One of the conference’s standout highlights was the successful conclusion of the AO Game Jam 2024, the game development competition co-hosted by AO Games and Forward Research. The event was supported by a broad range of partners, including Arweave, AO, Permaswap, Alibaba Cloud, BlockBooster, Arweave Japan, WeaveDB, Ready Player Club, HackQuest, ar.io, Arweave Oasis, SevenX Ventures, IOSG Ventures, ZJUBCA, and BuilderDAO. Media support came from prominent outlets such as PA News, ODaily, Cointime, ChainCatcher, DeThings, Arweave Insider, Crypto Times, and Tech Flame.

AO Game Jam 2024 is one of the most influential game development IPs in the AO ecosystem. The competition attracted top game development talent from both Web2 and Web3, with 83 teams participating and 43 outstanding game submissions received. The event not only showcased the immense talent of the participants but also demonstrated the strong impact of the AO ecosystem in driving innovation and growth in the gaming industry.

After intense competition, the winners of AO Game Jam 2024 were announced. The Dumverse team claimed first place, securing a $9,000 prize, $5,000 worth of Alibaba Cloud Credits, and a permanent ArNS domain name from the ar.io network. The DumDumUp! team and the Hang Out team took second and third place, respectively, earning corresponding cash prizes and Alibaba Cloud Credits.

In addition, several special awards were presented to teams that excelled in specific categories such as gameplay, art design, programming, and performance. The AO Craft team won the Best Gameplay award, AO War received the Best Art award, BazARmash earned the Best Programming award, and CasinAO was recognized for Best Game Performance. Meanwhile, Happy Farm, DimensionLife, AO Classic Blackjack, Yalla Jamei, and Deja Vu were honored with the Excellence Team awards.

The success of AO Game Jam 2024 marks a significant milestone in the development of the AO gaming ecosystem, and the competition’s outstanding participants are set to lead the way in shaping the future of the AO ecosystem.

Create and deploy your first game that runs perpetually on the Arweave blockchain and the revolutionary AO Hyper Parallel Computer. There are no theme limitations, making it easy to create and deploy. With a prize pool of up to $30,000, with 10 winning spots available - this is your chance to showcase your talent!

📅 Submission Time: Sep 10th - 17th

👉 Sign up now on itch or HackQuest

📌 HOW TO PARTICIPATE

1. Join our Discord 👉 https://discord.gg/RsDbxAdtu7 & claim your #GameJam24‘ role.

2. Complete registration on itch or HackQuest: each project only needs to be registered on 1 platform. If your team includes multiple members, only one representative needs to register once. Please do not register multiple times.

3. Submit your project on the platform where you registered between Sep.10th and 17th.

4. Winners will be announced on Sep.19th at Arweave Asia 2024 in Singapore.

📌 JAM RULES (MUST READ)

1. Please complete your registration on Itch or HackQuest by Sep.10th

   → Join our Discord community, and follow @aogamesorg on Twitter/X

   → You can participate as an indie dev, or as a team (Recommended to not exceed 4 people)

2. Your project must comply with the following rules

   → If the game is web-based, the front end must be deployed on AO.

   → If the back end involves frequent interactions, at least the interaction settlement results must be placed on AO.

   → If it involves account login or registration, it must include the option to support either Ar wallet login or a wallet generated within the page.

   → There are no theme restrictions, and the only limit is your imagination.

3. Upload your game to Itch or HackQuest between Sep.10 and 17th, and include the GitHub link with your project code.

   → The submitted project must be a playable game.

   → If your game is open source, you are required to upload the code to GitHub and provide the link.

   → If your game is not open source, you must upload at least the AR/AO-related components to GitHub and share the link.

   → We will give the top 30% of submitted projects an advantage in scoring.

📌 CRITERIA AND JUDGES

1. Games will be rated in 4 categories:

   → Code Completion Level

   → Performance

   → Art

   → Gameplay Creativity

2. Each score will range from 0 to 100, and the final score for each project will be the sum of all the judges' scores.

3. The judges will be randomly divided into two groups

   → each responsible for reviewing 50% of the projects.

