I made a game like Call of Duty Zombies with one single prompt using Claude AI and ChatGPT Pro. Now I have my very own game hosted on Internet Computer Protocol, where anybody can go play it for free, and I can make any change I want to it. This age of AI is absolutely incredible for what you can do. Right now the game doesn't have any sound, but think about this: it was a one-prompt game. I literally just talked to ChatGPT using transcribe on the pro level, had it research everything, and then I had it give that prompt to Claude, which I have on my computer, and Claude cranked this out in one single output. I hadn't tested it or anything. I did a video yesterday where I played it for the first time. This is so amazing.
Why is it amazing? Because I can have the characters say what I want them to say. I can make the story whatever I want. I can monetize however I feel like monetizing, and on ICP it's super easy — anyone who has ICP or has crypto, I can do micro-transactions. I can do anything with this. And the game is actually fun. The story behind it: you're slaughtering zombie crypto coins, and you're in DFINITY headquarters. I can put all of that into the game. I made a boss for the game. I got the perks set up. And all I did was imagine — I just imagined how this should work, and now AI makes it real. There are 110 zombies per level. And anyone anywhere in the world can play this right in their web browser without downloading anything. This is the future of gaming right here: being able to play games like this, and being able to make your own games with AI.
What It Cost and How Little It Took
Now, about what it takes: this only used five percent of my Claude Fable allowance on the plan I pay $200 a month for, and I pay $200 a month for ChatGPT Pro too. But you don't have to pay that much — you probably need at least the $100-a-month plan on Claude to do this. And honestly, this is not that hard. If you go to my website and schedule a call with me, I can easily show you how to do this. This is the cheapest and fastest game development there is, but what's important is that it's full control. You have control over everything — the game, all of it. That's what's so cool. This is user-generated content, but for gaming. Technically it's AI-generated, but it allows you to have user-generated gaming.
The Roblox Realization
Here's some of what I was thinking. Watching my kids play Roblox, I used to think, "Ah, nobody's going to play these easy, simple games." And it's like — well, yeah, they do. Look at Roblox. People are playing Roblox, and it's such a simple game. It is such a simple game, and yet it's one of the most popular games in the world. And what's better, my game is just in a browser, so anyone can easily play it in a browser. This was literally the first time I played it — I hadn't even edited anything yet.
Now I can make games and use them as the background for my videos. I have a couple of channels; I can literally just make my own games and use them as the background for my own videos. And this is all available at jerrybanfield.net, where I'm also looking at selling my own comedy — I don't have to deal with censorship. So I can make an entire content ecosystem that's actually under my control, that can't just be canceled or have the plug pulled on it.
Why ICP Hosting Changes the Math
Here's the problem with hosting games anywhere else: if you don't host a game like this on ICP, you'd need too much server usage to serve it if a bunch of people wanted to play at once. But I've got it set up where I can just pay to have that capacity there without paying for it all the time. AI plus this new hosting infrastructure is just an insane combination — the two of these together.
And imagine this: I'll make another version where I go through and record a bunch of voice lines — "Double points!" — jokes about my first wife and my new girlfriend — I can make it where I'm the character in the game. Especially if you're a YouTuber and you already have an audience, what is better than being able to put yourself in a game for your audience?
How I Might Monetize It
I could charge for this game if I wanted to. What I'm thinking I might do is make different versions of the game and maybe charge for the newer versions. I'll make the earlier versions free, then upgrade it and charge for the later versions. Every single new version of the game, I'll just put out there, and maybe have people buy a lifetime pass — lifetime pass holders get all the newest versions of the game — while the free versions stay out there. And the game is genuinely fun: they're dropping nukes in there. It's amazing. I'm just so excited for the future of gaming — not just having to play games that have been made for me.
The Web 2.0 of Gaming
For gaming, this is the same kind of revolutionary shift we saw with social media and websites. Back in the day, websites used to be read-only. You couldn't put any content anywhere you went. Then Web 2.0, as we call it, was where you could actually contribute content to websites, and that was an absolute game changer — instead of just being stuck with other people's content, you could contribute to it yourself.
While I was playing, I missed the fast power-up, so I bought the railgun power again to keep our shots as high as possible to take the boss down. We grabbed another quick reload too — got it down to a half-second reload — and if you buy a couple more quick reloads, you have almost no reload at all. And it's a railgun, so it goes right through them. There was even a little boss in there. This is a big deal for being able to start making your own games. Like I said, I thought people wouldn't want to play simplistic games, but Roblox and Minecraft are some of the most popular games in the world, and those are often utterly simplistic games. What's special is the ability to generate your own world, your own ideas.
My friend was telling me how big Roblox is, but the problem with Roblox is it's not as easy to use AI to create a game there, because you have to go through Roblox Studio to do it. Whereas if you just put out a browser-based game that anybody can play for free, and you put it on ICP, you can do that directly.
Taking Back the Creative Power
Around level 25 in my playthrough, I grabbed Second Chance — I think I'd bought all the perks at that point — and dropped a nuke to start the round off. I had 408 points, and my reloads were twice as fast as when I started. I wondered how far I could get. I was around round 26 already, and it had been pretty easy so far — but see, I can go in there and adjust anything I want. If I want to adjust how hard it is, I can do that. That's what's so cool about user-generated gaming: you take back the creative power instead of waiting around for some third-party developer, worshiping and sitting around waiting for GTA 6 forever. You can make your own version of GTA now. This came from one single prompt.
