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Artificial Agency Secures $16 Million to Elevate NPC Realism in Video Games Using AI

Artificial Agency Secures $16 Million to Elevate NPC Realism in Video Games Using AI

Leave a Comment / Artificial Intellegence, Gaming, News, Tech News / By

Artificial Agency, a firm formed by previous Google DeepMind investigators has come forth from the shadows with sixteen million dollars in funding to transform non-playable characters (NPCs) in video games with AI. The company aims to change conventional video games by rendering NPC encounters more dynamic and lifelike with gamers.

The AI Behavior Engine

Artificial Agency Secures $16 Million to Elevate NPC Realism in Video Games Using AI

Image Source: techcrunch.com

Artificial Agency’s revolutionary AI behaviour engine is intended to improve the realism of NPCs by breaking away from standard decision trees and pre-written scripts, which frequently result in monotonous and predictable NPC behaviour. Instead, the engine enables game developers to provide NPCs with a set of motivations, rules, and objectives. These features influence NPC responses to participant actions, resulting in enhanced and enjoyable gameplay interactions.

Competitive Landscape

Artificial Agency, situated in Edmonton, Alberta, joins a congested industry that includes competitors such as Inworld and Nvidia, both of which specialize on AI-generated NPC behaviours. However, Artificial Agency thinks that its innovations will quickly become indispensable in the industry.

"The conversations we often have with these studios are not about if, but about when," co-founder and CEO Brian Tanner explained. "This sort of dynamic interaction and dynamic response that our system allows is going to be table stakes in the games industry just a few years from now."

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Funding and Future Prospects

The firm raised $12 million in a seed round led by Radical Ventures and Toyota Ventures, which added to Radical Ventures’ prior $4 million pre-seed financing, for a total of $16 million.  Other seed round partners comprised  Kaya, Flying Fish,  BDC Deep Tech, and TIRTA Ventures.

Despite certain reservations about the use of machine learning in games, Artificial Agencies are collaborating with several famous AAA studios to build their behaviour engine, which is expected to be widely available by 2025. Daniel Mulet, a Radical Ventures investor, pointed out that many gaming firms were attempting to construct similar technologies on their own, emphasizing the necessity for a comprehensive network.

Demonstrating Artificial Intelligent Potential

The company’s ‘ Co-founder Alex Kearney showed TechCrunch a non-player character in Minecraft powered by the behaviour engine. The NPC, Aaron, completed difficult tasks and engaged with player characters uniquely, and unscripted, demonstrating the engine’s ability to produce more lifelike and responsive NPCs.

Also Read: US Grants Up to $400 Million to Taiwan’s GlobalWafers for Semiconductor Boost

Economic considerations

Tanner determined that the demo’s artificial intelligence prediction expenses were around a dollar, a significant reduction from a hundred dollars, a year ago. With further GPU optimizations and artificial intelligence optimisations, the cost is likely to fall even more. While Artificial Agency believes AI NPCs would not raise game prices for consumers, Radical Ventures’ Mulet speculated that licensing the technology to game producers may result in increased charges for gamers.

Conclusion

Artificial Agency’s artificial intelligence behaviour engine is a big development in developing lifelike NPCs, promising to alter the game experience. As the company works to improve its technology and partner with large studios, it places itself at the vanguard of the game industry’s future evolution.

 
Games

Top 7 Games like Harvest Moon

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Harvest Moon was developed by Amccus, birthed solely for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It was first launched in Japan in 1996, which rapidly become a favorite around the world, after initially gaining ground in America and Europe. In this world of technology, kids have been resorting to video games and smartphone games as their primary way of entertainment – and Harvest Moon is one of the most-accessed video games. 

Also Read: Nintendo: From a Small Card Company to World’s Largest Video Game Maker

Here, you have to look after the farm that you inherit from your grandfather, making it more than sufficient enough farm. You have to, in addition, also look after your livestock, harvests, and plant your crops and clear your land constantly. The game now also has 14 spin-off games under the titular series, all of them offering immersive and extensive setup, with as many levels and more fun-filled and useful features. And if you are just a tiny bit tired of looking at the same setup, here are some beautiful different games which are exactly like Harvest Moon, but offers a plethora of features.

