AI game with over 4 billion views: Profiting again! Addictive again!

Recently, an AI game called "Shawarma Legend" has garnered over 4 billion views online, captivating countless netizens and players. As the saying goes, "By day, working like a horse in the office, by night, selling shawarma online." Running a business in the cyber world is a form of light entrepreneurship unique to this generation of young people.

The core gameplay of "Shawarma Legend" is not new; you can find many similar simulation games on 4399 mini-games. The "Papa's Series" developed by Flipline Studios also revolves around players managing various virtual restaurants, having produced nearly a hundred simulation games.
Surprisingly, this seemingly ordinary 2D game with unoriginal gameplay has been hailed by netizens as a "AAA masterpiece": AI-generated graphics, AI-composed music, and AI voice acting have propelled it to the top of the iOS free game charts, with over 1 million downloads on Google Play, and a rating as high as 9/10 on Steam, just 1 point shy of the true AAA title "Black Myth: Wukong."
Whether the game truly utilized AI in its production is confirmed by the developer's notes on Steam.

Although it only explicitly mentions that the main menu image is AI-generated, the "four-finger" characters and the catchy Chinese theme song in the game are widely believed by netizens to be AI creations.
Especially for a low-cost mini-game like "Shawarma Legend," achieving 14 language supports, which even major game studios find hard to standardize, is likely due to the assistance of AI.
01
Low cost and high return; it can be said that the explosive popularity of the "AAA masterpiece" "Shawarma Legend" is inseparable from AI. While everyone is analyzing how to replicate the next "hit," the Degame team has already shifted their focus to the possibility of "creating infinite games."
Degame is a comprehensive platform well-known among Web3 gaming enthusiasts, featuring over 8000 game projects, with exclusive data rankings and analytics to help users find games and communities they want to participate in, while continuously providing a rich variety of zero-cost profit and airdrop opportunities. Compared to how AI has made "Shawarma Legend" a hit, Degame's long-term gaming experience has revealed another significant potential use of AI in Web3 games, beyond AI-generated content and AI NPCs.
Traditional game development is often limited by fixed assets and predetermined storylines, while large language models, with their powerful generative capabilities and creative potential, have made revolutionary breakthroughs in these limitations.
Role-playing games developed based on large model technology, such as Google's "No Boundaries," allow players to fundamentally customize their characters and adventure experiences. This change signifies that game developers are beginning to harness the potential of AI to create truly limitless game worlds.
AI can dynamically adjust game content based on player behavior and preferences, creating a "thousand faces" game world. Domestic games like "Yandere AI Cat Girlfriend" and independent developer creations like "Infinite Craft" showcase the immense potential of AI in game innovation, and the openness of Web3 is bound to release this potential even faster.
02
An important aspect of Web3 games is that they require users and platforms to participate in the creative process together, rather than being limited to pre-planned games. In games, we have a concept of Lore, which in traditional games is predetermined by game designers and is entirely predictable. However, through AI models, we can gather various inputs and generate unpredictable outputs, giving such games infinite possibilities.
Imagine a future day when we can access magical virtual worlds through AR/VR devices, where we can instantly create 2D and 3D objects from our imagination or beyond using prompts, as if we had uttered a magical spell and truly possessed them (with data hosted on the public chain). We could also interact with intelligent AI NPCs in the virtual world and influence the story development of the entire game world, all supported by a completely transparent open-source infrastructure.
In this vision, humanity will unleash infinite creativity.
It is this beautiful vision that drives the Degame team to attempt to "tell a good story" about Web3 games using AI.
03
Storytelling is one of the oldest and most powerful forms of communication. When a story captures our attention and engages us, we are more likely to absorb its information and meaning.
Compared to the already mature field of AI image generation, the AI gaming sector involving 3D assets is still in a very early stage, which is why the funding amounts for related game projects remain relatively low.
However, it is undeniable that the market size in the gaming sector far exceeds that of the image market, and AI will be a very important trend for the future development of games.
Therefore, the Degame team firmly believes that the potential of AI + Web3 games will be immense. However, this exploratory path will inevitably encounter bumps and challenges; it requires participation from everyone—not just hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands, but billions of people. Participants need an open, engaging, and closely connected environment, which is the original intention behind DeGame's establishment.

Providing a smooth Web3 application experience for Web2 users is DeGame's core growth area, resulting in a substantial number of stable, real users.
Over the years of operation, Degame has established over 4000 independent communities around Web3, GameFi, NFT, Layer2, etc., supporting any community and project to publish multimedia information, live broadcasts, set tasks, distribute rewards, and more on the platform.
At the same time, through the AIGC tools and ready-made task/reward/point modules provided by the platform, project parties and communities can quickly connect with existing real active users, stimulate positive social interactions, skip cold starts to achieve viral spread, and gradually cultivate high-value communities that can participate deeply in the gaming ecosystem for the long term.
In DeGame, it’s not just about social and gaming experiences; elements like NFTs, virtual assets, on-chain incentive mechanisms, and profit sharing allow every user to become a builder and a driving force for the development of the gaming ecosystem, enabling quality project parties and communities to reduce costs, shorten cycles, simplify operations, and gain unprecedented freedom and possibilities.
04
Looking back over the past year.
With the emergence of generative AI models like ChatGPT, AI has expanded from simple automation tools to complex decision-making and prediction systems, becoming a significant driving force for progress in contemporary society. AI products and applications have also experienced explosive growth, with ChatGPT itself continuously launching notable products like GPTs and Sora. The underlying infrastructure provider Nvidia has consistently exceeded expectations in performance, with data center business accounting for over 83% of revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024, growing 409% simultaneously, of which 40% is used for large model inference scenarios, indicating a rapid increase in demand for underlying computing power.
Undoubtedly, the collision of AI and Web3 is one of the hottest topics today, with the market full of attention and anticipation for both. Setting aside hype and price bubbles, can AI + Web3 games create valuable narratives and industries in the long run?
Let’s work together.