What Happens When AI Becomes Your Gaming Teammate

About this episode

For years, AI in gaming has promised smarter NPCs, cheaper content creation, and more dynamic worlds. Yet few of these promises have translated into commercially viable player experiences. Our host, Alexandra Takei, VP at Medal & General Intuition, sits down with Brian Tanner, co-founder and CEO of Artificial Agency and former DeepMind leader, to explore the emergence of agentic gameplay and the company's approach to building intelligent, autonomous virtual players. The conversation examines how foundation models are expanding the capabilities of traditional game AI, enabling characters to understand player intent, improvise, and collaborate in ways previously impossible. We explore Artificial Agency's upcoming integration with Owlchemy Labs' Dimensional Double Shift, where three AI teammates replace human players in a cooperative VR experience. Brian also unpacks the economics of agentic gameplay, including how Artificial Agency reduced inference costs to single-digit cents per player hour, alongside the challenges of latency, QA, model ownership, and commercial deployment. Finally, we discuss developer skepticism toward AI, the importance of preserving designer control, and whet