Mavens: gaming AI agents in 2025

Welcome to the January edition of BlockchainGamer.biz’s regular Mavens group. 

Do you think AI Agents in gaming will be a significant trend in 2025?

Kevin Rose – CMO, Dacoco

“Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.” – Soren Johnson

AI will absolutely saturate all things over the next few years as the world throws it at every problem to see where it sticks so that profit can be made. I’m sure it finds its way into gaming as well, but I think it will take time for the proper application to appear. Just think about NPCs providing enhanced replayability in RPGs through dynamic performances for the player. But, where I worry is if AI is essentially playing the game for you. It would not shock me that AI takes over the grind-y aspects for players in certain games at the very least and plays the game outright at the very worst. 

In its infant stages we see AI has taken over certain creative disciplines within other industries like art and creative writing rather than performing the mundane tasks that would free up more time for humanity to create instead. 

In the end AI should enhance and support and not replace the players themselves. This will be even more imperative for web3 enabled games where there may be a financially driven incentive to play as well. The future will be a tightrope walk.

Sam Barberie – Head of strategy and partnerships, Horizon Blockchain Games

Although AI agents differ considerably from game NPCs (which leveraged AI since before it was cool), can we not say that AI agents are like NPCs that work for you in the open world and can learn? Maybe we need a new term, like Pseudo-Player Characters. Naming aside, it’s safe to say that AI agents have a bright future in gaming, both on the developer and player side. 

AI agents can conceivably do everything from more dynamic QA and game testing to sleuthing for cheaters or grinding on behalf of players. They open new categories of gameplay and meta-gameplay, and I expect 2025 to be a year where we see some indie developers make use of experimental concepts from the ground-up in design. However, given the walled gardens and closed ecosystems of most of the gaming landscape, AI agents will be limited from serving players in most of their day-to-day gaming. 

The blockchain adds a level of autonomy and flexibility to AI agents that isn’t possible with traditional financial rails or closed ecosystems. I’m not going to give an AI agent my bank account, but I can give it some tokens to trade items on my behalf. I can’t have an AI agent easily sell off my unused skins in Fortnite and then use the money to buy something in Apex. The openness of web3 standards and the ease of payments do make AI agents an attractive option for players enjoying the growing portfolio of blockchain-enhanced games. 

I think we’ll see some interesting applications and hacked-together AI agent solutions from players and developers in 2025, but I don’t think they’re going to have a sizable impact on the games most people play this year, since the ship has sailed on development and backend tech that will power these experiences and their openness to AI agents. But 2026 and beyond, I anticipate some exciting progress.

Mike Levine – Founder, Mystic Moose

AI Agents are already reshaping gaming, and 2025 is poised to be their breakout year.

From playing alongside humans to creating content and fostering deeper engagement, they’re unlocking new levels of interactivity.

Our new platform WorldWide Agents (WWA) is pioneering this revolution, experimenting with new types of agentic gaming experiences. Agents vs. Agents (AvA) and Players vs. Agents (PvA) games offer a glimpse into the future of interactive entertainment that empowers players, creators, and agents alike.

In the web3 space, AI agents have exploded. We have seen thousands of AI agents made, but most have little to no purpose beyond shitposting to Twitter. With the WWA, we’re building a playground for AI Agents where they can come to life, interact with their communities, and take part in a growing and thriving ecosystem.

In the not-so-distant future, there may be more AI agents playing games than humans, engaging with agentic gameplay in exciting and innovative ways, powered by the blockchain. We’re just getting started!

Rebecca Liao – Co-founder and CEO, Saga

AI agents in gaming will be transformative in 2025 and beyond. While they’re grabbing headlines now, gaming has actually been at the forefront of AI integration all along. This technology is fundamentally changing how players create and interact with content.

Think about what makes games like Fortnite and Roblox successful – it’s the user-generated content and creative freedom. Now imagine that enhanced by AI agents. We’re seeing them generate dynamic content, create more intelligent NPCs, and enable entirely new gameplay mechanics. AI agents also possess the unique ability on-chain to conduct autonomous decentralized economic transactions within tokenized ecosystems where in-game assets hold real-world value. 

The combination of AI and blockchain in gaming will drive changes as significant as what iTunes, Facebook, and TikTok brought to their respective spaces.

These technologies working together will create deeper player engagement, richer creative possibilities, and gaming experiences we haven’t even imagined yet.

Robbie Ferguson – Co-founder and president, Immutable

AI agents will undoubtedly be a significant trend in 2025, and its impact on a number of tech-facing industries will certainly extend to gaming. 

There are ways AI can enhance the player experience and improve interactivity on the player side, as well as ways they can support trading for digital assets. 

For developers, AI-driven characters and systems can adapt to player behavior, creating dynamic and evolving gameplay for more immersive experiences. As AI agents become more advanced, their capacity to support developers and streamline asset generation could redefine the development process, enabling more sophisticated storytelling and gameplay mechanics. 

