Ever since the absolute explosion of generative AI models around two years ago, the concept of text-to-games has been incredibly alluring for the user-generated content community. Bitmagic is a company based in Finland, that is building such an ecosystem. Unlike many similar pilot projects, its AI model is getting some serious financial backing. In the latest funding round, the company got over 4 million USD from several big sources, including a huge traditional game development company. The first big test for Bitmagic is yet to come, but regardless of its results, the current financial structure offers plenty of room for a prolonged development cycle.
The latest round of fundraising for Bitmagic included an eclectic selection of backers. KIP, or the Korea Investment Partners, led the round in terms of the money provided to the AI startup. Alongside KIP, Supercell stepped up as another big investor. It is also a game development company from Finland, but one that focuses on mobile releases. You may know their games: Supercell published huge hits like Clash of Clans, Clash Royale and Brawl Stars. In 2023, its annual revenue was 1.8 billion USD, allowing it to help fellow developers through funding rounds like this one. Additionally, angel investors like Maarten De Koning and Zak Phelps took part in the round, further propping up Bitmagic’s corporate coffers for future development.
CEO of Bitmagic, Jani Penttinen, stated in a press release that the investment will push forward the company’s work on the AI model. With it, the team is hoping to make game creation a process accessible to everyone. If successful, Penttinen and the company’s investors believe that Bitmagic could usher in a new chapter of the video game development industry.
However, the scope of the work is massive. The platform offers a means of creating 3D video games through the use of text prompts. In fact, Bitmagic works like text-to-image or text-to-video AI models. The resulting prompt is a working video game system, set in a 3D visual environment. That's a big leap forward compared to the older text-to-game models, which usually offer a 2D visual space and the simplest gameplay mechanics.
The next big step for the company and its product will be the Steam Playtest release. Bitmagic has been present on Steam since the beginning of this year, but now it plans to provide its system to the actual UGC audience.
Right now, on its Steam page, players can sign up for the Playtest period and get notified if they get to become a part of the initial cohort of creators and gamers. The company has not released any concrete details about the Playtest and how long it will last. The same goes for further milestones and planned launch of Bitmagic. In all likelihood, the team is unsure how long the development will last and what scope of issues and opportunities the Playtest period will provide.
Bitmagic truly does sound like a magical system, where UGC creators type in a prompt with their idea and get a fully functional 3D game as a result. The promotional material that Bitmagic shared in its pre-Alpha teaser trailer showcases a stunning third-person video game, where creators can add pets, castles, enemies, and much more through simple textual prompts.
However, Bitmagic is working on the basis of GPT4-turbo, which is an OpenAI application. It means that calculations and all of the heavy lifting are actually done outside of the Bitmagic game engine. This is the biggest issue of long-term development of this text-to-game system. OpenAI is constantly changing and improving its models. As the case of GPT-4o shows, that process sometimes takes a step forward and two steps backward. Bitmagic might be forced to deal with problems that are not of their own making, but the potential and the finances are clearly there as well. With a working text-to-game model, the domain of gaming user-generated content could really begin a whole new and very exciting chapter.
