Ethereum game franchise Illuvium is set to leverage the viral AI agent Virtuals Protocol to enhance its non-playable characters, or NPCs. This comes after Virtuals has surged in popularity in recent weeks after it lowered the barrier for AI agent creation, leading to the creation of some of Crypto Twitter’s favorite new characters. The Virtuals Protocol straps AI agents with its proprietary G.A.M.E large language model framework to power AI agents. AiXBT (AIXBT) is the most popular of all its creations thus far at a $489 million market cap, with over 320,000 followers on X (formerly known as Twitter).
This same technology is set to be plugged into the Illuvium gaming franchise, which released three gaming titles in 2024. Illuvium’s trio of games (Overworld, Arena, and Zero) span three distinctively different genres of an open-world survival multiplayer game, an auto-battler, and a city builder—all of which will implement Virtuals tech, the developer said Tuesday. Put simply, using Virtuals’ G.A.M.E framework aims to improve gameplay and interactions with NPCs, as they’ll be powered using more effective artificial intelligence. This will manifest itself through more dynamic questing, storytelling, and deeper NPC relationships.
While the partnership announcement
As such, Warwick proposed various changes ahead for the franchise, including focusing on one game at a time rather than three, reducing microtransactions, and reworking its open-world game Overworld into a “streamlined, more accessible” experience akin to a massively multiplayer online game, or an “MMO lite.”
“lluvium’s immersive world, combined with an agentic NPC framework, positions it to lead the next era of gaming innovation,” Ether Mage, the pseudonymous co-founder of Virtuals Protocol, said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to bring our proprietary framework to life in their upcoming ‘MMO lite’ and showcase the transformative potential of AI-driven gaming.”
The Virtuals token (VIRTUAL) runs on Ethereum, while AI agent tokens running on the protocol have been minted on layer-2 network Base. VIRTUAL has surged by 117% over the last 30 days, per data from CoinGecko, sitting at a current price of $3.74.
NFT platform Candy Digital has announced plans to migrate its digital collectibles ecosystem to the Solana blockchain, signaling…
The U.S. military has confirmed it is actively running a Bitcoin node as part of national security research, while…
The Web3 gaming sector is facing a harsh reality check as new data reveals that more…
Justin Sun, founder of TRON, has filed a federal lawsuit against World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture…
Tether has frozen approximately $344 million in USDT on the Tron blockchain after the wallets were flagged by U.S. authorities, marking…
Prediction market platform Kalshi has fined and suspended three U.S. congressional candidates after determining they engaged in “political…