To me, the really amazing results are going to come from iterating. This game was a one-shot prompt. Now I can go in and tweak it: maybe you can only buy the railgun damage five times, or you can only stack three quick revives, or there should be an additional Bitcoin boss every level that fires coins faster and takes a hundred damage. I can just crank on it. Then I can put my own sound effects in the game, make the character me — so all my gaming videos can be me playing a game where I'm the character in the game. I can make my own version of Duke Nukem. I can make a 2D side-scroller.
Graphics, Music, and an Abundant Future
I don't know exactly how it sourced the graphics for this. I told it to make the zombies realistic, so this is its idea of realistic zombies. But I think you can plug things in — potentially use better graphics. Again, I literally just started this today; this is my very first attempt ever at an AI game. Along the way I upgraded my health to level five. When you think about how cool, how fun, and how playable this is for my very first AI game ever, from one single prompt — imagine what I could do with ten, twenty, thirty rounds of back and forth.
This is like AI music, except games are much more interactive. And I actually have my own music, so I can put my own music in my own game — or you could even use AI to generate your own music for the game. Oh man, it's such an abundant world, such an abundant future. That's what's exciting to me. In my experience, learning and knowing how to use AI is like a superpower today, because in the past I couldn't have made something like this. I couldn't have just made my own version of Zombies because I felt like it.
Playing through, I kept getting ideas: these zombies need to spawn faster every round. That's something I can put in next time — they need to spawn faster as the rounds go on. They should spawn fast as hell. I don't know how many the game can handle at once — I think it's around 25 — but it should be spawning them faster so that you just get overwhelmed rapidly. And what's cool is I could actually keep every version of the game and publish each one.
Publishing Every Evolution of the Game
This is like the "zombie launch one" version. I could keep every single version of the game and publish each one separately, so you could literally play every different evolution of the game. How cool is that?
At this point in my playthrough I had all the Second Chances, I think, and the zombies still hadn't caught up with my railgun damage. I had level five railgun damage, so I was still one-shotting them. I wondered how high I could take my railgun damage — I didn't tell the prompt where to stop. I wondered whether I could just keep going until I got to a point where I couldn't one-shot them anymore. I tried to buy a sixth round of it, which cost 400 points fast, and zombie kills are only one point each. My damage hit 313 — holy smokes. I don't think the zombies had that much health at that point. The next upgrade would be 500 points, but at that rate I could pretty much go indefinitely, because my railgun power was going to overwhelm their health. I think I only set their health to go up five each level. I was around round 28, and their health was something like 250. So it got interesting: how long were we going to last? And it felt so good — one guy had an XRP coin on his chest and I struck him down.
Why Content Creators Should Get Excited
Get excited about the future of AI gaming, because this is the future of AI gaming. Why? To me, if you're going to be a content creator — if you're going to be a gaming creator — the ideal scenario is to play your own games. If you can play your own games, my gosh, you can literally make games people have never seen before, and therefore your content is always going to be original and fresh.
What I'm really excited to do is see what games I can make, see what are the most fun games I can think of to make, then see what games people like playing and which games monetize. And then I can literally put a billboard for Jerry Banfield games inside the game itself. In future versions, a wall in the level can have a YouTube logo and say "Jerry Banfield Games" on it. I can literally promote my YouTube channel inside the game itself. How cool is that? And if I wanted to, I could attach a coin to it.
Another benefit: this way I don't have to mix my games up with a website that has 1,500 blog posts — or a thousand blog posts — on it. If I break something with the games, I'm not blowing up my business asset. This is so cool. I hope I've inspired someone: creating an AI game is easier than you've ever imagined, and this, to me, is the future of gaming.
Sound Effects Are the Next Upgrade
One of the zombies got a good hit on me while I was playing, and I realized I want to play this more than I even want to play some of the old Zombies games — because I made this. I'm so excited. But I am going to need to put sound effects in it. From now on, what I would do is have a sound effects folder ready to go before you start. So for the next version, I'll build a sound effects folder — I'll make real gunshot sounds, and there are websites where you can just grab sound effects — and that may take it to the next level. Right now it doesn't have any sound effects at all.
Back in the game, double points turned out to be huge, because zombies only give you one point each and some of these perks cost a fortune. And here's something interesting I noticed: if I go down, all the perks become fantastically expensive. So I really needed to stack up around a thousand points in case I went down, because at that point my railgun would probably be three-shotting them. It was doing 313 damage, and the zombies get five more health every level — they started around a hundred, so by then they should have had about 250 more health. Pretty soon we were going to run into a wall where we'd have to upgrade the railgun again to survive. Then a nuke dropped — look at that.
Total Creative Control
And I can rename everything, too. I can call the nuke something else if I don't want it called a nuke. This is totally my environment. As long as the AI will create it, the game can say "Jerry Banfield" on the wall all over the place. I didn't even tell it what to put on the walls — I just told it generally what to do, and it built much more than I actually gave it instructions for, which is so cool.
I share plenty more adventures like this one over on my Life playlist if you want to follow along with what I'm building.
So that wraps up this gaming session. I hope this inspires you to think about AI gaming. There are huge opportunities right now, before hardly anybody knows how to do this or sees what a huge opportunity it is. I hope you can cash in on it. I would love for you to try this game at jerrybanfield.net. Thanks a lot for reading.