Harvest Moon

Stardew Valley:

Stardew Valley is a game supported by a variety of platforms, right from PC, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch to even Android and iOS. It has an engaging story, where you get an unkempt land from your grandfather and the challenge is that you develop this land into lush green and a pretty one. The supporting romantic sub-plot also has the option of supporting same-sex relationships, meaning that it is one of the best games like harvest moon. There are many features, including how the story and the world is comparatively much huger and more advanced as compared to Harvest Moon.

Also Read: IMANGI STUDIOS- THE COMPANY THAT BUILT ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS MOBILEPHONE GAMES

Voodoo Garden:

Voodoo garden is where you can get your dream of being a witch fulfilled. It goes one step ahead of Harvest Moon, offering you to grow foods and veggies, along with shrubs and herbs. There is also an option of producing unrevealed accessories, as well as catching wild animals which you can use to make products necessary for voodoo magic. You can assign yourself a pet and just have a magical time playing this game.

Also Read: Counter-strike, celebrating 20-years of video shooter games

Plantera:

Plantera is a farm game, but works like Super Mario, because of the side-scrolling feature. It is slow-paced and lets you enjoy the game to your own preference. There is a farm as well as a garden that you have to take care of. You can grow, therefore, nice fruits and tress at the same time take proper care of your livestock. You can get new helpers as you expand the farm and your garden.

Terraria:

Terraria is one of the best harvest moon games alternatives, and why should it not be? It is a beautiful game to play, with an immersive setting and many fun-filled activities to do. You can explore, build, dig, and even fight. There is also access to a lot of items that can be put in inventory, which can be used later to craft new items. It is certainly an engaging game and users have fondly noted how they would just while away their time – sometimes, even hours at a time – on this game. Sometimes, they even want to take his eye off from the game for a while and look toward music, watching web series, or even sports streaming sites, but the addictiveness of the game does not let them do anything.

Also Read – David Crane: The Famous Videogame Guru and Co-founder of Activision

Rune Factory 4:

Rune Factory 4 is designed to feel a bit like anime, but the storyline is as unique as it can get. You are the prince/princess of the world you are offered and carry the ultimate power to change it. There are dungeons, which is a different feature when compared to Harvest Moon; other features, however, are almost similar. You also have to look after your skill of crafting, which gets more difficult as you pass the levels.

Farm Up:

It is the game of farming where you need to, along with constantly rearing animals and growing healthy crops, take care of an energy source. It is limited and therefore, you have to use the resources disposed at your service with great care. You can either pay for it with cash or just wait for the energy to refill itself slowly but freely.  Just like the harvest moon, it seems fun to play.

Also Read: Jason Citron: A Video Game Lover and the Founder of the Digital Distribution Platform Discord

Hay Day:

Hay Day is probably one of the names here that you must have heard at least once in your life. Available in smartphones too, you must have looked it in Playstore or Appstore. It is a free game to download, with few in-app purchases that you can get done if you wish for it. The app is rather famous, having gained four out of five stars, voted by around 10 million users of the game.

There is also an option of fishing and dock reparation, along with taking care of your farm and establishing a trade relationship with your neighbors.

Also Read: Mixer: The Story of Two Teenagers, and their Online Game Streaming Startup

nazara technologies

Nitish Mittersain : The Founder of Leading Mobile Games Publishing Company in India, ‘Nazara Technologies’

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The thrill gaming world brings to us, especially to the youngsters, is boundless. To plan a start-up based on gaming technologies brings with it a great potential to flourish in future. But, in a country like India, the major part of the crowd doesn’t support this unorthodoxy. Indian families always oppose the idea of gaming and even being a part of it. So, thinking about a gaming start-up is next to being delusional.

But, breaking all the social norms Nitish Mittersain, a boy from a typical Indian Marwari family, made bigger plans and established his gaming company, Nazara Technologies. Nitish Mittersain is an entrepreneur who founded India’s leading mobile gaming company in 2003. He was always passionate about video games and so decided to build his future around his interest without any hesitation.

Early Life of Mittersain

Since Mittersain belonged to a Marwari family, he was expected to join his father’s textile business after he completed a degree in MBA. But Mittersain as a very young kid was strongly attracted to the world of gaming and coding. His room used to be full of modems, video and computer games of all kind. Thinking that every kid loves to play video games, his father gifted him a ZX Spectrum, but little did he know that this is just the beginning of something incredible and unexpected. Receiving this gift was just like a spark that ignited the passion of gaming in him, and he coded his first game at an age of seven.

