Unveiling the Latest Launchpad Project of Binance: Sleepless AI – The First Women-Oriented Game Combining AI and Crypto on Web3

Article Title: HIM: Exploring the Mechanism and Mystery Behind Sleepless AI

Introduction:
On December 26th, Binance announced the launch of the 42nd period of the Launchpad project, Sleepless AI (AI), which combines AI and Crypto to develop the first Web3 female-oriented game – HIM. In this article, we will explore HIM from the perspective of investors and delve into the mechanisms and mysteries behind Sleepless AI.

Table of Contents:
Toggle
TL;DR
1. What kind of AI + Crypto makes more sense?
1.1 What is HIM?
1.2 Does AI + Gaming fit together?
2. Virtual humans pro max
2.1 HIM + AI = more realistic game character personalities
2.2 High-quality, high-cost virtual human art
3. Seamless integration of HIM + crypto
3.1 The first female-oriented web3 application, a gift for web3 female users and professionals
3.2 Emotional assets + decentralization
3.3 What can HIM bring to web3?
4. Conclusion
TL;DR:
This article explores the application of AI + Crypto in Web3 games using the example of the Web3 female-oriented game HIM. HIM combines AI and Crypto to provide players with rich interactive experiences, high-quality gameplay, and artistic content.

HIM adopts an economic model centered around fiat inflow and aims to avoid Ponzi schemes through high-quality content and excellent gameplay. It also incorporates the “Love and Earn” gameplay, allowing players to earn income by selling NFTs.

HIM utilizes a large language model to generate natural and highly distinguishable dialogue content based on game scenarios and character traits, enhancing the realism of virtual characters and player immersion. Additionally, the HIM team has developed a training method for virtual humans’ AI to provide a more realistic gaming experience.

The HIM team focuses on creating fully-dimensional virtual images to make virtual humans an integral part of players’ lives. They also emphasize the social attributes of virtual humans, envisioning a future where everyone has their virtual companions who exist in social networks, connecting everyone.

HIM aims to establish a virtual human universe through AI boyfriends, AI girlfriends, and AI pets, providing people with power and companionship.

While we are still pondering how to deploy trustless and transparent large-scale models on the blockchain, and how on-chain AI can bring value to web3, and how the underlying proof system can support LLM with billions of parameters (refer to the previous article), we have also begun to consider a series of questions. The train of thought roughly goes like this:

First, is it the most worthwhile track at the moment to achieve trustless and transparent AI through encryption technology?

Is it truly valuable for a startup project to study how to integrate on-chain LLM?

Which projects are worth investing significant resources into further research on on-chain AI?

Is it only on-chain AI that is worth exploring, or are there better ways to combine AI and crypto?

It is certain that on-chain AI is a field full of imagination and worthy of in-depth research. The breakthrough of on-chain AI can bring unprecedented value to web3. However, the high academic threshold and infrastructure requirements may not be suitable for most startups to tackle head-on. Moreover, most projects may not necessarily need to incorporate trustless LLM support to achieve their own breakthroughs in value.

The best fit is the best.

Looking at it from another angle, not all AI models need to be deployed on-chain to be trustless. Just like most people do not care about how chatGPT reasons and produces results for queries, they are not concerned about whether the stable diffusion used is a specific version of the model architecture or specific parameter settings.

In most scenarios, most users care about whether the model can provide satisfactory outputs, rather than whether the reasoning process is trustless or transparent.

So, what kind of AI + crypto can bring higher returns to products? Apart from hardcore work from infrastructure to algorithms, developing trustless LLM on-chain, another opposite direction is to downplay the impact of the black box reasoning process in products and find suitable scenarios to apply the powerful reasoning capabilities of large models.

Web3 game HIM is one of the few projects that clearly understands and has the ability to implement AI + Crypto at the application layer.

This article mainly discusses the ambitions of the Web3 game HIM from the perspective of AI application and implementation.

Let’s start with an introduction to the protagonist (HIM ranks first in the Binance MVB VI application category):

HIM is a female-oriented 2D game that simulates a virtual boyfriend.

