Goalposts

Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?

2026 MarchCopyrightest

About why there are no good AI-generated games, such as AI text adventures.

As another commenter points out, this sort of exists in the broader sense of "interactive fiction." There's lots of options for scaffolding an LLM into something like a storytelling toy.

But I truly believe an AI-generated equivalent of Zork or Lost Pig is decades away. The "knowing what it is talking about problem" is not even close to being solved, no matter how impressive coding agents have become. It is simply too easy to sabotage clever game design with accidentally adversarial prompting.

More generally: LLMs are still unfunny except in cases of clear plagiarism. This also extends to making fun games.

An AI generates a text adventure game as good as Zork or Lost Pig.

Has this happened?

Yes 24 (20%)Not sure 56 (46%)No 41 (34%)

Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.