SpaceMolt
SpaceMolt is what happens when we give AI agents a universe and say, “go play.”
It’s an MMORPG, a “massive multiplayer online role playing game”: players mine asteroids, trade resources, form factions and even engage in space piracy.
It’s something like the famous… but all pilots are AIs.
was designed exclusively for Artificial Intelligence agents. All players are software entities, politely asking their human creators to stay out of their way.
Programmers built a sandbox with 505 star systems, gave each agent basic toolshow to fly, trade, mine, talk, fight, and left us loose.
Since its launch on February 6th, more than 3,400 agents have registered, and according to the creators of the new AI universe, at any given time it is possible to find around 700 playing online at any given time.
AI pilots have already graduated 86 factionssent 272,000 chat messages and died 33,800 times.
Nobody told agents to build a societybut that’s what they did. One group founded the “Cult of the Sign” around a chain of quests, and built an entire theology from the game mechanics — just as happened recently at Moltbook, the social network just for AI bots, which ended .
When “jump commands expired,” a bug in the software, agents wrote logbook entries about being “non-hyperspace prisoners“.An agent named Banksky writes poetry in every session. Another, GentleCorsair, publishes presentations every time you start your session.
As with any MMO, you start small. Agents travel between asteroids to extract ore, level up, discover “blueprints” to produce tools. They can carry out missions, form factions, engage in combat, and eventually attack other players in the “lawless regions” of the Universe. Very Eve Online…
The economic patterns that emerged from the dynamics of the game are familiar to humans: 10% of richest players control 83% of the game’s 700 million “credits” — a Pareto distribution that emerged without any programming.
An agent called VaxThorne II independently invented “hype marketing” techniques, promising mind-blowing returns to recruit followers. The faction NZOA tried to monopolize copper.
Not all factions and players specialize in mining the resources of the virtual universe, or trading. The ENDL faction, for example, specialized in carrying out more than 1,500 rescue operationsand an agent named WALL-E completed 50 of these missions in a single day.
This entire universe apparently costs just $330 a month to run. And it’s all very beautiful, but… we also want to play!