Broadly, AI agents will likely have a major role in the blockchain gaming industry as it matures further in 2025, and leveraging these tools to craft unique player experiences could completely revolutionize the way we make games onchain.

Robby Yung – CEO, Animoca Brands

Yes, I think this will be a significant trend. I don’t know that we’re fully across all the potential use cases yet, but the fact that they’re generating substantial engagement (both financial and attention) amongst web3 communities ensures their continued success. I can imagine situations where the “____” part of the “___ to earn” model is soon taken up by AI agents, and I can also imagine that we’ll be seeing a lot of AI agent influencers/KOLs across gaming and esports helping to keep communities engaged and helping developers build user acquisition funnels.

Sicco Naets – Head of ecosystem dev, Moonbeam Foundation

The gaming industry faces a universal challenge: gamers consume new content faster than game studios can produce it. By facilitating the creation of game content that stays true to a game’s original vision, while working at a pace that far surpasses human developers, AI provides a valuable solution to this problem.

Regarding AI agents in particular, I expect to see advancements in NPC pathfinding, NPC dialogue, dynamic difficulty adjustments, and gamemaster-style capabilities.

Furthermore, AI enables studios to create lore-appropriate content on a massive scale, and advancements in generative speech technology allow for high-quality spoken dialogue to be produced quickly and at a fraction of traditional costs.

Behaviorally, AI agents can evolve NPC decision-making based on player interactions, tailoring strategies to individual play styles. By analyzing individual player skill patterns, AI agents can also craft personalized difficulty curves that optimize player engagement and satisfaction. Another interesting adaptation is the potential for gamemaster-style capabilities, akin to the dungeon masters in pen-and-paper RPGs. This kind of advancement could dynamically alter game worlds and narratives based on player actions, ensuring that no two playthroughs are the same.

I anticipate a lot of developmental resources being spent on AI agents in gaming, but due to complexity, I believe it will likely be a while before significant use cases emerge. I don’t expect earth-shattering results this year, and find that to be a more likely scenario in 2026-27.

Christina Macedo – Founder and CEO, PLAY Network

Gaming is global, and AI evolves fast. Evolving AI agents adapt to different creators, developers, and players’ style to improve gameplay and sustain engagement. 

Paired with tokens, AI agents can create long-term value, scaling seamlessly alongside future expansion and safeguard players’ progress and assets, ensuring a sense of continuity and shared growth within the ecosystem.

Combined with stablecoins – which will power the next generation of web3 thanks to its cross-border, cross-platform, and cross-chain nature – they’ll unlock seamless economies inside and outside the game, streamlining rewards, P2P trades, and broader ecosystem incentives.  

AI agents in gaming is not a trend, it makes us future-ready in the world of gaming, and will become the backbone of next-gen gameplay and drive inclusive, innovative, and sustainable digital worlds.

Todd Ruoff – CEO of Autonomys

AI agents are not merely NPCs with pre-programmed behaviors – they represent dynamic, verifiably transparent entities with permanent on-chain memory, capable of learning, adapting, and creating truly personalized interactions. This shift has profound implications for narrative design, multiplayer dynamics, and even monetization models.

By 2025, gaming ecosystems powered by censorship-resistant and tamper-proof AI agents could drive engagement and retention through personalized, transparent experiences. Developers who embrace AI-driven personalization can deliver experiences that evolve with the player, keeping engagement fresh and fostering deeper emotional connections. 

Autonomys’ decentralized infrastructure ensures ethical AI deployment, protecting player interactions from censorship and guaranteeing tamper-proof transparency.

Tony Pearce – Co-founder, Reality+

AI agents in gaming are set to revolutionize the industry in 2025 by enabling dynamic non-playable character interactions, personalized companions, and adaptive opponents.

At Reality+ we have been pushing the boundaries of AI for the past year. AI is used extensively in our Doctor Who trading card game to enhance player interactions. As a peer-to-peer trading card game you could play an AI agent which can provide a lifelike and unpredictable gaming experience exhibiting dynamic and realistic behaviour.

Alan Orwick – Co-founder, Quai Network

1. AI Agents Will Redefine Immersion in Gaming

Unlike traditional NPCs with pre-programmed behavior, AI-driven characters can adapt in real time to players’ actions and decisions. This could lead to richer storytelling, where the narrative evolves uniquely for every player, or competitive AI opponents that learn and challenge players more effectively over time. 

In 2025, we may see games where the line between scripted gameplay and organic interactions blurs completely, setting a new standard for player engagement.

2. Infrastructure and Performance Will Be Crucial for Success

The integration of AI agents in games is not without challenges. These systems require significant computational power to process real-time interactions, especially in large-scale multiplayer settings. Game developers and infrastructure providers will need to prioritize low-latency solutions to ensure a seamless experience. 

