Web3 Gaming and AI

What Is the Role of AI in Web3 Gaming?

By incorporating AI into web3 gaming,opportunities are opened for enhancing interactions and creating more dynamic stories in game, while also making it easier for aspiring developers to bring their visions to life. 

Key Takeaways

• Artificial intelligence (AI) is taking off across many fields including web3 gaming.
• Web3 games that include AI include AI Arena, Arc Agents, Rebel Cars Pit Girls, Beyond Human, Today, Parallel Colony, and more.
• There are also AI-centric game development platforms including: GameGPT, Aethir, Kinetic Elite, and AGIX.

This year has been a breakout year for AI – at least from a buzz standpoint. From the early days of AI generated art taking over every corner of the web, to the current state of AI deepfake videos and legislation proposed to put in place laws banning AIs from accessing vital systems such as nuclear arsenals.

It might surprise you to learn that one of Open AI’s first major successes with AI training came from playing DOTA 2, a MOBA-style game (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) that has been hugely popular for many years and which features the largest yearly prize tournament in eSports. Against veteran, professional eSport competition, and playing a game known for deep layers of complexity in regards to character selection and strategy, power upgrades, and equipment purchasing, Open AI surprised the world by delivering bots that could compete, even beat some of the top teams in the world!

But while their AI bots’ success against human players was very impressive, the way they were trained is even more notable. Given just a basic set of rules, e.g. winning is valuable, death is a negative effect – the very basics – the bots were set loose onto the game with no detailed instructions for playing or strategies to use. Instead, the AIs were tasked with figuring out everything on their own. How to move, where to move, when to use powers, when to purchase items, everything was discovered through trial and error over millions of games. The matches were simulated and accelerated to allow for more data collection, and over years of simulated game time, the bots did learn. They learned very well!

And while this gaming bots project only lasted a couple of real life years, it paved the way for Open AI to build more detailed AI algorithms that were capable of learning on their own with only minimal guidance and was a precursor to the AI explosion that is upon us now.

But where are we in regards to AI in web3 gaming? Plenty of game developers were quick to jump on board the AI train. But, as we’ve found with AI taking over  the world in general, promises are still a bit off from reality. So let’s take a look at a few of the web3 gaming projects that announced plans to incorporate AI in some manner, and see how things are going.

AI Arena: Training Your AI Agents For Battle

We might as well start things off with a game that has AI directly in their name. AI Arena is a side-scrolling, one-on-one fighting game where players train their AI agents to do battle against each other. In the training room, players will be presented with a variety of situations. They then model for the AI by playing the character for the scenario and altering various training configuration settings to guide how the AI implements the lesson. Players can run as many of these training sessions as they like. Once they feel good about their AI fighter development, it’s time to put it to the test in the arena against other players! Set your fighter loose, watch them in-action, and maybe head back to the training sessions if your fighter doesn’t perform as expected.

AI Arena is still in playtesting phase, and you will need an AI Arena NFT of your own to play. Alternatively, you can join a guild who can delegate one to you. Currently, all AI Arena NFTs are Mintpasses, which will convert into a generative fighter NFT at the game’s launch. Fighter NFTs will have different looks and stats, making each one unique. And of course, once you’ve begun training your Fighter, it becomes even more unique and personalized!

Some of the NFTs will even be able to incorporate powers from other NFT collections, bringing cross-project collaboration to AI Arena.

Though still at an early stage, AI Arena is one of the few games that is already putting AI functionality into the player’s hands. 

Arc Agents: Building an Distributed AI Training System

Arc Agents is the force behind AI Arena. It’s a decentralized, AI agent network. Powered by the Neuron token (NRN), Arc Agents will provide AI agent integration into gaming experiences, combining data aggregation, model training, and model inspection capabilities across imitation learning and reinforcement learning.

Arc will support the creation, training, and deployment of AI agents that are taught by humans. The vision is for AI to mimic human behavior through learned imitation. This can be used to build AI opponents for players, to create AI-centric games like AI Arena, bring the game NPCs to life, or wherever your imagination might take you.

By creating a centralized AI agent platform, Arc Agents is making it easier for other studios to implement AI into their games, without having to become experts in a whole new skill set.

They’ve already created a proof of concept through AI Arena, and you can expect that over time, the AI capabilities will only improve.

