The impressive performance of ChatGPT, made possible by the power of generative AI, has ignited a surge of enthusiasm for this cutting-edge technology among people worldwide. A generative AI-led revolution is on the way, as it has shown the potential for machines to create human-like content and engage in more natural and intuitive interactions with humans.
For the video game industry, which already involves a lot of AI work, the transformation will be even more profound. “There hasn’t been a technology this revolutionary for gaming since real-time 3D,” A16Z wrote in its blog post.
According to the renowned venture capital firm, many startups are exploring the potential of generative AI to create believable characters that gamers can interact with. NPCs, or non-player characters, are particularly crucial in creating immersion in video games. As exemplified by the popular sci-fi TV series Westworld, NPCs with human-like appearances and advanced interactive abilities can help create a feeling of being in a real-world environment for players.
A recent video clip of NPCs acting and interacting autonomously in a virtual ancient city in China has sparked a lot of interest in the gaming community as it demonstrates a technology that is closer to creating a Westworld-like game.
The demo video titled “Living Chang’an City” features hundreds of NPCs, including dancers, street vendors, pedestrians, and more, who move, communicate, and make decisions independently. These NPCs are endowed with different personalities and characteristics, allowing them to establish diverse social relationships on their own.
What gives these NPCs a higher level of autonomy in the virtual world? This should be credited to GAEA, a massive data-driven system developed by Parametrix.ai, a Shenzhen-headquartered AI company. GAEA enables the NPCs to learn, adapt, and exhibit human-like behavior, making them more lifelike and interactive.
Founded in 2019 by Kakar Liu, the former general manager of Tencent’s AI Lab, Parametrix.ai has more than 200 employees, of which 90% are R&D personnel. Among its investors are Sequoia China, Hillhouse Capital, 5Y Capital, and Gaorong Capital.
“There are two key elements to making NPCs more human-like, that is, various kinds of behaviors and natural language communication capabilities,” Parametrix.ai told PingWest. That’s where GAEA comes in, combining the company’s sophisticated AI BOT technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) to bring an enhanced AI NPC solution to game developers.
GAEA develops two connected subsystems to add more behaviors for NPCs. The first is the environment, which consists of a physical environment and a commonsense textual environment and is in charge of interacting with NPCs and gathering feedback. This system is unique in that it can adjust and change as a result of NPC behavior, and vice versa.
The Soul Module, which consists of a Memory segment and a Policy Network segment, is the next component. The Memory segment is in charge of modeling the system’s intrinsic motivation and archiving details of the events that particular NPCs have encountered. On the other hand, the Policy Network segment is in charge of taking decisions based on data gathered from the Memory segment and the Environment.
The influence of Soul Module allows NPCs to make decisions at any time, resulting in a hugely varied range of storylines. The variety of these storylines keeps growing as more NPCs are incorporated into the system, providing players with an immersive and dynamic gaming experience.
“For example, the Soul Module gives the dancer a romantic artist personality and records the various events of her daily life in Chang’an city, and then she will take actions based on internal motivation and changes in the Environment, thus changing the storyline,” the company explained. “She might go dancing or date someone; it’s her call.”
In order to give NPCs the best possible conversational abilities, GAEA also uses LLMs for goal planning, helps the environment subsystem with commonsense reasoning, and integrates this technology with the in-house chatbot.
With the help of all of these initiatives, GAEA was able to create the “Living Chang’an City,” an AI society run independently by several AI NPCs. This represents a significant advancement over decision trees.
Decision trees are a popular technique for developing NPCs, but they are constrained by their reliance on predetermined rules and conditions, which can result in monotonous and predictable NPC behaviour and may not cover all scenarios and outcomes. Developers will be able to design more varied and nuanced NPC behaviors and take a wider variety of scenarios and outcomes into account with the help of GAEA.
More sophisticated AI NPC solutions are starting to replace decision trees as a result of the growing demand for intelligent NPCs among gamers. According to a recent study by Inworld.ai, a platform for developers to create advanced NPC behavior and dialogue, most players want more personality from their NPCs and are willing to spend more time and money on games with these NPCs.
As A16Z mentioned in the blog post, numerous players have entered this niche market, including Charisma.ai, Convai.com, and Inworld.ai.
However, due to the extensive commercialization of its products in the gaming sector, Parametrix.ai may be able to demonstrate a first-mover advantage. According to the startup, it has offered solutions, such as AI NPCs, to several well-known game studios. It also claims to serve hundreds of millions of users across 52 countries worldwide, with 500,000 AI bots active at once during peak usage.
With AI continuing to make great strides forward, game developers have never been in a better position, with endless opportunities to generate personalized content that speaks to each player’s unique preferences. As Parametrix.ai puts it, “AI is more than a technology, tool, or set of solutions; it is a new form of life that can bring novel ideas, stories, and experiences.”
