Brainstorm game ideas

Why build an AI xrisk game

Lower p(doom) by make people more aware, save the world
Easier access to funding / grants

## Examples

There are a lot of games where humans vs AI is part of the narrative, but it's often presented as some conflict

Universal Paperclips, simple (yet weirdly addictive, once you pass the first phase) browser game where you play an AI that has to build paperclips: https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html
Despotism You play as an AI that has to exploit humans to gain power. https://store.steampowered.com/app/699920/Despotism_3k/
I have no mouth and I must scream: 1995 point & click based on the popular short story of an AI that tortures humans https://www.gog.com/game/i_have_no_mouth_and_i_must_scream
Crank: kinda similar to Universal Paperclips

## How you can help

Come up with novel ideas for video games! Feed inspiration to developers.

GOG.com

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

The last people on Earth are buried deep within the center of the earth, trapped in the b

faint-white•1/23/24, 7:06 PM

Starsector: The worldbuilding is rooted in the First and Second AI War, which hinged around out of control AI, automation of warfare and ethics of enslaving artificial intelligence.

faint-white•1/23/24, 7:12 PM

I wish we had a strategy game where we play as an AI, with typically AI tools and mechanics which would hammer in how different a conflict with AI would be.
Things like, self-replication, fully centralised or decentralised governance, global coordination, value attacks and mass manipulation, different relevance of local factors, substrate independence, etc.

colossal-harlequin•1/23/24, 8:06 PM

@Will Petillo want to comment on your Unity grid worlds visualization and game jam ideas?

Repeating my first thought when I saw it: for the right crowd, I think a Zachtronics style puzzler where you have to build worlds in which the agents exhibit various worrying behaviours could be really cool.

dual-salmon•1/23/24, 8:54 PM

Thanks for the mention Anthony! Game developer here and would love to discuss game ideas--or game design generally--with folks here, especially with the Global Game Jam having just started.

Here is a video lecture I gave on Interactive Fiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdJueK43jGw&list=PLA9W3lkRtAfOjDj58lmxk-xS4emRip-AG&index=3. If anyone wants to write a story about AI using the reputation system I outline at the end, send me a DM.

Here is a presentation on my Unity Gridworlds system to a general audience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdJueK43jGw&list=PLA9W3lkRtAfOjDj58lmxk-xS4emRip-AG&index=3. About half of it is about AI and and the alignment problem in general, see the timestamps to skip ahead to the project demo, or this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idn20Iibq6Q that focuses on level setup. The project has changed significantly in the last couple months, as I am working with Jobst Heitzig's satisficer team at AISC to adapt the system to work with algorithms written outside of the Unity game engine and deal with probabilistic environments.

YouTubeZen Marmot Digital

Extensible Choices in Interactive Fiction

Recording of a UnityPDX lecture on Interactive Fiction by Will Petillo. Explores various common and underexplored techniques for video game storytelling, heavily inspired by the writings of Chris Crawford.

Links:
Juice of Arthur on Itch: https://will9371.itch.io/the-juice-of-arthur
Github: https://github.com/Will9371/Juice-of-Arthur
"The Art o...

YouTubeZen Marmot Digital

Unity Gridworlds Demo

Recreation of DeepMind’s 2017 Gridworlds paper in the Unity game engine using its built-in ML Agents plugin, including a level editor that decreases the barrier to entry for non-specialists to design their own Gridworlds-style experiments.

Timestamps:
0:14 = Create a new level
2:19 = Draw walls
2:34 = Set objects
3:36 = Save/load layouts
3:53 =...

dual-salmon•1/23/24, 8:58 PM

Also, my p(doom) calculator (described in more detail on another Project listing) has the potential to expand into an interactive game by presenting the player with policy decisions and the goal of lowing p(doom) below an an acceptable threshold.

dual-salmon•1/23/24, 9:01 PM

So that's 3 different platforms I've built with the intention of spinning AI-themed games out of them, but for any of those to come to fruition, I need a collaborator (no technical experience required). If any of these look interesting to any of you, reply or send a DM!

wispy-yellow•5/23/25, 6:56 PM

Hi guys - I've been playing with claude... Joep suggested posting here and seeing what people think, for feedback on the game and the rationale behind the game. Full transparency, i did not and could not code this myself

pause-ai-game-final_3.html56.11KB

wispy-yellow•5/23/25, 6:57 PM

^ @Will Petillo @anthonybailey.net @Pato Vercesi

sacred-rose•5/23/25, 7:30 PM

if you want to make an educational game, you must find a way to combine the educational aspect with the moment-to-moment gameplay.
gameplay-wise, the most similar successful/fun thing to this concept is Vampire Survivors.
Anyway, i'm super pessimistic on the project of doing a good game that is also useful sorry. It could theoretically be done, but it would be better just to do some interactive teaching like Brilliant.

