Agora-1: The Multi-Agent World Model

5/18/2026 at 11:25:37 PM

This is cute and retro! But I think training only on GoldenEye undersells the concept a bit, since their world model inherits the N64-era graphics from GoldenEye, which automatically makes it look dated.

If they retrained the same model on real video data, they could potentially get a multiplayer world with quite realistic-looking graphics (see https://wayve.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Ex-2-GAIA-3.mp4, https://wayve.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Ex-3-GAIA-3.mp4).

Maybe for Agora-2 :)

by ollin

5/19/2026 at 8:04:34 AM

They don't want to push the envelope too far in the first release and Goldeneye level graphics are more forgiving towards flaky textures and wonky physics. Not to say what it is isn't already groundbreaking.

by anshumankmr

5/18/2026 at 7:42:08 PM

Very cool work, the learned world state is a smart way of getting consistent generation across all the views (and not having the map vanish when you 180 like some other models). Multi-agent is such an interesting field, because it's clear that humanity benefits from distributed intelligence, but I don't think MARL has really had a big breakthrough like AlphaGo or RLVR for single-agent RL.

Two thoughts about where this could go: first, the internal world state would need to be learned to transfer to real-life robotics, since you can't query the internals of a game engine in training. Second, an enormous challenge for many of these world models is going to be truly unbounded environmental interactivity - Agora is still mostly about a few agents interacting in a static environment. Learning interaction will be hard, because the interactions in games are intentionally added in, by hand. But we (human learners) acquire a strong model for environental interaction very efficiently, which is part of what helps us generalise so effectively.

by ainch

5/18/2026 at 8:18:05 PM

Underwhelming demo. Also the controls are terrible, but, the real Goldeneye was also underwhelming with bad controls if you had played Quake II.

by Stevvo

5/18/2026 at 7:53:51 PM

Unlike LLMs which made it into the public view, I have a hard time seeing these world simulation models doing the same

I'm not sure how to imagine their use in education or gaming, but it's clear that they have a real potential for being used in military programs

It's nightmarish to think these could be trained on shooting game footage and thrown into real life scenarios in some form or another

by hydra-f

5/18/2026 at 8:16:50 PM

World models are there for planning capabilities and data efficiency in training, they are an old and general idea (model based RL). You just see them in video games etc because these are easier cases.

by aspenmartin

5/18/2026 at 9:03:47 PM

So much of tech progress links back to gaming, it’s astounding

by Aboutplants

5/20/2026 at 11:55:10 AM

It's either games or pornography – pick your poison.

by nxobject

5/18/2026 at 9:54:34 PM

gaming is all about simulation after all

by ianbutler

5/18/2026 at 10:06:14 PM

Yeah, it's obvious that this will be used to pilot drones.

by empath75

5/19/2026 at 12:26:11 AM

Oh, not at all! It will be used to train drone pilot AIs.

by taneq

5/19/2026 at 7:24:59 AM

Well now I'm imagining Optimus robots teabagging the enemy.

by taffydavid

5/18/2026 at 10:00:26 PM

Hmm. Neat ( especially prowl -- as an idea ). But.. I don't see anything beyond the game. I might be a little cautious, but there is no way for me test any of it ( and I was actually setting up an old mmo this weekend to see how well agent can survive within a rigid ecosystem ). Is it just intended for pure researchers or something?

by iugtmkbdfil834

5/18/2026 at 8:31:15 PM

I played the game - the inputs feel like trash... I'm not convinced this is the correct direction to generate games. We should probably only be generating scripts and assets to plug into game engines, rather than relying on GenAI for the actual engine.

by gamer20123123

5/19/2026 at 9:20:19 AM

Gamepads usage doesn't match screen actions/movements through the entire presentation video(s), zero trust at this point.

Edit: I apologize, entirely missed the game itself, partially understand the mismatch now, but still, it's much heavier in the presentation than in real life for some reason

by leobuskin

5/18/2026 at 7:41:12 PM

Is there a little bit more on this in terms of evaluation or is this rather a Show-HN post?

by MASNeo

5/18/2026 at 8:06:52 PM

Be careful when transposing game-learned behaviors into real life.

by syntex

5/19/2026 at 4:54:28 AM

I'm confused how the world itself works - or would work - at scale. Taking that minecraft clip on the link, if I jump down a cave first, and the model decides the cave goes off to the left. A few hours later I come back, and this time the model decides the cave bends to the right?

by Incipient

5/19/2026 at 7:22:22 AM

I don't think it's a great approach for an actual game. In this case they're demonstrating that the model can create a shared space that's consistent for many players/users, for a short time. But like you say it would probably not endure.

Although it does put me in mind of playing daggerfall years ago, which had randomly generated dungeons that didn't always work. You could sometimes get trapped in architecture, jump from a height with no way to climb back up again. There was a reason Bethesda moved away from that

by taffydavid

5/19/2026 at 2:58:41 PM

[dead]

by pennomi

5/19/2026 at 3:31:10 AM

Can't wait for a fully immersive game with npcs

by picoloamg

5/18/2026 at 10:16:50 PM

good step in a direction

by graphememes

5/18/2026 at 7:06:30 PM

Super cool!

by decodingchris

5/19/2026 at 2:29:17 AM

[flagged]

by gen99

5/19/2026 at 9:50:20 AM

[dead]

by lezwon

5/18/2026 at 7:33:44 PM

we have this before gta-6

by max0077