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Google and Unity announced a new platform set to launch in 2026 that enables users to develop video games from simple prompts. The initiative aims to expand Unity's user base and bolster its game development segment, which accounts for roughly a third of its revenue.
Google Labs unveiled Playground, a tool that lets users build browser-based games using text prompts instead of code. Users can pick a genre, choose 2D or 3D and single- or multiplayer modes, upload images for AI-generated assets, and publish finished games privately, via link, or to a public gallery with leaderboards. The platform is live for users 18+ in the U.S., with free token-limited access and higher limits for Google One AI subscribers.
Google has introduced Playground, an experimental platform that lets users create 2D or 3D games by typing prompts instead of coding or drawing. Users can refine mechanics, physics and graphics through further prompts, share games via link or publish them to a community gallery with leaderboards, or keep them private. The platform is live now in the US for users 18 and older, with access tiered by Google One membership.
A solo developer built a game backend called GDT (Game Development Toolkit) that has run every title they've shipped since 2016, including Marooners, Verdun, Tannenberg, Isonzo, Crash Drive 2 and 3, plus a seventh game built by another studio. The PHP version, roughly 20,000 lines running on Google App Engine with Firestore, supported Steam, Epic, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, mobile and web without a player-noticed outage in ten years, and has now been replaced by a C# version on Cloud Run.
Jernej Barbič, a computer science professor at the University of Southern California, has received a 2025 technical achievement Academy Award for creating Ziva VFX, software that simulates realistic muscle, fat and skin for digital humans and creatures. The technology, launched in 2016 through his startup Ziva Dynamics and later acquired by Unity Technologies in 2021, has appeared in more than 60 films including Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.