Ssacred-rose if you want to make an educational game, you must find a way to combine the educ...

wispy-yellow•5/23/25, 11:13 PM

Yeah? Don't think if we had something shareable we could ad promote it might get some folks curious?

dual-salmon•5/24/25, 4:04 AM

It's really cool you were able to make this, there's some nontrivial mechanics here! Pretty much anything playable (which this is) can be published on Itch.io pretty easily and for free (they don't really supply any marketing, other than making the game easy to find & share).

dual-salmon•5/24/25, 4:08 AM

Re design. A game supplies two things:
1) interactivity
2) fantasy

Right now, the gameplay is pretty separate from what it is teaching, which is a problem for 1, but that can be OK if you lean into 2, which is already present to some degree. That is, the educational aspects serve as background color that make the gameplay feel meaningful, even if they don't actually change the interactive gameplay itself, because the integration happens through fantasy.

dual-salmon•5/24/25, 4:12 AM

Popularity of games follows a hard power law, where the vast, vast majority of games get no attention at all and a few go viral, where the latter requires both luck and solid design all around (Vampire Survivors looks janky, but the design is a master class in progression loops). If getting to that threshold looks like too much work to be worth the effort, it's still worth publishing something because why not.

wispy-yellow•5/24/25, 3:07 PM

There's lots here! I want to deep dive, can we talk this through next week?

dual-salmon•5/24/25, 6:26 PM

Sure!

dual-salmon•5/24/25, 10:33 PM

A really good example of blending education through gameplay through interactivity is Paper's Please, a game about checking passports for a totalitarian state. As the game progresses you are faced with increasingly unreasonable demands and incentives towards corruption in order to keep yourself and your family afloat.

...actually, this applies really well...

Game premise - "Safety, Please" you are an AI Safety researcher at Open Brain, tasked with approving/disapproving project proposals (these can be based on actual research studies/results for added flavor + educational value). Your stated mission is to ensure that AI is developed in a safe way, but as the game progresses competitive pressures mount towards cut corners and sweeping problems under the rug instead of solving them. With skill, you can balance your mission and these pressures for a while, but inevitably the game ends with you either going full acceleration or getting fired, with each case being followed by an epilogue as to what happens next. For a less pessimistic spin, there can be a third set of options to whistle-blow on the company, form a union, or otherwise push for governance changes, which has no short-term payoff but is the only long-run way to reach a positive ending story.

Ddual-salmon A really good example of blending education through gameplay through interactivi...

hurt-tomatoOP•5/25/25, 4:18 PM

Claude built it in 5 mins

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/eab22354-f512-426a-9deb-04f3aef51548

wispy-yellow•5/26/25, 12:31 PM

@Tom Bibby

wispy-yellow•5/28/25, 1:26 PM

Hi everyone - I'd like a project lead on this if someone has interest and time

wispy-yellow•6/5/25, 7:14 PM

@Will Petillo @Pato Vercesi

sacred-rose•6/5/25, 7:17 PM

1st level have bugs if you touch the walls

dual-salmon•6/5/25, 7:17 PM

Suggested tweaks for Ella's game:

Level 3: decrease guard move speed by 20-40%
Boss Level: decrease bullet speed by ~50%, increase rate of fire ~2x

Other thoughts:

Game is already good enough to function as a "lead magnet," e.g. a reward for joining the newsletter.
I don't see a path to improving this to the point where it works as a viral advertising tool.

sacred-rose•6/5/25, 7:24 PM

I like 1000x times more the idea of making a papers please analogous to ai safety

sacred-rose•6/5/25, 7:24 PM

i love papers please and i think it fits and everything

sacred-rose•6/5/25, 7:26 PM

if you can pull it off it would be amazing

sacred-rose•6/20/25, 4:44 AM

projects-💪i made this Game about the doom on ai, what do you think this is basically the same foundational idea (simulations taking decisions) + randomness and a lot more polished visually

sacred-rose•6/20/25, 4:47 AM

Btw Fernando has also a pdoom calculator and other cool stuff in his website https://ferfer.netlify.app/

wispy-yellow•6/20/25, 4:59 AM

Meeting with a new volunteer this morning who runs a game company and keen to explore helping

wispy-yellow•6/27/25, 1:31 AM

Relevant: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TjT3RdAfmrLqgb68K/help-the-ai-2027-team-make-an-online-agi-wargame

Help the AI 2027 team make an online AGI wargame — LessWrong

The AI Futures Project, the team behind AI 2027, has developed a tabletop exercise (TTX) to simulate AI takeoff where we facilitate people going thro…

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Why build an AI xrisk game

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