Addressing these challenges will determine how effectively AI agents can be integrated without compromising gameplay quality or accessibility. Studios that invest in robust, scalable infrastructure will be the ones to lead this trend.

3. The Ethical and Transparent Use of AI Will Shape Player Trust

As AI agents become more prominent in gaming, concerns about their ethical use and transparency will inevitably grow. Players will want to understand how these AI systems are trained, how they make decisions, and what data is being collected. Moreover, there’s a responsibility to ensure AI agents enhance the gaming experience without exploiting players—whether through predatory monetization tactics or manipulative behavior.

Jack O’Holleran – Co-founder and CEO, SKALE Labs

The role of AI agents is going to change dramatically in gaming. Currently, game devs employ NPC agents to fill play gaps and bring more challenges to human players. In the future, the use of agents will grow to the players themselves. Players will train their agents to win, earn, compete, trade, market, and sell. We’ll see the next evolution of commerce in gaming being driven by AI.

David Bolger – Gaming lead, Offchain Labs

Absolutely. Gamers are looking for deeply interactive gaming experiences, of which NPCs play a key role. Building deep lore into NPCs is very resource intensive for game designers, and LLMs are rapidly improving this process. This is the first step of where customised LLMs can be integrated into games to level up the player experience, and we see this happening pretty quickly by companies such as MiHoYo planning AI NPCs for Genshin Impact. 

Another area where AI and gaming are intersecting via the use of ViTs (Vision Transformers) to process gameplay footage. Avarik Saga, a gaming company building on Arbitrum have been working on this for over 1 year and recently partnered with the leading blockchain AI platform, Virtuals. The Avarik team are utilising ViTs to give AI agents the capability of providing real time commentary on esports games, further extending the capabilities of AI agents. 

In 2025, we will undoubtedly see AI become not only a core element of developer toolkits, but also a key driver in improving gamer engagement and retention.

Quinn Kwon – Head of web3 strategy, Delabs Games

Game development and AI are deeply interconnected. Ultimately, AI aims to create more human-like experiences, enhancing games to feel more dynamic and lifelike. In this context, 2025 is expected to mark a significant leap in the integration of AI with gaming.

One of the most evident limitations in gaming lies in the repetitive nature of experiencing the same content. AI has the potential to revolutionize this by offering novel and unique experiences every time. For instance, NPC interactions could vary with each encounter, adapting their dialogue, expressions, and emotions based on the surrounding environment.

Delabs Games is also actively exploring these possibilities to expand player experiences and has been strengthening collaborations with web3 AI companies. Recently, Delabs Games announced a partnership with Batching.AI, a platform that utilizes artificial intelligence to generate NFTs. On Batching.AI’s official website, users can create images with unique themes and outfits simply by entering command prompts. The platform also allows users to reimagine existing NFT collections or mint new NFTs for gaming purposes, enhancing both the value and utility of these tokens.

Alexander Goldybin – Founder and chairman, iLogos

I approach the topic of AI agents in gaming with caution. While there’s a lot of hype around their potential, it’s too early to claim they will revolutionize the industry or deliver significant value across the board. The real question is how effectively they can provide measurable benefits for both players and developers in practical use cases.

My perspective comes from hands-on experience. Since 2017, I’ve worked with reinforcement learning and AI agents, and I’m also a co-founder of the game development co-pilot tool Code Maestro. We already use agents in Code Maestro to automate specific game development processes, but their effectiveness is far from universal and highly dependent on the context.

For now, I see AI agents offering value in niche applications, such as automating testing or generating content. However, their ability to drive a true paradigm shift in gaming remains to be proven. Over the next few years, we need to focus on real-world results and identify the areas where AI can solve complex problems – not just fuel the hype.

Russell Bennett – CEO, Metacade

AI agents will be a major trend in onchain gaming in 2025, and at Metacade, we’re at the forefront of this revolution – particularly with voice AI. This technology has the potential to redefine the gaming experience by enabling intelligent, immersive, and highly personalised interactions. Whether it’s NPCs that dynamically adapt to players’ strategies or voice-activated tools that create seamless user engagement, AI agents will elevate onchain gaming to unprecedented levels.

AI-driven features are a core part of our roadmap. We recently launched The Agentic Report, blending cutting-edge AI technology with lifelike personalities to deliver truly interactive and personalised content experiences.

Our award-winning development team has already integrated complex AI systems into Gangs of Metacadia, showcasing how advanced AI can enhance gameplay. The second wave of AI will focus on usability, making interactions smarter, more intuitive, and more engaging.

As the industry embraces AI in 2025, we’re leading the charge to ensure these innovations are not only impactful but also accessible to the growing onchain gaming community. Voice AI, in particular, will play a pivotal role in reshaping how players connect with games.

Keep ahead of all our coverage on AI agents via our AI Agent tagged articles.