What We Talk About When We Talk About AI-Native Games

This English version was machine-translated from the Chinese original. Technical terms may require verification.

I actually wrote a blog about AI Agent and the game two months ago. But more of the time, it was in the context of game development, thinking about how AI Agent could help us make a better game, from research to the whole process of running distribution. I mentioned some points in it, but I was still relatively low on the game industry, some ideas coming from industry reports and my little chats with some game developers, so it may be slightly biased, and some views are too idealistic (which is still idealistic) to be found on the ground. And I dug a hole: the article deliberately overcame the part of AI that was involved in the experience and the way it was played. I've learned a lot today, so let me fill this hole while there's some external pressure.

The questions in this article can also be addressedReplaces the front-end engineer 'Ai, not making the simplest panel in the game、How the game industry is introduced AI AgentHow the concept of a relatively close read together is developed in different contexts.

When we talked about AI Native Game

I don't know who made this idea of AI Native Game, but it's terrible to look at names. We can start by making it clear that here's AI specifically referring to the generation of artificial intelligence models (which is used in the absence of a special description). The technology you used to do for enhanced learning intelligence, limited-state machines, behavioral trees, etc., does not belong to AI, but it doesn't mean that the new AI Native Game doesn't need them. We still need all the technology of the past, just a little fresh sauce, but it might be a little tough.

Now let's see what the Native Game Law is. Considering that we are still in the early stages and should not be too radical, I am here to give a relatively broad definition:AI Native Game is a game where the generation of artificial intelligence becomes part of the core, or it adds substance to the core. For the former, the world of games will not continue to function properly after the detached generation of artificial intelligence, or the core of the game will disappear; for the latter, AI will only complement existing core games and experiences. And to think of this, you may already have some examples: Starfield, Whispers From The Star, B-Side: Olivia Lin, all belong to the former; Eggs Party, The Life of the Jedi, the AI teammate and the client of The Anti-Wilm, belong to the latter. It's a rough division, but you can see from it that AI is involved in the deep end of the game.

I need to expand a little bit to help readers better understand AI Native Game. The example is one limitation: AI’s intervention is limited to the generation of pure text-based models (because other forms are really difficult to do), and their actions and TTS are essentially outside the text-based ones, which may lead readers to think that this is all. In fact, 3D world-generated by the Lee Fei-Fei team, Gene 3 by Google DeepMind, 3D by Meshy, and gpt-image-2 , the image generation is AI capability. In the future, the whole world of the game can be turned over to AI to generate, and then evolve according to the user feedback. But it's too free. Free generation is expensive and uncontrollable, technology can land, but it does not necessarily bring pleasure to players. In my opinion, AI Native Game needs to bind the generation of AI within a defined framework. Pure text generation and small-scale image generation will remain the mainstream, games will continue to be developed by people and games will remain art.

AI, what does it bring to the game?

Now that we have defined AI Native Game in general, this chapter has to answer a new question: What can AI bring to the game? Or, in other words, why should we make AI a game, why should the player need AI? When we build an "AI Native Game," this is the first question to answer. Don't say it's the boss's order. You can do a function and develop a game on the boss's orders, but the player won't play on it. I hope every game developer will think about the MDA model that he learned that year:AI is Game M and D, but the goal should be A, a little fun for the player.

Why would a player have fun because of AI joining the game? Before we discuss this, I would like to give the AI level of integration. This is a rather rough grade, and it's demo-like, and many differences are not possible to reflect. Anyway, try to split it first.

The first level is AI Chatbot, which is the initial form of AI integration. It's a simple chat robot, which is used in the vast majority of cases for role-playing: it has its own set of people, and sometimes it creates a long-term memory of you, so it can play a role better, but it's what it can do. Typical examples are Starfield, Cat Box and Silly Tavern; if you can accept the inclusion of some other elements, Whispers From The Star and B-Side: Olivia Lin. Chatbot brought emotional companionship to the player, and there is a certain lack of such companionship in modern society. Play types like SLG or RTS typically have NPCs that guide players to learn game games, and they can also access AI to provide better guidance, which has nothing to do with emotional companionship, but is also in the context of Chatbot.

