Yuga Labs Becoming A Game Studio?

AuthorAuthor

Mark Kennedy & Manuel Olumorin
April 28, 2023

GM. Welcome to Lootbox, your source of spice from the planet Arrakis.

Here is what we have in today’s load

  • AI playing Dungeons & Dragons!

  • Is Yuga becoming a gaming powerhouse?

  • The Sneakies

  • Funded Gems

AIs Playing Dungeons & Dragons

Hard to escape the web these days without seeing experiments with GPT-4. But sometimes, there is an experiment that gives you a peek into the future of AI and gaming.

That’s what we’ve got with this experiment by Twitter user @poof_eth.

So what did they build?

@poof_eth had AI agents autonomously play Dungeons & Dragons amongst themselves, and the results are impressive.

Let’s get to the details

This hobby project is called "AutoLore." Perfect name choice.

There were five GPT-4 agents - 4 players, and 1 Game Master. Each player has a name and back story that sets their motivations when making decisions during the game.

How it works

The players reflect on their goals, history, last actions and recent observation to determine their next action.

Then the game master checks the action against the rules, past rulings, game state and “personal judgment” to confirm if the action by the player is successful or not.

The player takes this new info and updates their goals, motivation and mood accordingly.

And these actions were all caught on 40+ min gameplay footage.

What Poof learned

  • Memory isn't as important as you might think in the process.

  • Having a Game Master cut out characters getting stuck doing the same thing.

  • But lack of guidance on what types of actions can be taken led characters to repeat moves.

  • The Game Master agent owns the final state of the world, but even though they have more robust vector memory, they still don't always retrieve the right information.

  • Poof plans to integrate AutoLore with frameworks from @rama19886 and @b33f_eth for top-down RPG characters moving around.

Another instance of experimentation in this realm is our friends at @moonstreamto. They are taking the concept of AI and gaming to the next level, combining GPT-4, gaming and web3 in a game called Great Wyrm.

Yuga Turning Into A Gaming House?

Something strange is happening at Yuga Labs.

They were supposed to be an NFT project, some cool art maybe, and a groovy community.

But…

their executive recruitment is starting to look more like that of a mega gaming studio.

Few months ago, former Activision Blizzard president Daniel Alegre joined as CEO.

Now, they are bringing Mike Seaver, former Epic Games and Riot exec, to take on the role of CTO at Yuga.

And his resume is stacked with games like League of Legends, Valorant, League of Runterra, Fortnite, and the Buildbox game engine.

These moves look like a push to make Otherside metaverse a smash hit. Maybe the Fortnite of web3? 👀 watching this closely

The Sneakies

Funded Gems

  • TinyTap, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands that allows users to create educational game-based activities, raised $8.5 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital, Liberty City Ventures, Shima Capital, Kingsway Capital, and Polygon.

  • Flow, an NFT ecosystem, raised $3 million in seed funding led by Nima Capital, with participation from Shima Capital and other industry heavyweights.

  • SuperDuperSecretCo, a US-based game developer, raised over $1 million in a pre-seed funding round that was oversubscribed. Polygon, Round 13 Digital Asset Fund, Merit Circle, Solana, Overwolf, Big Brain Holdings, LD Capital, Sebastian Borget, Gabi Dijon, and Christian Mane invested.

  • Metalevel, a web3 community-developed P2E blockchain arcade, raised over $100,000 in under 24 hours in a presale for its native utility token, $MLVL, which has been audited by blockchain auditing firm SolidProof.

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