From 'text' to a one-click generated game world, AI breaks the ice in the Web3 game narrative 'Ice Age'

In the world of Web3 games, we have witnessed a challenging era. From 2018 to 2023, a total of 2,817 Web3 games were launched, but unfortunately, 2,127 of them (75.5%) failed, highlighting the difficulties of the industry.

Although Web3 games have failed to truly take off since 2018, they are often highly anticipated whenever Cryptocurrency enters a new chapter. With the current expectations of a Bull Market, we may see many games reaching insane valuations.

Looking only at 2024 and 2025, with the centralized outbreak of many AI models such as DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, ChatGPT, we believe that “AI penetrating into Web3” will become a key driving force. Based on AI technology breakthroughs, in July, the official announcement of the launch of the “AI-generated game” feature by DeGame, hopes to bring a new attempt to the strong recovery of the Web3 gaming industry through a series of interoperable, composable, programmable, and modular game/video/voice generation models.

The nearly 3 billion Web2 gamers and nearly 600 million Web3 users worldwide provide a strong narrative foundation for Web3 games. However, currently, funds and projects are more focused on infrastructure, lacking new growth points in terms of large-scale user adoption and narrative conversion.

The key to promoting the development of the gaming industry lies in technological innovation. The application of AI technology in game development is becoming increasingly mature. Using AI generation models to solve typical problems faced by Web3 games, and thus achieving a breakthrough and rise in the short term, may be the best solution.

01, Breaking the Ice Narrative ‘Ice Age’

Playability has been the main drawback that previously limited Web3 games from attracting a large number of players. Monotonous gameplay and rough graphics often make players feel like they are flashing back to more than a decade ago when participating in Web3 games. However, for ordinary players, there has always been only one hard criterion for evaluating the quality of a game, which is whether it is fun or not; Web3 games that excessively focus on ‘Fi’ can only attract the gold farming crowd, but cannot achieve a large-scale conversion of Web2 users.

However, from a practical perspective, as an industry that burns money and time, the explosion of the game zone requires the joint promotion of multiple factors such as capital, time, and technology. And as time progresses to 2024, AI seems to be able to bring together these elements. The improvement of modular AI generation tools has provided stronger support for the improvement of Web3 games towards AAA-level production and high quality direction.

In traditional games, NPCs (non-player characters) have very limited artificial intelligence and can only operate under fixed circumstances. With the help of AI technology, NPCs can simulate human behavior more realistically and have more intelligent ways of operating. For example, the AI NPC real-time dialogue decryption in ‘Save Me! Labor Law Protection God’ increases the interactivity and immersion of the game.

In addition, AI can also be used for generating environments, character images, and numerical balance, further enriching the diversity and playability of games, making the interaction in games more convenient and natural. Traditional game interaction methods are often based on keyboard and mouse, which are difficult to meet the needs of players. With the help of AI technology, more intuitive and vivid interaction methods can be realized, such as voice, gestures, expressions, and so on.

Overall, AI has undoubtedly made the most successful breakthroughs in the gaming field in terms of enhancing the gaming experience and personalizing game content. AI-generated models can optimize the game development process in a short period of time, integrating multiple highlights of traditional Web2 games at a lower development cost, to enhance the smoothness of incremental user participation in Web3 games. And this is an important factor in the large-scale migration of Web2 users to Web3 games.

02, Release Unlimited Creativity

The blockchain of Decentralization is a vital force in balancing AI (and machine learning), firstly, it can be combined with other technologies, such as ZK, to optimize the trust framework of machine learning, secondly, it can effectively utilize the long tail resources, drop the cost and threshold of using AI, on the other hand, because many Web3 applications sacrifice user experience for security and Decentralization, AI can help optimize and enhance user experience, this is part of how AI can empower Web3.

When it comes to specific application scenarios, although AI+Decentralized Finance and AI+DID/social have use cases, generative AI is naturally suitable for Web2 user familiar gameplay such as text-based, sandbox-based, cultivation-based, open world, UGC, etc. By rewriting game logic with AI, making games more uncertain and random, will make Web3 games collide with AI to produce different sparks.

For example, an important innovation of Web3 games is that it requires users and platforms to participate in the creation process together, rather than pre-planned limited games. In the game, there is a concept of Lore. In traditional games, this is planned by the game designer and is completely predictable. However, through AI models, various inputs can be gathered together to generate unpredictable outputs, giving such games infinite possibilities.

Imagine, one day in the future, we can access the magical virtual world through AR/VR devices. We can instantly create 2D and 3D objects that we imagine or cannot imagine through the prompt, as if we cast a magical spell and truly own them (with data hosted on the public chain). We can also interact with intelligent AI NPCs in the virtual world and influence the development of the entire game world’s story, all supported by completely transparent Open Source infrastructure.

In this vision, AI-driven Web3 gaming will unleash infinite creativity.

**03、**Rapid evolution and continuous integration

In fact, the prototype of AI development in gaming history may be traced back even earlier.

The application of AI in game development can be traced back to classic games such as ‘StarCraft’ and ‘Diablo’. At that time, developers needed to use AI systems to create interactive virtual worlds and characters. These systems have become standard configurations for the development of such interactive platforms.

Early research in AI development for games emphasized controlling non-player characters (NPCs), and with the advancement of natural language processing (NLP) technology, there have been groundbreaking efforts that use Depth learning techniques to generate levels.

One of its representative works is MarioGPT, which successfully generated some levels in “Super Mario Bros” by fine-tuning the GPT-2 model.

With the rapid iteration of models, the ability of AI is becoming stronger and stronger. For practitioners in the Web3 game field, how to better create high-quality games with AI, and how to apply AI-generated models to the R&D process, are the core of seizing incremental users.

DeGame AI is a lightweight, focus on generative model, is also a no-code creator tool, support users in the game development or optimization process, DeGame AI to provide tools integrated into the existing game production ecosystem, to automatically execute challenging content creation tasks. At the same time, based on the Transformer neural network, through DeGame’s Annotation and Substation model, DeGame AI also provides text generation game video and other functions.

We hope to see emerging, algorithmically generated worlds, each with its own rich history, inhabitants, and mysteries. There will be interactive novels, stories that evolve through player choices, and are told through generated images, videos, and audio, giving Web3 games more possibilities.

At the end…

If a Web3 game practitioner wants to complete a game work, it must at least cover interactivity, playability, and content with a game plot core. Consider the plot connection between characters in the game, and also carefully design game levels and goals for players. With cutting-edge AI generation models, creativity and imagination can be transformed into complex game mechanisms and storylines, designing AI NPCs with vivid personality traits to lead player actions, triggering the direction of the game story, and improving game development and operation efficiency. drop the development and operation costs of the game, thereby generating new profit growth points.

AI technology has many applications in the development and operation of games, including game plot planning, map generation, level setting, mission generation, dialogue generation, story narration, model generation, as well as the generation of rules for growth systems and economic systems within the game.

It’s just the beginning now, and we believe that the exploration in the AI and Web3 gaming field will open a door to a new gaming world. With the advancement of technology and the deepening of applications, players can expect to encounter more unique gaming experiences, which will surpass the boundaries of traditional games and bring a more immersive and interactive gaming world. For players who love games and technological innovation, this is an exciting time.