Rebel Cars Pit Girls: AI Companions for Racers

Rebel Cars plans to bring AI to life in their game through Pit Girls, animated, female characters that will interact with the players in meaningful ways. Their initial release saw 100 Pit Girl NFTs – AI-generated, and AI-driven companions – minted and released into the wild. Though these companions don’t do anything at the moment, many of the owners seem very excited about the potential..

Rebel Cars is first and foremost a racing game. But they have decided to try and add something interesting with their Pit Girls collection – NFTs that come to life in-game. With a human model used to help create realistic expressions, these Pit girls won’t just be eye candy. They will also bring utility to the game and could influence your story progression in the game’s career mode.

We don’t really know a whole lot more about the Pit Girls, but Rebel Cars is focused on bringing major doses of realism to their racing game (such as tire temperature affecting the wear and performance of the tires), so you can imagine that they would apply that same focus towards other parts of the game.

With a VIP launch on the horizon followed by a public alpha playtest, Rebel Cars is one to keep an eye on if you’re a racing fan, and a game to note if you’re interested in AI interactions in gaming.

Beyond Human: A World of AI Characters

At the moment, Beyond Human is just an interactive Discord game. But the eventual goal is to build a massively multiplayer world inhabited by AI-controlled NPCs. But Beyond Human isn’t a standard MMO with lots of fighting. Instead, it’s about persuasion, brokering deals and managing relationships, something that will require the NPCs to keep a memory of players’ previous actions while using that historical knowledge to adapt and use critical thinking skills to determine their course of action.

The ultimate goal at Beyond Human is to utilize AI NPCs to create dynamic stories, make autonomous decisions, and enhance player interactions in the game. And perhaps, with a little training, they may even be able to pass as human players!

Personally, I love games with complex, interacting systems that can create unscripted results. And the ability for AI agents to be part of these systems brings the potential for interesting interactions to a whole new level.

Today: Develop Relationships with AI Friends

Another game that will feature AI-driven NPCs is Today.  Today is a game system in development where players will talk to and work with AI residents on their island. Not only will the NPCs be AI-controlled, but they can even understand your voice chat, taking the natural language interface to a whole new level. So you better watch what you say!

Today has already held a couple of playtests known as Luma’s Call and received much praise from a variety of streamers who tried out the game. Though Today hasn’t released any specific timelines or dates on future playtests and releases, the team does promise to deliver a roadmap at some point in the future when they feel comfortable setting expectations.

Anyone interested in the game can pick up an Ancient or Mythic Seed and stake it to start earning Seed points which will be used for something down the line.

With integrated voice chat allowing you to talk directly to NPCs, Today could be raising the bar for what we expect from this new phase of AI-controlled characters before it has even begun!

Parallel Colony: Loose AI Agents into a Survivalist World

Quite a while back, Parallel previewed a game they were working on called Colony where players would manage AI-controlled characters as they scavenged, harvested, built, and survived in a devastated world. Each AI character would even have their own crypto wallet that they used for trades and bartering.

Unfortunately, it has been quite a while since we’ve heard any major updates on this front. But supposedly they are planning on releasing an alpha in the first quarter of 2025, so perhaps we’ll get some more details on the gameplay and AI-driven characters in the near future.

Parallel Avatars, which provide bonuses to earning and other benefits in the Parallel TCG game, will also play a part in Colony.

OMM Games: Building Better Opponents through AI

OMM Games is a game development studio who plans to leverage AI in a number of different ways – as an aid in development, to enhance player experiences, and to assist players in making creations of their own.

Their first game, Quantum Command, a sci-fi, play to earn, multiplayer shooter, is currently in alpha and will include AI-generated battle maps. But OOM Games has bigger plans than that. The roadmap ahead includes building games with AI generated dynamic quests and NPCs, making each player’s experience a unique journey. They also want to open up their generative AI engine to players, letting the users create maps and experiences of their own.

All of this won’t be immediately available in-game, but the OMM team makes the following promises for Quantum Command:

• Adaptive opponents that don’t just reflect your strategies but influence map generation. Every battle features a unique map and environment, customized based on your player profile. 
• AI managing resources for you; you focus on long-term strategy, while it performs the grunt work. 
• Playing a game unlocks new objectives and environments each time. Since the AI creates original content, there is never a repeated gameplay experience. 
• AI-powered companions that can make quick judgments and will support you should things become heated.

