the game engine offers some in its store. So we’re going to focus on something smaller while giving ChatGPT more information.

A more affordable 2D browser game for ChatGPT

So let’s put aside our desire to create the next Fortnite, this is not within the reach of ChatGPT. We have thus chosen to start with a tic-tac-toe, something quite simple. This is also the kind of project that allows you to learn about web development, let’s take the opportunity to learn! ChatGPT is greedy and needs information, so we will detail this second prompt that we send to it.

Directly, as requested, he provides us with the game code in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. At the end, he very often shares small information about this code, this is what allows us to learn a little more. This first version offers the minimum required for a tic-tac-toe to be called as such. You can see it for yourself just below.

ChatGPT and lack of information

When we see the game offered by ChatGPT, we say to ourselves that there are plenty of problems. We can still play while a line has been created, and at the end of a game, the game does not restart automatically, you have to refresh the page. There is also no scoring system. So we could tell ourselves that ChatGPT is dumb, but not so much. He just didn’t have enough information and was very literal about what he was told. We must therefore give him feedback on what he has done and detail our request.

This second version already gives us something much more qualitative. We go from a simple almost non-functional game to something with a score, a notion of player, a little style… We could continue to improve it by adding functionalities, a database which would keep the score and a system identification, for example. But for a first video game project, the bet is rather successful from ChatGPT.

For further ….

As it stands, you will have noticed that the game is very clearly functional. You can play a classic tic-tac-toe, without inconvenience. It is certainly possible to improve it, but we stopped there, because the objective was achieved.

Several improvements were possible, such as adding a timer to play a move, forcing the player to hurry. We can clearly improve the style by providing more complex displays than a single page. Or we could have asked to define a game as consisting of three consecutive rounds, and the winner would get 1 point per game. In any case, the possibilities of GPT are still very far from this simple project, we can do much more!