Game bridges are here — reverse engineering enables game mixing
What was once a novel concept in the Disney movie Wreck-It Ralph has become reality, with AI becoming capable of reverse engineering software.
In my published Medium story AI Game Development with Codex/GPT 6 Astra, I was humble enough to quote myself with an idea I like to use to point out to my friends where I think AI is going. In the post, I wrote:
“I want a PUBG in a Warhammer 40k setting on a Hive City map.”
Because I thought this might be possible in 5 years. So my PUBG-playing, Warhammer 40k-loving friend group could enjoy some more time together.
I wrote it as an example of what you should not do.
Well, people have done it. Last week.
Remixing games through reverse engineering
At this point, everybody might have heard how Photoshop got reverse engineered, probably by decompiling the complete software. Every single product line got an exact (not yet 100% capable) copy and was open sourced.
Us gamers got to game. So our tribe took that idea, decompiled and reverse engineered several games. Imagine having access to every feature of, for example, Minecraft.
And because you have access to and knowledge of every single functionality of Minecraft, you can put specific parts of it, like the character, user interface, and interactions with specific blocks, including placing them into the game world, into a decompiled version of, why not, GTA 5.
This has been modded before, you might say. Yes, it might have been modded specifically as Minecraft with GTA assets in GTA. Putting the actual Minecraft assets into GTA is an absolute novelty and changes everything.
It’s not just Steve from Minecraft replacing the model of Michael in GTA — Steve is IN GTA. He travelled there just like in Wreck-It Ralph. And everything Steve can do and does in GTA interacts with the world. Cars drive into TNT blocks. TNT block explosions wreck cars. Creepers run into pedestrians and cars.
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Two game worlds suddenly interact.
And I can’t currently imagine where this ends.
Remixing every single game is now possible
Minecraft in Pokémon. Mario 64 in Elden Ring. PUBG in Darktide. Space Marine 2 in Darktide. Nivalis Nights in Cyberpunk. Ballpit in Stardew Valley. Dredge in Sea of Thieves. Pacific Drive in Hogwarts Legacy.
At this point, looking at my Steam library gives me a headache of possibilities.
Of course, there are more questions than “can it be done” and “is it fun”. Is it legal? I have no clue.
This right now feels like the Napster moment of the late 90s and early 2000s.
Trust me, Frodo, I’ve been there.
What comes next?
The same things that happened in the late 90s and early 2000s. Ads in cinemas about how stealing is bad. Tougher penalties for decompiling and reverse engineering. A probable red line for AIs in that regard. And of course: Capitalism.
Capitalism will find a way to figure the legal stuff out and make money with it. Google is testing this with Google Playground:
And other companies will follow sooner rather than later, as the technology seems to be making several Will Smith eating spaghetti-sized leaps.
What mix-up would you like to play?