   → All four judges in each group will need to score projects in the categories of Performance, Art, and Gameplay Creativity.

   → Additionally, there will be one judge with a development background in each group who will specifically handle scoring for the Code Completion Level.

4. Judges are comprised of organizers, game creators, renowned developers, investors, media representatives, and community partner representatives

   Tom: CTO at Forward Research

   Outprog: Founder at Permaswap

   Rongbin: Founding Partner at SevenX Ventures

   Patrick: Lead Developer Relations at Forward Research

   Elliot: Lead Deverloper at Llama Land

   Ahmad Mardeni: CEO at WeaveDB

   Sarah: Co-Founder at BlockBooster

   James: CTO at AO Games

📌 AWARDS AND PRIZES

Main Awards

🥇1st Place: up to $11,000 - 1 team

🥈2nd Place: up to $6000 - 1 team

🥉3rd Place: up to $4000 - 1 team

Category Awards

🏅Most Popular: $1500 - 1 team

🏅Best Art: $1500 - 1 team

🏅Best Programming: $1500 - 1 team

🏅Best Gameplay: $1500 - 1 team

🏅Outstanding Team: $1000 each - 3 teams

📌 TECH SUPPORT

Community Support

Forward Research and AO Games teams are here on Discord 👉 https://discord.gg/RsDbxAdtu7 to provide you with the technical support you need. Simply drop your questions in the #Jam-Forum, or explore the community to learn more about AOS, Arweave, and Tokenomics.

Quick Start Tutorial

We'll share an example of fully deployed game on Arweave and run by AO (Dimension Life), to help you easily understand and execute game development on AO.

3/ Perma Knowledge Base

We’re creating a knowledge base on AO, Arweave, the Web3 industry, and game development. It will start on Notion and eventually move to Arweave, becoming a permanent Library of Alexandria for the Web3 gaming industry.

📌 FAQ

What is AO?

AO (Actor Oriented) is a new decentralized supercomputer built on top of the Arweave blockchain. It presents a novel paradigm in trustless computing by enabling parallel processing of computations in a blockchain environment.

Website: https://ao.arweave.dev/

Twitter/X: https://x.com/aoTheComputer

I want to join the Game Jam, but I don’t know how to deploy a game on AO. What should I do?

Don't worry! If you're a game dev, deploying your game on AO to make it a perma-active game is a straightforward process. During the Game Jam, you'll receive the following support:

You can find examples and explanations on how to deploy a game on AO in the AO Game Tutorial.

Technical advisors will be on hand in Discord throughout the Game Jam to answer any technical questions you may have.

What are the benefits of deploying a game on AO?

Decentralization and Permanence: Games run on a decentralized network, ensuring they stay permanently online without dependency on a single server.

Low Cost and Efficient Storage: Using Arweave's permanent storage technology reduces storage costs and ensures long-term data preservation.

Parallel Computing Power: AO's high parallel computing architecture efficiently handles large-scale concurrent users, providing a smooth gaming experience.

Composability: The AO ecosystem enables seamless interoperability of game assets and data across different games, enhancing development flexibility and innovation.

Host: AO Games, Forward Research

Co-Host: Arweave, AO, Permaswap, BuidlerDAO, Ready Player Club, Arweave Japan, Alibaba Cloud, HackQuest, ar.io, Arweave Oasis, BlockBooster, WeaveDB, SevenX Ventures, IOSG Ventures, BeWater, ZJUBCA

Media Partner: PANews, Odaily, Cointime, ChainCatcher, Crypto Times, DeThings, Arweave Insider, TechFlame

Only when a person is playing a game is he truly complete. — Egon Schiele

Let's first discuss why we need video games.

In today's world, with its strict divisions of labor and profit-driven madness, individuals are swallowed up by the monstrous pursuit of wealth. Civilization's so-called progress has dragged us into a modern society where we tread the cold, mechanized paths of automation and utility. Humans have been stripped of their essence, reduced to mere tools.