Sounds pretty cool. We don’t have any playtest dates yet, but I’m definitely looking forward to seeing this sort of AI integration in action.

GameGPT: Create New Games with AI Assistance

GameGPT is another AI-assisted, user content generation platform. Their design sees users using a natural language interface to describe their game, which the AI then uses to generate a codebase, graphics, even music, and then spits out a playable game through Unity or Unreal.

Users build their games by going through a questionnaire and responding to the prompts which includes questions such as game genre, vibe, world, and mechanics. The AI will create background images, character visuals, and it will even suggest a game name for you if you need some ideas. It can also generate a soundtrack for your game, which is a pretty cool feature that I haven’t seen mentioned in other projects like this.

The GameGPT generator is still in its early stages. And for now, it’s focused on giving users the ability to create hyper-casual games such as a simple platformer, or basic shooter, or a puzzle game like Candy Crush.

However, the team plans to release updates every few months with additional mechanics, including integration with blockchains and tokens. The will expand on the AI’s game creation ability, giving it the power to comprehend and construct more complex projects.

GameGPT isn’t the only player in the AI-powered game creation market, but if they can be one of the first to launch a working product, they will be in a prime position to seize the momentum and attract a lot of buzz. 

They showed off a live demo a few months ago, creating a new side-scrolling shooter just by answering a few prompts. So hopefully that means that they will get this app into users’ hands soon! 

And More...

And of course this isn’t all the projects. We have Sequence partnering with Scenario, a generative AI engine, to assist developers in seamlessly creating unique game assets and experiences with AI assistance. We have other AI-assisted game creation platforms such as Tales and Alterverse. AI assistants, AI characters, AI dungeon masters – they’re all in progress throughout the web3 gaming space.

Additionally, we have a growing number of AI related platforms, larger structures focused on the larger AI picture rather than just focused on a single project.

AI-centric Platforms and Services

Though not always specifically focused on gaming, the rise in AI-focused platforms and services is not a trend to ignore. Here are a few projects that aim to provide AI services to users and developers.

Aethir

Aethir is a cloud-based computing infrastructure, letting users utilize other systems’ computing ability to power their own apps. Aethir is specifically targeting AI training and cloud gaming with their marketing and ecosystem development.

They have also released their own token ATH, which holders can stake to earn returns on their ATH tokens and also potentially tokens from the web3 apps that are utilizing the Aethir services.

Kinetic Elite

Another AI service is Kinetic Elite, who are building ‘an AI Data Liquidity Protocol for scaling AI Model Training with Private Compute’.  We don’t really know anything else about this project, though they have apparently formed a partnership with Genopets. From the project description, it seems they want to use distributed computing to help with the processing power needed to train AI models.

With the current AI usage already straining CPU limits, this sort of distributed computing service is likely to see increased value over the coming years.

AGIX

AGIX is a web3 marketplace for AI tools. This includes agents, extensions, mini-apps, and more. Planned as a central gathering place for developers to find and/or monetize AI tools, AGIX has set a goal of being the world’s largest decentralized AI marketplace within the next year.

And though they don’t have anything to show at the moment, this AI focused market could end up being the go-to place when you need help with AI integrations.

What to Expect in the Future for AI in Web3 Gaming?

While we’ve all had a good chuckle at the AI generated figures with too many fingers and arms that come out of strange places, or at the AI’s inability to count the number of ‘R’s in the word ‘strawberry’, the practical uses of AI remain. And though it may not make the news every night, the AI revolution is coming, and AI gaming will be a prime location for testing and implementing all sorts of AI-powered features.

In the future of gaming, AIs will be our companions, our facilitators, and our opponents. AI will provide insights for competitive play that will change metas. Natural language interfaces will become commonplace, and AIs will begin to operate in the background of many services without many of us knowing it.

And though all of this is still in the future, that future may arrive sooner than you expect! Coinbase Ventures recently released an article exploring the crypto AI tech stack. Among their findings they determined that AI’s generative abilities will rapidly, and fundamentally, change software development paradigms. AI has already caused a dramatic culture shift, but we’re only getting started. So grab hold, keep your friendly bots close, and prepare for an AI-enhanced and assisted future!

This article is only for informational and educational purposes and should not be taken as financial advice. Always do your own research before connecting your wallet to any platform and signing any approvals. 

About PlayToEarn

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