Taste is the new programming language (w/ Astrocade CEO Amir Sadeghian) | AI Basics
August 20, 2026 · 21 min
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Show notes
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Astrocade is building super-intelligence for the interactive world. Build the future of fun: https://www.astrocade.com/careers
Today's show:
*Making a video game once required a studio, an engine, and a team of five or more people working for six months. But with Astrocade, users just describe the game they'd like to play and share, and an AI assembles it from minutes, ready to publish to a TikTok-style feed.
Still, founder and CEO Amir Sadeghian tell us AI can't actually build a great game all on its own. The magic isn't just in the automation, but the user's creativity and good taste.
Amir demos how the app turns simple sentences and descriptions into full video games, explains why frontier models still regress to the mean rather than pushing boundaries, and unpacks how the game's human-in-the-loop workflow can turn even generic ideas into something original and fun.
Guest:
Amir Sadeghian on X: https://x.com/_amirabs
Astrocade: https://www.astrocade.com/
Relevant Links
Flappy Bird: https://flappybird.io/
Plants vs. Zombies: https://www.ea.com/ea-studios/popcap/plants-vs-zombies
MrBeast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast
Google's Nano Banana Pro: https://nanabananapro.com/
Timestamps:
Welcome to AI Basics, presented by Google Cloud
Amir Sadeghian, CEO of Astrocade joins
What is Astrocade and how does it work?
From describing to publishing: the TikTok for games
Amir's origin story: four continents, one vision
Why making games used to require years of training
The watermelon juice theory of product friction
Taste as the new programming language
Personalizing games with your own images
From consumer to prosumer: can you make a living?
Astrocade's creator fund and new creator economy
Open roles at Astrocade
Why play is the most universal human language
Google Cloud, Gemini, and wrapping up
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