Arena Breakout: Infinite just entered early access but is expected to launch as a full game later this year. It’s breaking heavily into the extraction shooter market, which is admittedly becoming quite a densely populated landscape, but it’s coming with quite a bit of innovation.
Insider Gaming has learned that the team at MoreFun Studios is working on an innovative AI solution known as ‘FACUL’, which stands for First Ever AI Companion Who Understands Human Language.
Next-Level Intelligence
MoreFun Studios is working to constantly pump Arena Breakout: Infinite, a new free-to-play extraction shooter, with content. On the roadmap is the integration of a next-generation artificial intelligence engine called FACUL, which will allow players to make use of AI-powered companions that they can order around the battlefield.
But it’s far from the command model that existed 20 years ago in the likes of SOCOM.
FACUL allows AI characters to recognise up to 17,000 in-game items, such as buildings, weapons, landmarks, and as the team said, ‘even blades of grass’. Players can use an adaptive, dynamic model to issue commands to these AI companions, ordering them as though they were talking to teammates. They can even have casual conversations and crack jokes with the AI.
Update: I caught up with Enzo Zhang, the game’s producer, to speak about some of the concerns of using such an AI model in Arena Breakout Infinite:
This is just a tech demo, so it’s not a major concern at this stage. Secondly, all large language models, not just in-game ones, face similar issues. What sets us apart is our utlisation of AI and large language models in a specific gaming scenario. Therefore, in terms of data privacy concerns, it won’t be a more significant issue compared to other AI and GPTs. If one day we do implement this technology into our game, we will ensure that it complies with the data and privacy protection laws and regulations of each country.
MoreFun admitted that it hasn’t found a real use case for the AI in the game, particularly as it’s trying to avoid implementing something that could become quite overpowered, but it’s an innovative and interesting feature that’s being penned as a first-ever for the FPS genre.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Sniper Elite: Resistance has been revealed
