The creation of smart contracts and Web3 interfaces has led to a new genre of play-to-ear or nonfungible token (NFT) video games. But during the crypto bull market of 2021 and the subsequent crash in 2022, many games in this niche experienced incredible ups and downs in terms of player count and transaction volume.
Despite this volatility, one Web3 gaming executive who spoke to Cointelegraph said that new innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) will make the genre better than ever.
Alex Connelly is the chief technology officer of Immutable, developer of the digital collective trading card game Gods Unchained and the Immutable X NFT platform. He told Cointelegraph that OpenAI, an AI-focused American research laboratory dedicated to developing friendly AI applications that can help with various tasks, the software will allow new possibilities for Web3 games, allowing developers to create better art, meet more challenges and superior narratives . leading to a more immersive and rich experience for players.
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Connelly said the team’s most interested area for OpenAI applications is art. In the past, video game artists often had to create multiple versions of the same image. For example, there are often multiple sizes of the same image or slightly different versions that emphasize different parts of an artwork. This sometimes leads to a lack of efficiency. But with OpenAI software, artists can now experiment by letting AI create multiple versions of their artwork, freeing up artists to spend more time creating original work.
Challenging players…but not too much
Beyond the immediate benefits of creating better art, Connolly says there are other areas where OpenAI could improve the game in the future. One subject the team has been discussing is creating an AI that can dynamically adjust to the player’s skill level, creating encounters that are just as challenging as fun, without being overwhelming. Connelly said:
“I’m really excited about the potential of this technology to create a more useful counter-play for the enemy, so one of the challenges in trading card games or RPG-like is to build an AI that has the right level of difficulty for and has tailored More to the needs of the player. I think we can create a deep and immersive learning curve for players that fits the game.
“I think it’s very important to make sure that you don’t have something that’s too easy, so that nobody can fight or that’s too difficult, that it’s not fun to play, find a good curve and make the player customized. It’s amazing to use this technology,” he said.
Of course, video game developers always try to create AI programs for computer opponents that will provide the right difficulty for the players. But the irreplaceable executive said that OpenAI provides a better approach compared to the strategy used by developers in the past:
“I think a lot of what’s been built before in games is what we call ‘manually written’ AI where the enemies in the game base their decisions on a bunch of pre-programmed rules that are given by the programmer there.”
Connelly continued, “You have to tell us what to do, instead of just saying ‘Hey, we’re an AI playing a game. The AI’s goal is, is it to win everything? Is it to win about 50% of the time? Is it to win about 50% of the time against the player? this?’ […] There is a lot of fuzziness and black boxes in the middle of the model, […] with this new technology it makes it possible for people to create a more customized experience for games.
Connelly says this new technology doesn’t just make AI for computer-controlled opponents easier; it will also lead to “more customized, personalized content, a complete single-player experience.”
ChatGPT and GPT3 stories
One of the latest OpenAI software is the Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, also known as ChatGPT, which has been used to create trading bots, blogs and even crypto songs.
In response to the question of whether Immutable plans to use ChatGPT in its game, Connelly said that the team is only in the very early stages of considering, given that it is new. However, he said that the team used its previous incarnation, GPT-3, to test how to create an AI narrator that would tell a story based on the drama that happened in the card game, as he explained:
“We think there’s a great storytelling opportunity with this technology. We’ve been exploring ideas like, let’s say, you’re in a card game and you’re playing cards taking GPT-3 to stitch that together into a story. […] No human can participate and write a story that connects the inputs for the entire game. It’s impossible that we’re talking about millions of games here, right?”
Despite this optimism, he warns that the team ran into some problems when trying to implement the idea of a storyteller. Early tests have resulted in “spam” narratives that detract from the game rather than enhance it, so the team is still trying to figure out how to inject proper narrative into the card game.
“We do this thing that looks cool. However, when we actually play, it confuses people [players] or does not resonate directly with them. We’re still finding the right balance, how do we make sure that when we do this, we don’t just create a lot of spam content? I think it’s one thing where NFTs and games, there are some potential uses to reduce the amount of spam that will be produced or in introducing some costs there so that people can still have it. […] a richer experience,” he said.
Web3 game developers are embracing OpenAI
Connelly said it is not only Immutable that is looking to use this technology to improve the game. He also saw partner developers releasing items on Immutable X becoming increasingly interested in experimenting with OpenAI.
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According to his opinion, Web3 studios tend to be the most enthusiastic about using the new technology when compared to other studios. Although all game studios want to use OpenAI to improve their games, he said the big studios face an “innovator’s dilemma” that makes it more expensive to take the risk of implementing OpenAI features. Therefore, he expects that Web3 and NFT games will lead the technology in the future.