Second floor I call AI NPC. Compared to Chatbot, the first level of AI understands the world, acts (including speaking and influencing it), and interacts with players in the world. I can see that this is the world I want to talk about. AI is no longer in a static virtual space and simple settings, but in the world of games where players are located, understand the world and change it. The egg treasure of the Eggs' Party, the AI teammates of the Unharmed and the PUBG, the AI expeditions brought by the Charlock, the clients of the Anti-Wildness, the UE definition of the NPC of Fortnitte, and the AI cut-off price of the Faraway Galaxy: Builder, can all be placed in this layer. NPC understands your natural language and gives feedback (impacting the environment, speaking, expression and dementia, etc.). AI NPC is actually strengthening the original game, giving players a higher degree of freedom, for example, by using voice commands for AI teammates, or by breaking up each other's preparedness by talking and acting on the level. Players always want the world to be real, and AI can help us do this. This layer is a reinforced play, and the next layer is a new play.

The third layer can be called AI World. The emphasis is still on the world, but the focus is no longer on how NPCs perceive and influence it; it is on the world itself. To decide whether something belongs at this layer, I look at whether the model participates in updating world state rather than merely generating more natural dialogue for an NPC. After the player makes a choice, resources, relationships, institutions, and character decisions continue to change; narrative and gameplay stay open, and stories emerge naturally. At this layer, world evolution is part of the gameplay.

Stanford’s Smallville (Generative Agents) used the memories, reflections, and plans of 25 agents to let everyday interactions accumulate into parties, relationships, and social events. HKUST’s Aivilization expands a similar idea into large-scale social simulation, where agents take part in production, trade, social life, and the formation of governance and cultural norms. History Simulator: Chongzhen (《历史模拟器：崇祯》) brings world evolution into a released historical strategy game: the player issues free-form decrees in natural language, while the model generates world-state feedback and ministers’ dialogue at runtime, allowing fiscal, military, and court politics to continue unfolding from those choices. Westworld remains the fictional reference point: if characters have memory, agency, and histories entangled with one another, when does a theme park stop revolving around its visitors and become a world of its own?

These examples sit at different levels of maturity: one is a science-fiction reference, two are closer to research projects and social experiments, and one has already been released to players as a commercial game. Voyage and AI Dungeon explore the same direction through text adventures, with less engine overhead. Here, AI begins to help decide what happens to the world next instead of only writing an NPC’s next line. In such a world, players can live a life that no designer could have fully written in advance. That is also what I find most compelling about role-playing games.

As an extra-post from AI World, I would like to talk about the emergence of game games. Here, I define it broadly:Within the framework of the game design, players play some more fun than planned, based on the freedom of design itself and on personal creativity. The most typical works are the Soldaks: The Land of the Wild and the Sedition of the Kingdom. The excellent play plan provides a framework for emergence, not rigid design; the emergence of a framework is the result of a co-benefit between top play planning and procedures, but it is very difficult to find a balance between the surge and the process. AI World talks about a new level of emergence: World, NPC and the drama are all part of the emergence. This is far more complex and more vulnerable than the emergence of a game, but it is more worth studying and thinking.

In this chapter, I would like to address a special topic. It can be understood as a small patch for the above classification: long-term memory, emotional memory and personality change. Should the characters in the game have these? The AI teammate of PUBG may not need a long-term memory, but it needs to be implemented according to your decision; the eggballs need a long-term memory because it's to accompany the player, remember the drops; what if the AI teammates of "Travelling the Life" have a long-term memory? It's a good design. Chatbot must have long-term memory, because memory is the heart of emotional companionship. Shouldn't the NPC in a great epic remember what you did in your day, as a hero or a sinner in the new village? There is no doubt that memory is necessary here, but the player cannot be allowed to surround him because he killed a chicken. Long-term memory, emotional tendencies and personality changes are linked, and it is not easy to keep these functions in a stable way in a world. Choose the game that is most needed, that is the player's best interest, not the whole thing, and then the whole thing is wrong.

As an exception, perhaps we should model the player itself, think about the personality and emotions behind its behavior, and then let the world understand those feelings and let the NPC in it respond more appropriately to the understanding of the family and its own personality. Personality will be the inescapable part of open world games.