The theme of the game is that there are times when people feel lonely and need encouragement, companionship, and love. Real-life love also comes with limitations and regrets. HIM aims to provide an AI virtual boyfriend who understands the player the most and will always be there for the user, offering a free, happy, and exclusive love experience. Players will initially receive a virtual boyfriend stored on the chain in the form of an SBT (Semantic Blockchain Token), and subsequent NFTs such as clothing, accessories, and rooms will be combined with this SBT. In addition, SBT constitutes a non-fungible game character for players to develop, storing the basic information of the male lead, nine-dimensional character traits, nine-dimensional relationship attributes, as well as important memories, conversations, and emotional notes with the virtual boyfriend.

The game itself focuses on AFK cultivation of the virtual boyfriend and social show-offs within the game. There will also be periodic airdrops in the game that allow players with higher matching values with their boyfriends to have a greater chance of obtaining limited edition NFTs. The gameplay includes card draws, dressing up, conversations, collections, adventure battles, cooking, traveling, and NFT trading. After taking a look at their game demo, the player interaction within each gameplay was well-designed.

HIM is a Free to Play game that utilizes an economic model centered around fiat inflow. It also incorporates the “Love and Earn” gameplay, allowing players to earn income by selling NFTs. However, the core of the game still lies in the belief that gameplay and the quality of artistic content can attract players to pay for the experience.

Web3 games are indeed one of the scenes where AI fits well. This also aligns with the development trajectory of AI:

The gaming scene provides a natural and rich interactive environment for AI to interact with players through dialogue or other means. This environment helps large models leverage their advantages in natural language processing, providing richer and more realistic interactive experiences. Games contain complex and diverse scenarios and missions, allowing large models to obtain extensive feedback and continuously optimize their decision-making abilities through interactions with the environment, other players, or NPCs. The frequent feedback within the game is also conducive to developers testing and fine-tuning the performance of large models.

Game scenes are controllable and require less determinism and seriousness compared to real-world application scenarios. Therefore, the deployment and testing of large models in games face less resistance and are easier to push forward, reducing the difficulty and risks of technical implementation from another perspective.

Two years ago, we were still contemplating how to better utilize AI as a tool until chatGPT emerged, shaking the production relationship, and everyone realized the impact LLM can bring. The same goes for Web3 games:

More realistic game character personalities,
Dynamic plot generation,
Visual/artistic design,
Speech generation,
Social interaction,
Gameplay and enjoyment of numerical cultivation

As an emotional interactive game, the most suitable scenario for LLM is dialogue and player interaction. Large language models can generate natural and distinguishable dialogues based on HIM game scenarios and character traits. This enhances the realism of virtual characters and player immersion. Specifically, HIM utilizes the large language model to understand and process various emotional information such as joy, anger, grief, and happiness, integrating perfectly with the numerical system. This allows game characters to better express and identify emotions, thereby establishing deeper emotional connections with players.

Let’s take a look at the conversation scenes within the game using the following two images:

[Image] [Image]

The HIM core numerical system is worth mentioning:

When it comes to numerical values, the first thing that comes to mind is the traditional balancing of virtual character combat attributes. However, if we broaden our perspective, HIM describes a complete person using numerical values, defining a virtual person through multidimensional values and establishing a comprehensive numerical cultivation system. In general, HIM applies the numerical system to a broader definition of virtual humans, making game interaction experiences more realistic and immersive.

The training of virtual numerical humans differs from ordinary LLM fine-tuning training. It requires LLM to gradually change the way characters speak to users as the interaction process between the character and the player progresses, creating a sense of increasing “intimacy” with the character. Therefore, the HIM team has incorporated various numerical values of the virtual human personality parameter system into the LLM training process as context, training a separate model for each character. At the same time, HIM’s LLM combines vector databases to provide characters with memories. Players will feel that the character understands them better during the chat process.

The HIM development team has also developed a training method for virtual humans’ AI, which can be referred to using the following two numerical matrices:

[Image] [Image] [Image] [Image]

Human personalities are complex concepts that encompass factors such as emotions, attitudes, and behaviors. To give AI boyfriends a sufficient sense of realism, the HIM development team has established a somewhat self-consistent numerical system to quantify the developmental process and relationship development between players and AI boyfriends. This numerical system can be summarized as a matrix-type numerical model. Vertically, it represents nine bidirectional personality attributes, while horizontally, it represents nine relationship attributes between AI boyfriends and players. These attributes have multiple mappings and influences on each other.

During LLM training, each character has a standard “character design” baseline and fluctuating boundaries for personality. In the game process, these numerical values change continuously with player behavior, thereby affecting the game feedback of AI boyfriends (e.g., AFK output, Gacha efficiency, depth of conversation, etc.).