Nitish Mittersain
Image Source: glaws.in

During his college life, Mittersain started a bulletin board service which helped him connect to many influential and famous people over the internet. And this is how he got an opportunity to come across the 1960s actor, Shashi Kapoor. Apart from being known as a talented actor, he also showed great interest in technology and the internet. After his cinematic career, Kapoor engrossed himself in spreading of technology, and that’s how both, Mittersain and him, hit a common ground to discuss. Mittersain spoke to Kapoor almost every day, regarding the perfect blend of entertainment and technology. And, Kapoor was the one who inspired him and gave him ideas to start his own business. Getting motivated enough, Mittersain decided to launch his gaming company, Nazara Technologies, when he was still in college.

Beginning of the New Business

Nitish Mittersain founded Nazara Technologies in 2000 in Mumbai. But land swept off from under his feet after an unfortunate incident took place. The first dotcom crash in that very year made him question his decision repeatedly and whether to back off or not. But, he didn’t want to shut down his business as it was the doorway to his dreams. He tried his best to survive the bubble burst and with some clear strategies and a little luck he finally survived the crisis.

Stepping Ahead of Others

Being an entrepreneur with an innovative idea, he was already one step ahead of his competitors. And, in the early 2000s, there weren’t many companies in India that planned to develop gaming technologies. So, using it to Nazara’s advantage, Mittersain’s first strategy was to invest in advertisement and brand campaigning. He knew that once it captures the attention of mass, investors would line up in front of his door. So, in 2004, he approached Sachin Tendulkar, the legendary cricketer of that time, to come on board. After months of requesting and convincing, Tendulkar finally made a deal with Nazara Technologies. This strategy of his stirred the existing competitors away from his way.

Soon, Nazara came into a partnership with Electronic Arts (an American video game company) and brought it to India. Once, the company started taking up a good and faster speed, Mittersain planned to expand the market with stronger and bigger partnerships.

Keeping aside Nitish Mittersain’s passion for games, when he developed the company, his dream was as simple as that to make huge profits. But, he also wanted his company to play fair and square in the market, and it is appreciable that even after 19 long years of sustaining, his company doesn’t have any lawsuit against it.

The success of Nazara Technologies

Today, Nazara is doing business in 61 different countries, with more than 130 million monthly visitors. In 2017, nine in-house games of Nazara were listed among the top three games by download on Google Play Store.

Recently, Nazara has acquired 27.42% minority stake in Crimson Code, which will allow the company to offer real money on winning live quizzes. In 2019, the company acquired a 67% stake in Sportskeeda and now expecting an IPO in early 2020.

discord

Jason Citron : A Video Game Lover and the Founder of the Digital Distribution Platform Discord

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The video game industry is vast and is growing even more through online gaming and live game streaming. Over a decade ago, people could only play games on the desktops or gaming consoles. But now, they can play games online with other gamers as well. While playing, they can even talk to each other in real-time. This is called the real evolution of technology. Earlier, the gamers made the use of other expensive chat apps, like TeamSpeak, Mumble, and Ventrilo to communicate through chat at the time, they played games. But soon, they got their hands on more convenient and a lighter platform, i.e. Discord.

Discord is a VoIP application that Jason Citron, an American developer and entrepreneur, developed for the video gaming community. With Discord, the gamers are capable of sending and receiving texts, images, videos and communicate, while playing a game using the internet in real-time.

Early Life

Jason Citron, the founder and CEO of Discord, had always been a video game lover. His father, and his grandfather, both were businessmen. His first encounter with video games was through one of his childhood friends, who introduced him to NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). Later, when in middle school, in Florida, he opted for computers as one of his subjects in school. One of his friends at school was good at fundamentals of QBASIC and taught him the basics of programming.

Jason Citron
Image Source: vox.com

Inspired by his father, he also aspired to be an entrepreneur. By the time he was 13, he had learned a lot about computers and started teaching the basics of computers to people older than him and charged them a small amount of fee. When he was sixteen, he started part-time freelancing and wrote codes for different companies.

