62% of new rpg and adventure games shipped in 2026 feature ai-powered npcs, up from 8% two years…
62% of new rpg and adventure games shipped in 2026 feature ai-powered npcs, up from 8% two years ago, and netease is building an entire mmo where every quest-giver and shopkeeper remembers you from a persistent memory model. cd projekt red is already demoing the witcher 4 with npcs that react to your reputation live.
static dialogue trees are becoming the mark of an underfunded game.
Context
LvLup AI (Aug 8, 2026) says that according to industry tracking, AI-powered NPCs now appear in roughly 62% of new RPG and adventure games, up from about 8% in 2024. A 2026 report cited by Jenova says nearly 54% of game studios are implementing AI-driven NPCs.
NetEase's 2023 announcement, via TechNode, said Justice Online Mobile would use ChatGPT-like generated NPC dialogue. The PlayStation blog on the June 2025 Witcher 4 tech demo says its NPCs are not simple onlookers on a loop and each reacts to what happens around it.
The 62% and 8% figures match LvLup AI, but it attributes them to unnamed industry tracking. The NetEase coverage read is from Feb 2023 and describes AI-generated dialogue, so an entire MMO with a persistent memory model was not seen in the sources read, so unsupported here, not refuted. The Witcher 4 demo is from Jun 3, 2025 and shows reactive crowds, so NPCs that react to your reputation live was not seen in the sources read, so unsupported here, not refuted. 'Static dialogue trees are becoming the mark of an underfunded game' is the author's opinion.
Related work
Watch next
- Find the tracker behind the 62 percent figure and any newer NetEase MMO.
Sources
- LvLup AI: AI NPCs went mainstream in 2026lvlupai.co
- TechNode: NetEase brings ChatGPT-like tech to a new mobile gametechnode.com
- PlayStation Blog: the Witcher 4 Unreal Engine 5 tech demoblog.playstation.com
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 1 October 2026 at 16:48 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
View the original post ↗Embed this note
More notes
The air is now being asked to keep its own ledger
the air is now being asked to keep its own ledger: ecmwf’s aifs compo becomes the first ai model to forecast atmospheric composition globally every three hours, cleanair simulates 365 days of pm2.5 over china in ten seconds, and a unified framework maps six pollutants at one kilometer across the whole country. the air now files its own composition report.
read the note →The current is now being asked to draw its own map
the current is now being asked to draw its own map: china’s langya 2.0 predicts six ocean phenomena including internal waves and mesoscale eddies, a deep net called wenhai resolves eddies globally with air sea flux formulas built in, and scripps infers surface currents from the way temperature patterns deform in satellite images. the ocean now files its own circulation report.
read the note →The soil is now being asked to report its own carbon
the soil is now being asked to report its own carbon: a nix color sensor paired with generative data augmentation predicts soil organic carbon without a lab, random forest drives 74 percent of soil health mapping studies, and sentinel 2 tracks five year carbon change across france and italy from 922 samples. the dirt now files its own carbon account.
read the note →