Inside the new architecture of play

What happens to games when the characters inside them start thinking for themselves, making decisions you didn’t predict, remembering your past interactions, or even telling you “no”?

This was the question hovering over a fireside chat at the YGG Play Summit in the Philippines, where Joe Josue of Ahensya sat down with LongHash Ventures’ Shi Khai Wei to unpack the fast-moving world of artificial intelligence (AI) agents in games. The conversation was part speculation, part cautionary tale, and part wide-eyed excitement about where play might be headed next.

Right from the start, Shi Khai acknowledged the obvious: we’re in an AI hype cycle, and everyone is scrambling to stake a claim. But hype aside, he argued, something more profound is emerging.

“AI agents are not just NPCs that respond better. They’re entities that can act, plan, and sometimes surprise.. even disobey you.”

That single idea reframed the entire discussion.

Josue pressed him on what kinds of agents actually matter, and the conversation flowed through a spectrum of experiments happening today. On the utility end, there are productivity-focused agents, systems that automate tasks or maintain persistent game worlds, much like the autonomous logic behind EVE Frontier. These are helpful, but not exactly transformative.

The magic, as Shi Khai explained, begins when agents stop simply assisting and start interpreting. Games like Parallel Colony let players whisper instructions to AI characters, knowing full well those agents might follow their own instincts instead. “When agents start interpreting your instructions instead of obeying them,” he said, “that’s when gameplay becomes magic.”

From there, the discussion slipped into AI-driven worlds populated entirely by generative characters and objects, ecosystems that feel alive because they’re not restricted to scripts. At the same time, more grounded projects are using AI companions as onboarding guides or personalized helpers. These “sherpa agents” blend utility with warmth, remembering the player’s behavior and adjusting in real time.

But this raised the emotional question: how close is too close? Some AI companions today already feel intimate, intelligently so. Shi Khai acknowledged the stickiness this can create, but also the lurking risks. “We have to be careful,” he warned. “AI companions can be powerful, but intimacy can also be dangerous.”

When Josue brought up how founders should handle the weight of building in both AI and crypto, two experimental domains colliding at once, Shi Khai emphasized not chasing trends for the sake of it. “Founders don’t follow hype because investors say so,” he said. “They’re drawn to frontiers.”

And constraints, surprisingly, can be the spark. Since running a large model per player is still expensive, studios must craft clever architectures rather than leaning on brute force. “Constraints force creativity,” he added. “You can’t brute-force your way to magic.”

The examples poured out naturally: Parallel Colony’s emergent gameplay, Virtuals Protocol’s agentic experimentation, Roblox creators blending genres in ways big studios wouldn’t dare, and new worlds driven by AI companions from other teams. Even infrastructure players like Aethir are shaping how these experiences can scale. The common thread? None of it fits yesterday’s categories.

This led to one of the most intriguing ideas of the session: what happens when agents develop a will of their own, not just personality, but the right to push back? Shi Khai’s eyes lit up as he described what he wanted to see next. “I want agents that say no,” he said. “I want them to reject you, argue with you, push back. That’s when you get real character.”

A digital companion that always agrees is just software. One who disagrees becomes a character.

As the session wrapped, Shi Khai left the audience with a challenge. “When you see a demo today, ask: where are the AI agents? If they don’t have an answer, they’re not experimenting hard enough.”

By the end of the conversation, it was clear that AI agents aren’t a feature; they’re a shift in the architecture of play. They’re the beginnings of emergent worlds, personalized narratives, unpredictable moments, and characters that can surprise or even confront you. And as Shi Khai put it with a hint of anticipation: “We’re just starting to understand what happens when we give AI a will. That’s the frontier.”

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