Paul McNally has been around consoles and computers since his parents bought him a Mattel Intellivision in 1980. He has been a prominent games journalist since the 1990s, spending over a decade as editor of popular print-based video games and computer magazines, including a market-leading PlayStation title. Paul has written high-end gaming content for GamePro, Official Australian PlayStation Magazine, PlayStation Pro, Amiga Action, Mega Action, ST Action, GQ, Loaded, and the The Mirror. He has also hosted panels at retro-gaming conventions and can regularly be found guesting on gaming podcasts and Twitch shows. Believing that the reader deserves actually to enjoy what they are reading is a big part of Paul’s ethos when it comes to gaming journalism, elevating the sites he works on above the norm.
Roblox is somehow turning 20 and now its AI can build games from a text prompt
By Paul McNally
Oh are you lot gonna hate this one. First, let’s get the madness out of the way. Roblox is about to turn 20. That’s insanity. It’s gone through the Terrible Twos, the difficult teenage years and now it’s turned into a frat-house jock. Great. What’s next, a manosphere influencer?
Yes, The blocky game you let your kids play on your iPad to shut them up has morphed beyond all recognition into one of the most important platforms in the world, is worth an absolute fortune and has made lots of people very rich with a variety of Brainrot-inspired nonsense.
Anyway, you will be glad to know that now, making games such as (and these are real), Police Girl Prison Run Easy Obby, Murder Drone, and Spongy Love Story, are about to get even easier with the introduction of new AI tools that can make a game with a text prompt.
Sit down Greta, I know there is a huge anti-AI movement in gaming and this is not here to discuss the pros and cons of that, despite the fact nothing will change and AI is going nowhere, whether you like it or not, but people’s usage of it will, I believe, change to be more in line with what society expected.
Whether society expect people to be able to type “make me a 6-7 game in Roblox” in to a chat prompt and get something back is another question.
What is Roblox Build?
The company has just announced Build, a new mobile-first creation tool that allows users to generate the foundations of a Roblox game by describing what they want in a text prompt. Build will enter public alpha testing in New Zealand on July 28, with a wider rollout planned over the following months.
Users could, for example, ask Build to make a cosy adventure game set in a dense forest. The tool will then create a playable starting point that can be tested, altered, shared with friends or eventually published on Roblox. They won’t ask it that, of course.
Roblox says Build can handle gameplay mechanics, environments, characters, visual styles and sound. It uses a mixture of open-source technology and Roblox’s own AI models, which have been trained using 3D models and game-specific data.
In other words, making a basic Roblox game could soon be as straightforward as sending a message saying: “Make me an obby where the floor is lava and everyone is being chased by a giant toilet.”
You are not going to like what happens next.
Roblox insists Build will not flood the platform with AI “slop”
Lowering the barrier to game development is clearly a good thing in principle. Roblox has always been built around the idea that its players can become creators, and giving children or complete beginners an accessible way to experiment with game design could inspire people who might otherwise never open a traditional development tool.
It could also produce an industrial quantity of barely functional AI-generated obstacle courses, simulators and games based on whichever meme is currently occupying the minds of the internet’s youngest users.
Roblox appears fully aware of that concern. The company says Build creations will be judged by the same retention-based discovery system as other games, meaning something will need to attract and retain players before it begins appearing prominently across the platform.
“Our discovery systems are designed to highlight games with long-term retention, which doesn’t include AI slop,” Roblox said. “The quality of games on the homepage isn’t changing: If no one plays it – no one can find it.”
That is reassuring, although Roblox already contains a staggering number of games competing for attention. Making it possible to produce another one from a mobile phone without coding, modelling or even opening Roblox Studio could dramatically increase the amount of content uploaded to the platform.
Build will initially be available to age-checked users aged nine and over in New Zealand. Games published through the tool and approved by Roblox’s safety systems will be playable globally by verified users aged 16 and above. A basic version will be free, while additional paid features are planned for more advanced creators.
Of course they are.
Wake me up when the meteor gets closer.
