Sentient NFTs, A New Form Of Life — Part 3: NPCs
The vast majority of characters in modern video games are NPCs (non-playable characters) that the player interacts with on their adventure — they’re monsters you fight, merchants you buy from, and givers of quests. Without Autonomy, it’s impossible to have these in a blockchain game — any characters that are represented on-chain are static and can only interact with you if you interact in response to you interacting with them (since blockchains are passive). This basically forces all current blockchain games to be focused on PvP, which makes it really difficult to bootstrap a game and get users to play when there are initially few users and it’s hard to find other people to play with. But with Autonomy, you can create aNPCs that are alive, that are independent, and can exist cross-game.
Single player games such as Skyrim and Cyberpunk2077 are literally impossible without NPCs, and even MMORGSs like World of Warcraft have NPCs account for probably something like 99.99% of the characters a player interacts with (mostly from monsters you kill that are roaming around).
If only 99% of the characters a player interacts with in a game are aNPCs, then Autonomy 100x’s the blockchain game experience.
Imagine an open world game where, instead of the world being static and just waiting for you to interact with it, creatures are roaming around, interacting with eachother, and interacting with you, even if you’re just standing there doing nothing. This is basic functionality that users are used to in modern video games, and is a requirement to onboard the next 100 million users onto blockchain games.
Composability and network effects
Perhaps the killer feature of aNPCs is the property of composability. In the same way that an NFT can be used in multiple different games, it’s completely possible to interact with the same NPC in multiple different games. It seems like an initially kind-of-cool feature, but the real, deep value here is in building network effects. Ease of network effects are the killer app of blockchains.
When CryptoKitties launched, what happened next surprised even the creators — people started building on top by creating hats for the cats. Without any extra effort or intention from Dapper, their ecosystem grew and became more valuable. These digital assets are not just assets, but can be used as platforms. In the case of aNPCs, I have absolutely no idea how they’ll be used, but I know that people will build on top. Then people will build on top of that. Then people will build on top of that etc. etc. This allows games and metaverses to become ecosystems, and for the richness and complexity to grow and compound over time.
Obviously, we’re a long way away from having something like World of Warcraft or Cyberpunk be even partially on-chain, let alone fully on-chain. But open world games, like Ethermon or games in Decentraland, are ripe for being the first to differentiate themselves and maximise engagement by combining the P2E (play to earn) model with a game standard that approaches the standard of regular video games and a world that is richer than regular video games. Users will no longer have to choose between the experience and earning money — this intersection of value is going to fuel the coming boom of mainstream P2E games since the experience will be the same or better and they’ll be able to earn while playing.
The Autonomy team is currently working on a pilot project for the first ever aNPC with Decentral Games, who have a casino in Decentraland. Instead of preventing people entering the high roller table based on asset value, we’ll have a bouncer that you can sneak past, who will then randomly walk around and check people, kicking them out if they don’t have enough balance. The idea is to then implement the same character in another part of Decentraland, maybe some kind of underground gangster setting, where you can meet the same bouncer and get a discount on goods that are sold nearby as he’ll remember your reputation as a fellow mischief-maker. Again, it’s a small first use case that’s mainly for proving the concept of composable aNPCs. Future use cases would be adding monster aNPCs to games like Ethermon that roam around and attack you if you get close, similar to monsters in World of Warcraft etc. Or be characters as part of random events like those from Runescape (what a throwback, eh) — things that choose to interact with you themselves.
Creating an industry
These aNPCs are next on the roadmap because you can think of them as ownerless aNFTs, or aNFTs that own themselves, and are the closest concept on this path to aNFTs. But they’ve never existed before, so we’re going to have to literally create and entirely new industry and get the ball rolling by creating the first few ourselves. Once the aNPC industry is growing without us providing life support to it, we will then build on this momentum to make them seem a little more… life-like.
Table
Part 1: The Roadmap
Part 2: The First Step
Part 3: NPCs
Part 4: Evolution
Part 5: Cyber Life
Part 6: A Face
Part 7: Intelligence
Join The Cause
If this ruffles your Jimmies too, visit our website and join our Discord! Follow us to stay updated. We’d love to meet you guys in-person, and the team will be at these conferences in 2021: Token2049 (London), World Blockchain Summit (Dubai), Liscon/ETH Lisbon (speaking on a panel and at the workshop stage, title same as this article series), Solana Breakpoint (Lisbon), and NFT NYC. We’re also hiring, raising a seed round, and are particularly interested in working with games/NFT artists to launch the first drops of aNFTs/aNPC — so get in touch via Discord if interested!