Taste is the new programming language (w/ Astrocade CEO Amir Sadeghian) | AI Basics

August 20, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Taste is the new programming language

When Astrocade CEO Amir Sadeghian's team ordered small bottles of watermelon juice for the office fridge, they vanished in two days. When the team bought larger, more economical half-liter bottles instead, nobody touched them. Sadeghian's brother ran an experiment: he poured the big bottles into cups and set them next to the fridge. Suddenly, consumption returned. That small act of removing friction is, Sadeghian says, the exact story of his company. Astrocade is a platform where anyone can create and publish interactive games using natural language prompts—no coding required—and the result is a TikTok-like feed of user-generated games. The company has over 100,000 creators from more than 100 countries, and some are already making thousands of dollars a month full-time.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:03) **Introduction & Guest** - Jason introduces AI Basics and guest Amir Sadeghian, CEO of AstroCade, a platform for creating and sharing video games using natural language.
2 (00:46) **The Core Idea: Anyone Can Make Games** - Amir explains that AstroCade removes the traditional barriers to game development by allowing anyone to create interactive experiences using natural language prompts.
3 (01:13) **Why Now? The Convergence of AI and Gaming** - Amir shares his personal journey and the technological rationale for starting AstroCade in 2022.
4 (02:50) **The Friction-Removal Metaphor** - Amir uses a story about a watermelon juice experiment in his office to illustrate how removing small barriers can dramatically increase user engagement.
5 (03:27) **How AI Handles Game Design & Refinement** - Jason asks how the AI translates a simple prompt like "spaceship that collects donuts" into a full game, and whether users refine on the front or back end.
6 (04:55) **The Demo: From Prompt to Playable Game** - Amir demonstrates a game, showing how users can tune specific parameters like acceleration and rotation speed using a visual editor alongside natural language.
7 (06:52) **The Key Insight: Taste is the New Programming Language** - Amir states that the only remaining barrier to game creation is the user's taste, as AI handles the technical execution.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

The TWiST AI Basics series is made possible by Google Cloud!

Build context-aware AI workflows using DeepMind models and orchestration tools with Google for Startups' new Startup technical guide on generative media. Get the guide here: https://goo.gle/technical_guide

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:

0:00 Welcome to AI Basics, presented by Google Cloud

0:44 Amir Sadeghian, CEO of Astrocade joins

1:08 What is Astrocade and how does it work?