Since, he had always been into gaming and coding, after completing his graduation from the Full Sail University in Florida, he started working for a game company, where he worked on a gaming console in San Rafael. Meanwhile, he moved to a new apartment where he lived with the students of the University of California, Berkeley, where he got to meet Rohan Relan. Rohan’s uncle, Peter, was the owner of an incubator called YouWeb that supported mobile and gaming-focused businesses.

Building Aurora Feint; The First Startup

As Citron was into starting his own business, he met Peter and joined his company as one of the developers. At the incubator, he started working on a new iPhone game and built a company named Aurora Feint along with a fellow developer Danielle Cassley.

With the launch of the iPhone in 2007, Jason Citron got the opportunity to build new games that would work with the small screens. He focussed on creating games based on RPG and puzzles. The company launched the first version of Aurora Feint for free to use for iOS during the Christmas in 2008. The game was a success but was not making any revenues. Citron was looking for a better business model but had no clue how to work with newly built iPhones.

After just a few months the game reached one million people, but still, there was nothing that would pay back Citron and his company.

Founding OpenFeint

One day, while discussing with the YouWeb Owner Peter, Citron realised that the iPhone did not have Xbox live in it, but their Aurora Feint 2 did have a similar feature. It was the kind of first asynchronous MMOG (massively multiplayer online game). So they decided to build a separate SDK that other platform could integrate and use.

In February 2009, Citron launched the beta version of the software at TechCrunch, where he got to showcase it in front of hundreds of developers. This way, the software also got hundreds of signups, and thus, he was able to raise the money to produce the next version of the product. The software was free, but the company monetize the sale through revenue sharing, mobile storefronts, and game features.

The company carried out its first round of funding at the end of 2009, which was led by DeNA in Japan and raised $6 million. In the second round of funding, the company raised $5 million. By 2010, the company had more than 10 million users registered on the network. In October 2010, Intel Capital also invested a $3 million in the company. The next year, Japanese company GREE, Inc. acquired OpenFeint for a whopping amount of US$104 million.

The Journey from Hammer and Chisel to Discord

After selling the company, Jason Citron started another startup named Hammer and Chisel, a game development company, that launched its first game named Fates Forever, in 2014. Citron tried to launch the game as the Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), but due to the lack of good communication methods, it could not be commercially successful. This led Cistron to develop a new chat service, that would help people to chat in real-time while playing video games online.

Citron was able to get a sufficient amount of funding from YouWeb, Benchmark capital and Tencent for the development. Finally, he launched the first version of the product in May 2015, with the name Discord. Soon, the platform was famous and was used by the esports, LAN tournament gamers, and by the Twitch.tv streamers. In January 2016, the company received an investment of worth $20 million. In the same year, the growth rate for the software had reached a million users per month. By the end of the year, the software had registered 25 million users worldwide, and in December 2017, it recognised a total 90 million users, subscribed to the platform and raised $50 million by December.

By the end of 2018, the company valued at $2 billion and raised an additional $150 million, in a round of funding, led by Greenoaks Capital. In May 2019, the company announced that it has more than 250 million users across the world, who use the software.

The reason behind the success of Discord has been the consistent hard work of Jason Citron, and the skills, as an entrepreneur he possessed in his genes.

Chinese Govt to Put Digital Locks on PUBG to Restrict Young Players Under 13

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There have been rounds of rumours for quite some time now, that the multi-player battle online game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), will be banned soon in various countries due to the extra engagement of children on the game. But there had been no confirmation on the same ever, from any of the governments.

pubg
Image Source: gearnuke.com

But now there is bad news for the Chinese young video game players, as Tencent has imposed a digital lock on the games like Honour of Kings and PUBG Mobile, for the children of age below 13. The children of the same age group, now, will have to ask their guardians to open the lock in order to play the game.

The Chinese gaming giant Tencent announced the new curbs for the underage video-game players, following the Chinese internet governance requirements, to restrain the gaming addiction in youth. The company had already imposed the screen time limit and other rules in order to restrict children from spending more time on games. Now, Tencent plans to double down the rules in order to prevent minors from accessing some of its games in China, to prohibit things like violence, information about gambling or pornography, national politics, or another damaging behaviour for the minors.

The digital lock will be based on facial recognition and player ID checks, such that it will identify the age of the player and restrict the access. The company has set up the barriers, as the Chinese governments have raised concerns about addiction and myopia in children. The government is also worried about the worsening sightedness and poor optical heath among minors, due to their indulgence in long-hour gaming habits.