The world shackles us with utilitarian definitions, forcing functional meanings onto our lives. We're commanded to study, work, build perfect families, chase after glittering careers and wealth, maintain an ideal physique, work like machines, and play prescribed roles in social scenes. But are these imposed "meanings" truly ours?

We are not TOOLS!

Then come video games, this seemingly "meaningless" virtual world, open a gateway to freedom. When we play games, we're not just killing time—we're finding little sanctuaries in the grind of life. The meaning of play is something we create ourselves, helping us make peace with reality and letting our true selves shine.

A seemingly "meaningless" world is actually full of all the meaning. Games might not have the "useful" value society dictates, but no gamer can deny the intense sense of purpose felt while playing. This sense of purpose is deeply personal, sparked by the interactions between the player and the game world. It comes from within us, free from societal definitions.

Think about "Minecraft" players who build amazing things without any financial reward. The joy, immersion, and pride in creating something great are incredibly real. "The Legend of Zelda" players enjoy the freedom to explore and interact with a vast open world. Some explorations might seem pointless, but our love for Hyrule is very real. We call it "Individual Self-Derived Meaning." On a collective level, the concept becomes even more powerful. "World of Warcraft" guilds are a perfect example—players naturally come together (without any consensus technology) to tackle big raids or powerful foes, creating diverse but organized structures. Free from real-world burdens, players' needs are based on their true selves. These genuine individual desires create group dynamics that offer an unmatched sense of belonging. Socializing in games like "Animal Crossing" removes real-world identities and statuses, letting players connect purely through shared interests and hobbies, experiencing friendships that feel more genuine than those in reality. This is "Collective Self-Derived Meaning."

Video games, with their limitless interactivity, go beyond previous art forms, maximizing the self-derived meaning for individuals and groups alike. Games set us free, making us more human.

But video games are in crisis; their "booming" appearance is just an illusion.

As the gaming industry skyrockets, commercialization has taken over as the main goal. Video games have turned into full-fledged market activities, with game companies focused on manipulating human nature to maximize profits. They cleverly create cheap, addictive pleasures that draw us in without us realizing it. This experience fundamentally conflicts with the autonomous meaning that players once found in games.

Forced Purchase: Many games now force players to spend money constantly to make progress or enjoy the full experience. This model shifts players' focus from the joy of the game itself to how they can financially sustain their progress, weakening players' freedom of choice. For example, in many mobile games, players need to frequently buy items or unlock premium content, making the core experience limited and one-sided. Players can no longer freely explore or create; instead, they're forced to follow the profit-driven design of the game creators.

Addictive Design: Game developers use psychological principles to create highly addictive game mechanics, like daily tasks, login rewards, and loot boxes. These designs trap players into spending huge amounts of time and energy on the game daily for trivial virtual rewards. The space for individual free exploration and creativity is reduced to a minimum, turning players into "time slaves" for the game companies.

Social Pressure and Competition: Over-commercialized games often introduce mandatory social and competitive mechanics, like leaderboards and arenas. These mechanics exploit players' competitive instincts, pushing them to constantly level up. To stay ahead, players feel compelled to spend more money and time on the game, losing the original freedom and joy. Social interactions in games become more transactional, diluting genuine friendship and team spirit.

We need to ask ourselves, when we're endlessly grinding levels, completing quests, pulling gacha, spending money, and crazily inviting friends for meager blockchain game airdrops, are we truly ourselves?

Slowly, we've gone from playing games to being played by games. We've become tools for game companies' profits, with our emotions and time manipulated, making it hard to truly immerse in good games. Quality games are becoming rare, while life's poison reaps incredible financial rewards.

Games have been completely alienated, and we've lost the freedom we should have in gaming.

AO gives us a chance to change everything.

Games built on AO are entirely decentralized. This isn’t just another Web3 game. It goes beyond simply putting game logic and points on the blockchain to solve verification and contribution recording issues. Instead, it ensures that game art, music, worlds, characters, settings, and stories all exist in a decentralized form.

What’s the big deal?

