Written by: Raf
Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News
Robots are often portrayed as villains, exploiting loopholes in systems built for humans to cheat. But is that the whole story?
In fact, bots are the unsung heroes of the game, working constantly in the background to make the system more dynamic and engaging. They may not be heroes in the traditional sense, more like targets or cannon fodder, but their contributions are too significant to be ignored. Most importantly, they become even more interesting when combined with blockchain's permissionless deployment and data availability.
At their core, bots are just process automations. They handle tasks that humans could theoretically do themselves, but at a much larger scale and with far greater efficiency. Most bots are far from autonomous agents, they are scripts that react to specific inputs, adapt to state changes or data feeds. They are tools: they are only as good as who uses it.
Take Googlebot, for example. This ubiquitous web crawler is a silent worker, indexing the internet and keeping our search results relevant. Similarly, spam filters that scan emails or arbitrage algorithms that keep financial markets efficient rarely receive criticism.
Bots are much more present in games than most people realize. For example, they can provide services in games. Non-player characters (NPCs) in single-player games are essentially bots. Whether they are quest givers, enemies, or allies, they enrich the game world and provide content for players to interact with. Think about games like The Legend of Zelda or Dark Souls, and how empty these immersive worlds would seem without bots.
They can also pretend to be humans and fill in empty spots in the lobby during matchmaking, ensuring that games can start quickly. In addition to this, they can also be used as companions for less skilled players. For example, in Fortnite, a large proportion of the players in any given match are bots, which are placed there to balance the difficulty and ensure that you can have fun defeating your opponents.
However, when bots transition from being guides to being direct competitors to human players, that’s when the ban is triggered. The problem isn’t with the bots themselves, but with the environment in which they operate. First, they can’t fully exploit the unique factors that distinguish them from humans, namely speed and endurance. They can react to changes in game state in milliseconds and have high energy and no need for sleep. Second, they are competing with humans for some form of scarce reward. No one complains about the unresponsive sparring bots in Fortnite, nor the super-efficient Googlebot that’s just doing a very boring task for our benefit. When these two characteristics coexist, bots steal our “fun”.
Blockchain Robot
In the blockchain environment, MEV bots (Maximum Extractable Value bots) have emerged. These bots operate in the competitive DeFi system, using their ability to read memory pools and execute transactions faster than humans to make profits.
But here’s the thing: MEV bots aren’t breaking the rules. They exist because of the rules: scarcity of block space, visibility of transactions in the memory pool, and prioritization of transactions through gas fees. They’re just playing by the rules. People may feel cheated when bots suddenly appear to take over opportunities that humans want, but bots are just using the existing system more efficiently. This state of affairs is no different than factory workers feeling replaced by robots on the assembly line. Robots are better suited to the task, they’re faster and more consistent.
This tension between humans and bots in games becomes clear if we look at the core mechanics. Games are built around an Objective, Challenge, Reward loop, known in game design terms as an OCR loop. Players need to complete a task, overcome a challenge, and receive a meaningful reward. Often, players focus more on the reward itself: experience points, gold, loot, rather than the challenge. But the real fun comes from overcoming a challenge, even if it doesn't feel that way at the time.
Depending on how challenges and player abilities are structured, bots can easily bypass challenges and go straight to the rewards. This can create conflict with human players who are working hard to complete the game's challenges. Take, for example, coin-collecting bots in MMOs (massively multiplayer online games), where these bots perform repetitive tasks to collect in-game coins that can be sold to other players. While this doesn't directly harm other players, it can disrupt the game's economy and bypass the intended gameplay loop, which is a problem for game developers.
Robots as Game Content
However, the real missed opportunity here is that bots, especially in blockchain games, can become content in their own right. By thinking carefully about how we design games, we can turn bots from exploiters into targets: players can compete with bots for resources, compete with them, and even collaborate with them in new and creative ways. The problem is not that bots are efficient, but that the systems they operate in have not yet adapted to integrate them as part of the fun.
Let's assume an MMO-like game where resources are gathered in certain places and transformed into items that can be used to attack other entities (players). This is a very common system and we have seen it appear in different forms (hero fantasy, pirates, spaceships, etc.) with varying levels of complexity. My point is that if this system has some basic rules to constrain and limit bots, they can become part of the game. At the end of the day, they are limited by the same rules as human players, so the challenge is to make rules that leave room only for interesting automation. In this sense, here are some basic principles that I think should be followed.
Vulnerability and Ownership: Once the health of a wallet (or entity) drops to zero, the contents of the wallet are lost. This means that any bot can be targeted and potentially robbed. Carrying rewards can make them a worthwhile challenge.
Geographical restrictions: The wallet (or entity) will be tied to one location and can only interact with elements in adjacent locations. This imposes a huge limitation, as the bot must move around to interact with different game elements.
Inventory limitations: Wallets (or entities) have limits on the assets they can carry. This also limits the impact a bot can have, and when combined with geographic restrictions forces the bot to make choices.
Energy consumption: The wallet (or entity) must expend energy to perform an action. This is another condition that creates choice, most importantly potentially changing the bot's priorities. When the fuel runs out, it becomes a higher priority than the bot's original goal, forcing it to change its behavior.
This isn’t a perfect recipe for a game that solves all bot problems and turns it into a new kind of UGC. It’s some ideas around rules that limit the overwhelming power of bots and make it an alternative way to play. Rather than designing rules that are designed to weaken or eliminate bots, we should focus on creating systems that encourage human players to interact with bots — whether it’s fighting, trading, or cooperating.
For the eternal question of "Why develop games on the blockchain?", bots can become one of the defining features of a game, becoming a natural part of the game world, adding complexity, challenge, and appeal. They may not be heroes in the traditional sense, but they can still play an important role in making the game more dynamic and more appealing to human players.
Ultimately, bots are what we create. They can be invisible competitors that exploit vulnerabilities and frustrate human players, or they can be integrated into gaming systems to provide content and create new interactions. Especially in blockchain gaming, this shift could transform bots from a nuisance to a powerful tool for innovation and entertainment.