Savannah Pennington
Staff Writer
Released on Oct. 31, Oasis is an AI-generated game from Decart credited as being “the first real-time AI world model.” Based on user input, the game generates its environment as users play it, similar to Minecraft but powered entirely by AI. While it’s an impressive technological feat, some users’ experiences have been less than spectacular, revealing potential limitations and significant challenges.
Oasis allows players to interact with a Minecraft-like world where every in-game action, whether it be moving, breaking blocks or collecting items, leads to instant visual feedback. The game runs at around 20 frames per second and is currently operating at a resolution of around 360p, which is quite low by modern-day gaming standards. The graphics are also extremely pixelated and lack any sort of polish that players would expect from much older games. This shows that while the idea is innovative and impressive, the execution at this point is underwhelming.
Twitch Streamer SakuraPointe recently play-tested Oasis and commented on some of these flaws.
“Just taking and recreating Minecraft with AI, seemingly just throwing it at the wall and seeing what sticks isn’t going to do anything,” SakuraPointe stated. “You build a house and turn around to look at a sheep, and then you turn around again, and now your house is [a flight of] stairs. It’s really not something Minecraft will be threatened by.”
The technology behind Oasis is quite advanced and relatively impressive compared to what we’ve seen in the modern era of the gaming industry. Oasis utilizes a custom AI architecture based on both diffusion models and Transformer technology, allowing it to generate frames in real time without traditional rendering techniques. This approach allows the game to respond immediately to player actions in a way we had yet to see, which, in theory, is impressive. In practice, it struggles with maintaining any semblance of consistent and cohesive visuals, leading to extremely blurry and distorted images while actively playing the game.
The most disorienting, and lackluster aspect of Oasis is the lack of object permanence. When you so much as turn around, the environment changes dramatically, making it feel less like a coherent world and more like a series of snapshots, taken from other games, that don’t connect seamlessly. This all but destroys any sense of immersion within the world of the game, as you will find yourself in an environment nothing like what you just interacted with one action ago. Currently, Oasis feels more like a proof-of-concept for a game rather than a fully realized game.
“If they were to bring actual [game] developers into it, and use AI as part of the process and not the entire foundation of the game, I really think it can affect the future of the gaming industry, as a whole,” SakuraPointe said. “As a streamer, I see Oasis as a tool we can use to inform our viewers, anyone who doesn’t know much about AI, and just show that, yes, this is a silly game, look at all of the problems with it, but look at what can grow out of it. Look what can grow from using AI as a tool and just maybe not the whole foundation like the creators [of Oasis] did.”
Despite Oasis’ current flaws, Decart does have improvement plans. They are aiming to enhance resolution and frame rates significantly in future iterations, possibly reaching up to 4K gameplay with specialized hardware. There is no current timeline for these updates. Decart has also introduced “Custom Worlds,” a feature that allows users to upload images themselves that Oasis can turn into playable environments. Early tests of this feature show that these custom-generated worlds have the potential to quickly lose their resemblance to the provided images.
The potential applications for Oasis and the model it’s built on extend beyond the gaming industry, with Decart anticipating its technology being used for other forms of storytelling, content creation and entertainment experiences. However, this raises concerns about copyright issues related to the millions of hours of Minecraft gameplay data used for training the AI.
The novelty of playing an AI-generated game is extremely overshadowed by technical limitations and gameplay inconsistencies. Oasis is built on the gameplay of Minecraft, but it lacks any and all of its storytelling capabilities and opportunities. At this stage of development, it is more of an interesting idea rather than a polished game.