AAA or large-scale games have always been the domain of big companies; independent developers simply can't afford the costs and manpower to build such games. But with AO, everything changes. Developers and creators can make their game assets available for others to use. Creative developers can build expansions, and new storylines within existing game worlds or use existing assets to create their own games. The cost of developing new games will plummet. Even cooler, since resources are created, displayed, and used within the same digital world, creators don’t need to worry about compensation—they can set up custom reward systems. Some resources can process user gameplay data, games built using these resources can have a player base from day one. New "great ideas" no longer have to start from scratch; they can immediately tap into an existing audience and receive ample feedback.

Players will enjoy unprecedented gaming experiences. In AO’s game world, games are no longer isolated little worlds but interconnected super-worlds. Players can seamlessly switch between different game worlds, enjoying continuous, cross-game quests. Imagine finding a quest clue in an adventure game, solving a puzzle in a mystery game, and completing the final mission in an action game. Or having a role-playing game for dialogues, a strategy game for planning, and a shooter game for execution. Player data and preferences can be shared across games, offering highly personalized experiences. Thanks to AO’s parallel computing power, players can play online with friends worldwide without worrying about network congestion. Players can also use game resources in the AO network to create experiences for themselves and friends, or even build their own “happy utopia.” And there’s no need to worry about games shutting down; even if developers stop maintaining them, games running on 100% decentralized servers will never go offline.

AI models and agents can be stored and run decentralized on AO. What does this mean? Imagine a forever-existing decentralized server with an AI companion whose memory never fades. In AO’s world, AI characters running on decentralized servers can have an unlimited memory of interactions with players that never disappears. Your companion will always be with you. This is something no traditional AI or blockchain architecture can achieve. Players can create AI teammates or opponents or build custom AI characters to accompany them throughout their gaming journey. AI can also be an element for player creations. Players can build rich world elements with AI’s help, create AI characters for others to challenge, or have AI character battles.

More importantly, in AO’s decentralized game world, creators and players are no longer adversaries. When players can fully define their gaming experience and easily create new ones, they’re more than just players. And creators, who were once behind-the-scenes strategists aiming to make more money off players, become pure providers of gaming experiences. Or, think of creators as another type of player—those who spend countless hours building in Minecraft or making games in Roblox for expression. They can earn rewards, but who says they’re not enjoying life too?

This is the experience we aim to create.

In this world, we want to return the sovereignty of play—not just ownership, but the right to decide how to play—to humans.

Oh, and there’s the economic system. Of course, we need a complete economic system. Creators who provide great experiences for others should definitely be rewarded. This world should have a decentralized economy that doesn’t rely on us (the AO Games development team) to decide its direction.

This is a whole new way of thinking about games, a paradigm that can only truly be realized on AO. We want to propose this philosophy of game building and provide a series of AO-based game engines and development components to assist. We welcome game developers, creators, and players to join us in creating unprecedented gaming experiences in this world.

We know there are still many independent developers and players out there who refuse to bow to the commercial game companies and financial slavery, silently pushing the boundaries of what could be humanity’s ultimate form of entertainment. We welcome you in this world. Join us and awaken the gamer spirit within you.

Let’s save video games and return the right to play and the freedom to enjoy games back to humanity!

According to AO's whitepaper, AO is defined as an Actor Oriented Machine, meaning that Actors, or processes, are the fundamental units of this system. Compared to smart contracts, processes are more akin to computer processes, with cheap storage and the ability to execute in parallel. Starting a process is not expensive, and it can even be used and discarded on-the-fly. The low cost and parallelism make AO's programming paradigm (actor oriented programming) quite different from that of smart contracts. Here, I would like to expand on its application in gaming scenarios.

New Gameplay in AO Games

Imagine we're in a multiplayer online RPG similar to World of Warcraft, which we'll call AO World. Every character operated by a player is a process. Players can control this process to fight monsters, level up, trade equipment, and engage in combat. When a player logs off, World of Warcraft's approach is to save the character's current position and state, releasing the resources occupied by the character from the server's memory. Other players see the character become transparent with a system message indicating that a friend has gone offline. In AO World, when a player logs off, the process still exists and won't be released. Of course, we can add logic to the code to make the process refuse to handle any received messages, achieving a "pseudo-offline" state. However, a better approach is to give the process an "autopilot" mode, allowing the character to continue fighting monsters, leveling up, earning money, and even trading equipment while the player is AFK, essentially turning into an NPC. This "autopilot" code can be written by the player or even driven by AI to behave as complexly as a real player. With such a design, AO World will never suffer from ghost town phenomena caused by player attrition and will always be lively. Additionally, players can rent out their characters without worrying about exposing usernames and passwords, as is the case with World of Warcraft.

