Carly Quellman, aka Carly Que, is a multimedia strategist and storyteller at the intersection of technology and the humanities, investigating how perspective can enhance, rather than overstimulate, the world. She can be found online and near the closest south-facing window in Los Angeles.
Sometimes jumping into another world feels nice -- but what about building your own?
After spending time creating a character with artificial intelligence to practice my flirting skills, I was curious about what it would entail to build an entire world filled with characters using AI. Most importantly, I was curious to find out if it was easy enough for non-experts or committed tabletop gamers.
I was sifting through various sites and found GameForge AI, which was noted for its ability for real world building beyond just characters and dialogue.
GameForge AI was founded by Ben Pollack, in 2023, who combined his background in product management and entrepreneurship to create the company.
The platform's main feature is, of course, AI to streamline the game development process and reduce time and effort.
I'm fascinated by AI's ability to build anything in the game space, so I dug deeper to learn more about GameForge AI's functionality.
While I didn't create an entire game (you can do this in GameForge, but it would have been a much longer process), I found this step-by-step system to be the easiest way to navigate through the site:
For visual learners, I found a video of someone who challenged the platform to create a city and "forge in five minutes." In response to his success, the gamer shared: "There's plenty I can do, images I can create [on GameForgeAI]. I can be generating all kinds of things at the same time. This is how I like to start a new location to get inspired with new things."
Watching these videos is a great option for impatient folks like myself who want to see everything GameForge can do, but who found the AI generation to be sluggish in both standard and incognito tabs.
Since GameForge AI also primarily exists on Discord, the setup and capabilities mirrored AI-powered creative writing apps.
GameForge AI is built for... yup, gamers. This includes game designers and creatives who are curious about creating their own games, tabletop game enthusiasts, students and really anyone who can easily add another server to their Discord account.
While the free version of GameForge AI is limited within its Game Designer mode, the $12/month upgrade provides unlimited entity generation and full map integration, as well as fully customizable AI-generated Non-Player Characters. This allows for an enhanced performance and visual optimization (read: faster AI generation) -- plus, a customer service team to help resolve issues.
Now, GameForge AI is relatively new and should be compared to similar platforms like AI Dungeon, NovelAI and KoboldAI, but what GameForge AI aims to do is focus on world-building responses that encapsulate more than just dialogue. It uses a "chain of thought" building process that helps create complex worlds and characters that are narratively driven and mindful of the story they tell -- in relation to the world around them.
If role-playing games are your lane and environments matter to you when building your stories, GameForge AI could be a great companion enhancing your visual worlds and navigating them to your liking. Or with the help of AI.
