Game studios can now design NPCs with unique personalities and contextual awareness using AI technology supported by NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs and NVIDIA Triton Inference Server.
However, non-playable characters (NPCs) often don’t get the same level of attention. Many NPCs act in ways that seem shallow and repetitive, making their interactions feel dull and unmemorable.
Inworld AI is changing this by using generative AI to make NPC behaviors more dynamic and responsive to players. Based in Mountain View, Calif., the startup offers a Character Engine that works with any character design, helping studios and developers create more engaging gameplay and enhance player interactions.
Level Up Your Gaming Experience: Achievement Unlocked
The Inworld team is dedicated to developing AI NPCs that can learn and adjust to players, form connections with them, and provide a smooth, immersive gaming experience.
To help developers integrate these advanced AI NPCs, Inworld has developed the Character Engine. This tool uses generative AI powered by NVIDIA technology to create engaging and interactive characters that are ready for production, scalable, and optimized for real-time use.
The Character Engine is made up of three key layers: Character Brain, Contextual Mesh, and Real-Time AI.
- Character Brain manages the NPC’s actions by coordinating various personality models, including text-to-speech, speech recognition, emotions, gestures, and animations. It allows NPCs to learn, adapt, and react based on player interactions. For instance, developers can use the “Goals and Action” feature to set specific behaviors for NPCs based on player inputs.
- Contextual Mesh gives developers tools to control content and safety, add custom knowledge, and manage narratives. Features like “Relationships” let developers create evolving storylines where an NPC’s role can change depending on player actions, such as an ally becoming an enemy.
- Real-Time AI ensures that the NPCs perform well and scale effectively in real-time gameplay.
A key challenge with generative AI is ensuring that NPCs remain true to the game’s world and storyline. Inworld’s Contextual Mesh helps address this issue by ensuring NPCs stay true to their in-game logic and avoid unrealistic responses, which is a common problem with large language models (LLMs).
Boosting AI Processes with NVIDIA
Inworld, a startup supported by NVIDIA’s Inception program, relies on NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs and NVIDIA Triton Inference Server for its generative AI training and deployment. The company uses the open-source NVIDIA Triton Inference Server to streamline the deployment of various machine learning models needed for features like NPC emotions in Character Brain. They also plan to use NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM to enhance inference performance. Both of these tools are part of the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform, which ensures security, stability, and support for AI in production.
For training, Inworld uses NVIDIA A100 GPUs in Slurm-managed bare-metal servers, and similar setups in Kubernetes manage NPC interactions during gameplay. This configuration allows for cost-effective, real-time AI generation.
“We selected NVIDIA A100 GPUs because they offered the most cost-effective solution for our machine learning needs,” said Igor Poletaev, VP of AI at Inworld.
“Our clients are excited to find new methods to increase player engagement by adding AI NPCs to their games,” Poletaev said.Achieving real-time performance was only possible with hardware accelerators, which is why GPUs have been a crucial part of our infrastructure from the start.”
Inworld’s AI-driven NPCs create engaging, ever-evolving gaming experiences that keep players returning. Developers and gamers have noted improved player engagement and satisfaction.
Inworld has enhanced NPC experiences for companies like Niantic, LG UPlus, and Alpine Electronics. For example, a virtual reality game using Inworld’s Character Engine saw a 5% increase in playtime, while a detective-themed indie game gained over $300,000 in free publicity after being featured by popular Twitch streamers.
Discover more about Inworld AI and NVIDIA’s tools for game developers.
