Ethereum game franchise Illuvium is set to use a virus AI agent Virtual protocol upgrade your non-playable characters or NPCs. This comes after Virtuals has surged in popularity in recent weeks after lowering the barrier for Creating an AI agentleading to the creation of some of the Crypto Twitter’s Favorite New Characters.
The Virtuals protocol bound AI agents with its patent GAME large language model framework for powering AI agents. AiXBT (AIXBT) is by far the most popular of all his creations with a market cap of $489 million with over 320,000 followers on X (formerly known as Twitter).
The same technology is supposed to be involved in the Illuvium game franchise that came out three gaming titles in 2024. Illuvium’s trio of games (Overworld, Arena, and Zero) cover three distinctly different genres — multiplayer open-world survival, auto-battler and city builder — all of which will implement Virtuals technology, the developer said Tuesday.
🌟 We are happy to announce our cooperation with @virtuals_iopowered by the state-of-the-art GAME Framework! Together, we are revolutionizing the intersection of AI and gaming on the web 3 and pushing the boundaries of immersive experiences. 1/7 pic.twitter.com/Nka4w7J7ty
— Illuvium (@illuviumio) January 7, 2025
Simply put, the use of the GAME framework Virtuals aims to improve gameplay and interactions with NPCs as they will be powered by more efficient artificial intelligence. This will be reflected in more dynamic questing, storytelling and deeper NPC relationships.
While the partnership notification claims that all three titles will eventually use the framework, Illuvium’s in-development open-world survival game Overworld appears to be the first to use it.
This comes after Illuvium outlined plans to move the franchise forward, as co-founder Kieran Warwick admitted in a blog post that “concerns” about its gameplay were valid.
As such, Warwick proposed various changes for the franchise, including focusing on one game at a time instead of three, limiting microtransactions, and reworking its open-world game Overworld into a “more efficient and accessible” experience akin to a massively multiplayer online game or “MMO lite”.
“The immersive world of lluvium combined with an NPC agent framework puts it at the forefront of the next era of gaming innovation,” Mage of Aetherpseudonymous co-founder of Virtuals Protocol, said in a statement. “We’re excited to bring our proprietary framework to life in their upcoming ‘MMO lite’ and showcase the transformative potential of AI-driven gaming.
The virtual token (VIRTUAL) runs on Ethereum, while AI agent tokens running on the protocol were minted on Layer 2 network Base. VIRTUAL is up 117% in the last 30 days, according to data from CoinGecko, at a current price of $3.74.