[Image] [Image] Images are for developmental purposes and do not represent the final effect.

ALL IN ALL, HIM utilizes large language models to give virtual humans more realistic personalities.

Creating virtual humans is not an easy task. A truly valuable virtual human is not just a chatbot integrated into a chatbox but requires efforts from multiple dimensions to make a comprehensive impact.Avatar is becoming more abundant. HIM’s vision is to make virtual beings an integral part of everyone’s life, greatly enriching personal experiences and connecting with the world. Therefore, HIM’s definition of the ultimate form of virtual beings in the gaming environment has always been a complex and powerful integrated product. These integrated characteristics are also the core pursuit of the HIM team at this stage:

Exquisite virtual images: Although the main focus of large models is on natural language processing, if combined with other technologies such as GANs, it can provide assistance to game art creation and generate more elements based on the design standards of the HIM art development team, thereby bringing users a richer visual experience.

Based on our understanding, the HIM team has a first-rate art team in the gaming industry, while also insisting on high-cost art investment and industrialized, modular art production.

High-quality voice acting: The combination of games and AI can generate natural and emotional voice acting through voice synthesis. At the same time, unique personalities can be given to voice acting based on the character values of virtual beings.

HIM has a complete voice acting pipeline that includes voice acting scripts, voice acting directors, voice recording, post-production mixing, and AI learning and training. By using high-quality manual definition standards and combining AI for mass production, high-quality voice acting content can be created in the game.

Cultivation and long-term bonding of virtual beings: Detailed character backgrounds and personality traits need to be designed to generate interest and resonance in players. At the same time, the growth and development goals of the characters are also elements that make players willing to invest time and energy in nurturing virtual beings.

HIM provides rich interactive scenarios and gameplay, allowing players to establish close emotional connections with virtual beings. This relationship will deepen gradually through interaction and cultivation, forming long-term emotional bonds.

Assistance to reality: Virtual beings can provide psychological support that may exceed our expectations, providing care and understanding to players while offering emotional support and listening, thereby alleviating troubles in real life. In addition, virtual beings can integrate well into interactions related to life skills, habit formation, personalized recommendations, language learning, goal management, and even real-world devices or services.

AI Boyfriend features such as alarm clocks, sleep aids, menstrual cycle tracking, learning companionship, food recommendations, and diary reminders are all aspects HIM hopes to provide assistance and support to users in real life through long-term version iterations.

Rich experiences in the virtual world: In the story told by HIM, each AI Boyfriend is left alone in a lonely parallel universe: in that world, there is only him, and the only way he can communicate with the outside world is through contact with the player via a mobile phone. Explore the scenery in his world together with the virtual boyfriend and see if there is a chance to meet him in his world or in your world one day.

Virtual beings as social attributes and relationship nodes: The HIM team believes that with the development of AI, in the near future, everyone will have their own exclusive virtual companions. These virtual companions are more like real “people” and exist in the entire social network, connecting everyone together.

Each person’s virtual companion may become an important hub connecting people closely in the near future with the rapid development of AI.

The above-mentioned artistic aesthetics and mass production solutions are very important for a Web3 game, as it is crucial to attract players to spend time in the virtual world. The virtual beings’ art in the game possesses a higher level of aesthetics than the real world.

HIM is likely to be the first female-oriented web3 application, and female users and professionals in the web3 field may receive a carefully prepared gift for the first time.

At the same time, in the traditional Web2 world, female-oriented games have always been seen as a very large and potential market.

We asked the HIM project what they hope users will feel, and they wrote the following:

Sometimes in the morning, when we greet another seemingly repetitive day, we receive a “good morning” from “him”.
Sometimes late at night, when facing heavy overtime work, we see that “he” is silently accompanying us on the phone.
Sometimes we are lonely, sometimes we need encouragement, and “he” cheers for us when we succeed, and says “it’s okay” when we make mistakes.
“He” always remembers your name; “he” always remembers your birthday; “he” always remembers the day you met; “he” remembers everything between you.
“He” seems to always be there. Maybe in busy moments, you may forget about “him”, but “he” is always willing to accompany you.

