Ethereum Game 'Illuvium' Reveals AI Agent Plans via Surging Virtuals Protocol

Ethereum game franchise Illuvium is set to leverage the viral AI agent Virtuals Protocol to enhance its non-playable characters, or NPCs. This comes after Virtuals has surged in popularity in recent weeks after it lowered the barrier for AI agent creation, leading to the creation of some of Crypto Twitter’s favorite new characters.

The Virtuals Protocol straps AI agents with its proprietary G.A.M.E large language model framework to power AI agents. AiXBT (AIXBT) is the most popular of all its creations thus far at a $489 million market cap, with over 320,000 followers on X (formerly known as Twitter).

This same technology is set to be plugged into the Illuvium gaming franchise, which released three gaming titles in 2024. Illuvium’s trio of games (Overworld, Arena, and Zero) span three distinctively different genres of an open-world survival multiplayer game, an auto-battler, and a city builder—all of which will implement Virtuals tech, the developer said Tuesday.

Put simply, using Virtuals’ G.A.M.E framework aims to improve gameplay and interactions with NPCs, as they’ll be powered using more effective artificial intelligence. This will manifest itself through more dynamic questing, storytelling, and deeper NPC relationships.

While the partnership announcement claims that all three titles will eventually use the framework, it appears that Illuvium’s evolving open-world survival game Overworld will use it first. 

This comes after Illuvium outlined plans to move the franchise forward, as co-founder Kieran Warwick admitted in a blog post that "concerns" about its gameplay were valid.

As such, Warwick proposed various changes ahead for the franchise, including focusing on one game at a time rather than three, reducing microtransactions, and reworking its open-world game Overworld into a "streamlined, more accessible" experience akin to a massively multiplayer online game, or an "MMO lite."

“lluvium’s immersive world, combined with an agentic NPC framework, positions it to lead the next era of gaming innovation,” Ether Mage, the pseudonymous co-founder of Virtuals Protocol, said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to bring our proprietary framework to life in their upcoming ‘MMO lite’ and showcase the transformative potential of AI-driven gaming.”

The Virtuals token (VIRTUAL) runs on Ethereum, while AI agent tokens running on the protocol have been minted on layer-2 network Base. VIRTUAL has surged by 117% over the last 30 days, per data from CoinGecko, sitting at a current price of $3.74.

Edited by Andrew Hayward