Allow me to conclude this chapter by emphasizing that AI NPC, Chatbot and the evolution of the world are not ends, and that the goal is always to give players an A (Aesthetics, aesthetic experiences). Technology should create games, not kidnapping game designs. Remember this when developing AI Native Game. The obsession with technology and the neglect of the game itself are frequent mistakes by developers of technological origin. How players interact with the world, how they understand the implications of these interactions and are willing to continue to invest in them, together constituting the experience of the game. AI in AI Native Game should serve game-like purposes, and technology cannot be separated from its application.

Note: Faraway galaxies: Builders, while introducing an AI program, its core play is still runners and builders. The playability of this game is poor due to the imbalance in the value system. And this is a response to the idea that the first part of this paper is that AI is just a saucer. Make sure your food is not bad, then you add the spice.

Or do you want to talk about the world?

OK, let's keep thinking about this floor of my favorite.

The world will remember what players do. You destroyed the walls here today, and tomorrow you'll see AI to rebuild it; by next month you'll hear the hymns sing about this town being taken over by the enemy because of the wall's destruction. The world changed because of you, and the story changed because of your interference, and finally came back to you with the wind and NPC. It's a world.

NPC and World are components that make up a whole interactive world. The world records what players do and do not do, and it is a non-talking teller. Players may come back here after dozens of hours of play, aggregating their own stories in the broken walls and then regret what they did in the past. NPC is a more straightforward teller, with personality and a memory of what happened in the past. It may not know you, but it will tell you the stories of the past.The world will remember those behaviours that are not part of the mission's feedback and then turn them into stories that NPC or the world itself tells. Traditional behavior trees never do that. When you leave traces of the world and see them fed back, the world will be more like a world, and games will have souls.

Releasing is an art. The world needs to be white, and the story is not necessarily a text, but rather a scratch, a piece of a broken maze, a broken sword, a graveyard, or a rain. The story that remains is often more contagious than the story that is given straight. NPC also needs to stay in the paper. It doesn't have to react to you right away. A silence, an expression, a few seconds of hesitation, or total neglect makes it more human, but it's hard to do that with the NPC technology that LLM was before it came up. In the design philosophy of the AI original game, Negative Space can be a sophisticated and sophisticated emotional mechanism. The absence of response is itself a powerful response, as well as a more real response.

The silence and citation of players is also an action; the amount of information that is not operational is in no way less than the operation itself. Roles are offline, long-term gaze, repeated viewing of specific items, all signals that can be collected and analysed; the world can think and respond to players, and thus become more real. Silence is a powerful expression. Understanding silence may push emotional attachments to the extreme.

Maybe you're going through the real world's boredom, opening the game and doing nothing, just sitting on top of the mountain and watching the clouds and then getting off the line. And a few days later, when you open up the game again, a round of sun and sun rises in the clouds, saying that the bookman has given you a pot of wine to tell the story of your best friend over the past few days. This AI saw not only what you did, but also what you did. Releasing is also an act, and that is the response of the real world.

I'm looking forward to AI Native Game, and maybe there won't be a Big Change. It's just gonna remember. Remember who you saved and who you failed, and the wall you destroyed and repaired, and remember that you did nothing one day after you went online, but sat on the top of the hill for a while. When you leave, the world will follow these traces slowly; when you come back, it will not rush to put everything in the mission log, but leave it for change, until you find out.

When we talk about AI Native Game, we talk about maybe one of those possibilities: players experience a life like a real world. AI allows the role to remember that the world is responsive and that stories continue to happen after the player leaves. But what is worth remembering is what should be forgotten, what responses are fun to be answered by the game. Models may make the world move. The player will not want to come back again, and it will end up being a good game.

If I think about getting AI into the context of game development and operation, not the way it is, I've talked about it in another blog before. AI can assist in rendering, numerical balance and mass code tasks. But if you want AI to be involved in something that is more artistic than art/image, and you want AI to be able to produce something that is directed to players in the game or in the community, remember: AI has no soul, it cannot understand the context. The world view, context and aesthetic judgement of the work are still humans to hold, and AI can generate content, but it does not understand it naturally.

ICML 2026 AI4Game 、GDC 2026 、China Joy 2026

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