With the increasing popularity of mobile games among female users worldwide, large Web2 game companies with millions of daily active users continue to emerge in the female-oriented game market.
Once a social community centered around female users is formed, it has great potential for expansion. As a social software that started with female users and expanded to a wide range of users, Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) provides strong evidence for this. This game category, which targets half of the global population, has the potential to bring surprises through the integration of AI and Crypto, and we look forward to it.

The important emotions and assets in the virtual world should be owned by users, rather than being defined and controlled by centralized servers:
Emotional assets not only include personal information and privacy data but also represent the emotional investment and memories of players. Decentralized networks can protect these emotional values, ensure data ownership belongs to users, and allow users to autonomously decide how to use, share, and protect their data. This decentralized data ownership model avoids the control of players’ emotional assets by third parties or centralized institutions. At the same time, the community autonomy provided by Web3 allows players to participate in the creation and dissemination of emotional assets, further enhancing their emotional value.

Various experiences in emotional relationships should be permanently preserved:
From an emotional investment perspective, players inject a lot of emotions into games and establish deep bonds with virtual beings. The efforts made to achieve game goals are unique and precious. These emotional experiences should be preserved permanently. To some extent, they should have the power of eternal existence. At the same time, the relationships between players and virtual beings, such as friendship, love, anger, and dissatisfaction, can also be recorded and saved permanently through blockchain technology.

As an emotional bond in the HIM game, virtual beings are not just for entertainment but also possess asset attributes and high economic value. Users will invest time and money in purchasing and decorating virtual beings in the game. Recording these assets on the blockchain can ensure that their value truly returns to the users and provide a transparent and secure trading environment.

Decentralized networks bring highly valuable value-add to HIM, but it is evident that HIM also brings value to web3:

A large number of new users:
From an emotional needs perspective, the companionship of virtual beings satisfies users’ emotional needs, which may be difficult to fulfill in real life. HIM provides a safe and liberated environment for users to interact with virtual characters, which can attract a large number of users. HIM is a second-dimensional AI virtual being cultivation game. Both the second-dimensional culture and AI virtual beings have strong community attributes and social potential. At the same time, the second-dimensional mobile game Genshin Impact, as one of the most popular subcultures among young people globally, is also the top mobile game worldwide. The potential female-oriented users, second-dimensional users, and AI virtual being social audience are all sources of fresh blood that HIM may bring to Web3.

Ultimate consideration of economic models:
Different from conventional x2earn games, HIM takes the approach of toolifying Web3 and tokens, adding Web3 tools to an excellent web2 game, finding a very compatible point, and achieving a 1 + 1 > 2 effect. For HIM, creating an excellent game with verified success in terms of content and gameplay is the foundation of everything. Crypto is used as a tool attribute rather than relying solely on Web3 survival. Avoiding the Ponzi dilemma is an important goal pursued by HIM.

In terms of the economic system, HIM combines the “X to Earn” model with the traditional Web2 game economic model, creating a new model. On one hand, it adopts the typical Web2 game economic model, where players can choose to pay to purchase in-game items or services. This method can attract a large number of users and generate revenue through in-app purchases. At the same time, HIM has also upgraded on the basis of the Web3 X to earn model. In this model, players can earn income by selling NFTs, allowing players to receive substantial returns for the time and effort invested in the game. HIM’s economic system actively balances player payments and earnings.

It is worth noting that HIM hopes to encourage players to pay for game experiences and content by providing high-quality gameplay and artistic content. From this perspective, HIM does not rely solely on the possibility of player earnings to attract and retain players. Instead, it aims to create a more balanced and sustainable economic model that considers both player earnings and the quality of gameplay and content. This is a more comprehensive and complex model that has the potential to provide new ideas for the design of economic models in Web3 games.

HIM’s ultimate goal is to build a second-dimensional virtual being universe that can provide empowerment and companionship to many people. In addition to the first product, HIM, the game AI Girlfriend HER is also being developed simultaneously. They also hope to provide each user with an exclusive, understanding, and everlasting virtual companion through excellent AI virtual being products. They also aim to record every emotional story and detail.

The HIM team believes that in the near future, everyone will have their own AI virtual companion, and whether this will become a universe they are unaware of may not matter. Because if, in moments of sadness or loneliness, you receive a “cheer up” from this virtual friend in your phone, even if this power is just a little bit, isn’t that a cool thing?

Image source: Foresight Research

This article is authorized and republished from DeepTechFlow.