For now, the digital lock will only work in 12 cities in China. The cross-platform game PUBG has been most criticised for the increased addiction among the video game players. The game is one of the fastest growing video game that is available to play on PCs, Xbox, as well as smartphones. PUBG hosts 100 players during a single game in real-time, which has been the biggest factor in the popularity of the game.

Last year, too, the Chinese Government had imposed a nine-month freeze on new video games for the same reasons, that ended in December, itself.

Ubisoft : The Journey of the Leading Video Games Company; From a Small Village to a Global Market

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Video games have seen a great transformation since its commencement. It all started with old 3D tic-tac-toe and Moon Landing games, and now, we see visually rich mission games and numerous small scale Smartphone games, which are really good at their functionalities.

The rise of video games not only provided people with new means of entertainment but has also given the opportunity to many businesses and developers to head into new horizons. The founders of the company Ubisoft also founded their passion in the same field, and now they are the owner of the third biggest video game development company.

Origin

Five brothers, Christian, Claude, Gérard, Michel and Yves, from the Guillemot family of northwest France founded Ubisoft in 1986. In the beginning, the Guillemot brothers had joined their family business. They started working even before they started going to University and had gained enough experience to start their own business.

ubisoft
Image Source: sharkone

Before Ubisoft, the Guillemot brothers had tried their hands in many other businesses. As their family business was based on farming, there was a real less margin in the business. Soon, they realised that the farming industry was not paying much and was going through a decline. So, the first business they did out of farming was selling audio CDs, as these were the latest trend in the market. The business was good, and soon, they were able to deal in personal computers and established a small shop.

The trade was going well, and along with selling computers, they also sold things that were needed in farming. The Guillemot then stocked up video games in the shop and installed 20 machines to play video games at the shop. In 1980, they shifted from buying the video games from France market to the US’s, as it was much cheaper to buy those video games from the US. This led to a huge difference in the profits, and as a result, the five brothers started another new business. In 1984, they founded Guillemot Informatique and began the mail-order business around computers and software.

By the year 1985, they were earning good profits through video games and realised that they can have much more of that if they start developing video games by themselves.

Founding Ubisoft

Guillemot brothers founded Ubisoft in Carentoir, in Brittany, on 12 March 1986. Ubisoft is the acronym for Ubiquitous Software, and formally, it was named as Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. For the development purpose, they gathered a team of developers from their neighbouring places and set up their first office in a chateau in Carentoir.

For two years of the startup, the brothers continued operating their company from the chateau only, but it was way expensive to maintain the office. So many of their developers relocated to Paris. One of their first recruited staff, Michel Ancel, who also returned to his hometown in the same year, came back with another developer Frederic Houde with a prototype of a game with highly-animated features in 1994.

The prototype caught the immediate attention of Guillemot brothers, and in 1994, they started working on the same, making it the prime project of the company. They also set up an office in Montreuil and hired 100 developers to work on the project. Finally, in 1995, Ubisoft launched its first hit video game Rayman, which targeted the new line of fifth-generation consoles, like the Atari Jaguar and PlayStation. The instant success of the game made the company popular worldwide.

The game was a huge hit, and only in one year, Ubisoft went for its IPO, in 1996, and raised over US$80 million in funds. The company also expanded to other worldwide cities, including Annecy, Shanghai, Montreal, and Milan, in a span of four years from its inception.

With the expansion of the internet in 1999, the Guillemot brothers found another opportunity to widen the growth of Ubisoft in the US market, too. They, then founded Gameloft, an online game publisher, in 1999. In the year 2000, Ubisoft acquired an American video game development company Red Storm Entertainment, that too, helped Ubisoft to expand in the American market, bringing titles like Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series.

The success in the US market led Ubisoft to work with companies like Microsoft, at the time, when no one was ready to develop games for Xbox. With Microsoft, Ubisoft brought games like Halo and Ghost Recon, etc.

As of 2017, the estimated valuation of the company was registered at $6.4 billion. Currently, the company owns several video game studios across the world. The company gets the credits of many popular games to its name, including Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Just Dance, Prince of Persia, Rayman, Raving Rabbids, and Tom Clancy’s.

As of March 2018, it is the fourth largest publicly-traded game company in America and Europe after Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Take-Two Interactive in terms of revenue and market capitalisation.