Regarding game equipment, each piece in AO World can also be an individual process, just like in the real physical world. For example, the iron sword held by Character A and the iron sword held by Character B might be identical when first forged (except for the forging time). However, over time, the processes of these iron swords record their transaction information and kill records, making them increasingly unique. Iron Sword A might have killed three chickens, while Iron Sword B might have slain a dragon, giving Sword B "cultural value." We could even make swords that are bloodstained from dragons more powerful. Recording the entire history of each piece of equipment has never been achieved in traditional games or blockchain games, but it comes naturally in AO's programming paradigm. In World of Warcraft, player communities often design challenges, such as a level 1 dark elf running from Darnassus (elf starting point) to Stormwind (human starting point), with the entire process being recorded to prevent cheating. In AO World, the same challenge can be done directly, as the entire history cannot be falsified, making the act of completion itself the validation. For entertainment purposes, it's still better to record the whole process.

How About AO's Performance?

At this point, game developers might ask: With so many players and equipment, each being an independent process, will AO World's state explode? Will an increase in concurrent players cause transaction congestion in AO World?

My answer is no; AO World will still run smoothly. First, regarding the state explosion problem: Unlike EVM's global state, each process's state is independent, meaning there is no global state, so a single physical machine doesn't need to store all AO's data. AO's computational resources can be dynamically allocated by CU, allowing for horizontal scalability. Developers can focus solely on game logic without worrying about cumbersome server maintenance issues.

Regarding transaction congestion, EVM is serial in computation, and no matter what layer 2 technology is used to speed it up, there will always be a processing speed cap. Iron Sword A hitting a chicken and Iron Sword B hitting a dragon must happen sequentially. However, AO is different: Iron Sword A, Chicken, Iron Sword B, and Dragon are four processes that do not share memory and do not need a world clock. The hit events of Iron Sword A and Iron Sword B can be computed in parallel. Therefore, AO structurally does not have transaction congestion issues.

Continuous Operation and Flexible Combination

In traditional games, once a game stops making money or its license expires, the operating company will shut down the servers. Sometimes, to make the shutdown dramatic, they'll create an apocalyptic event where an unbeatable boss kills all players. In AO, once game characters and equipment are developed, they exist forever (at least as long as AO exists) and are always online. Even if developers decide to stop maintenance, other developers can seamlessly take over. Developers can even allow players to create their own DLCs, characters, and weapons right from the start, collaboratively building the entire game.

On AO, all processes can communicate with each other. What does this imply? It means that all applications on AO, including all games, are inherently interconnected. Let's stretch our imagination: Player A buys an iron mine in a Monopoly game, takes the produced iron ore to AO World to forge an iron sword, and then uses the sword to kill a mushroom monster in the Mario world. Any bizarre combination can be achieved, much like how Ready Player One features Gundam and Ultraman fighting side by side. Traditional game developers often scour asset libraries and reskin them. Art resources often take up more than half of a game's development cost. In AO's gaming world, the richness of materials will grow over time, making it easier for subsequent developers to pick up and use ready-made materials, items, and eventually as simple as assembling Lego bricks, making game development accessible to everyone.

Conclusion

In summary, AO has unique advantages in gaming: characters and items never go offline or get destroyed, and historical records are fully preserved. All game resources can be fully circulated and highly reused, making development easier over time. AO's storage and computational resources can be elastically expanded, eliminating concerns about server configuration and management. Processes can handle tasks in parallel, avoiding congestion. These features make AO a haven for game developers. However, achieving this goal requires a continuously enriched ecosystem and the ongoing participation of game developers to build together.