AI People Explained: GoodAI's AI-NPC Sandbox, What It Cost, and What We Could Not Confirm
AI People is a sandbox game from GoodAI in which you build a scenario and watch, and talk to, AI characters who have goals, memories and a mind of their own. It is made by the AI company founded by Marek Rosa, whose sister studio Keen Software House makes Space Engineers. It is also a case study in how hard the idea is: in February 2025 its own creative director said the game had not yet become the living world the team wanted.
If you came here from our AI simulation games guide, this is the page for the one we left out. We could not confirm that AI People is still on offer in 2026, so we read what the developer has published and mark every gap.
This page is built from the developer’s own posts. We have not played AI People, and nothing here is scored. It is read, not played. The latest source we found about the game itself is dated 13 February 2025, so treat everything below as a snapshot of early 2025. See the next section for what we found on 26 October 2026.
Arcanum is independent and unaffiliated with GoodAI, Keen Software House and every company named here.
The Short Answers
- What is it? A single-player sandbox game, built on Unity, in which AI characters act inside scenarios you create.
- Who makes it? GoodAI, a sister company of Keen Software House. Marek Rosa is the creative director, and his blog biography still lists AI People as a current focus.
- How do you get it? At alpha launch (19 September 2024), through the developer’s own platform after a waiting list, not through Steam or other stores.
- What does it cost? The launch post gave a subscription of $10 a month with 1,000 credits. We have not checked the current price.
- Does it run offline? An update in December 2024 added a local model option, which needs a strong graphics card.
- Is it finished? No. The developer’s own February 2025 diary calls it closer to a scene-creation tool than a living world.
- Is it still on offer? Unclear. Its web address now redirects to GoodAI’s home page, which does not name it, but Marek Rosa’s blog biography still lists it as a current focus (checked 26 October 2026).
Is It Still Available? What We Found on 26 October 2026
We could not find a current page for the game. Three facts, all checked on 26 October 2026:
- The web address redirects. The developer’s April 2024 announcement points to a website for the game, www.aipeoplegame.com. That address now redirects to GoodAI’s home page.
- The home page does not name it. The text of GoodAI’s home page that we read did not mention AI People. It lists “AI in Games” among the company’s current areas of work, described as using language models with long-term memory for game simulations. Its most recent news items are dated 2026 and are about other projects.
- Rosa still lists it. Marek Rosa’s own blog biography says he now focuses on Space Engineers 2, the VRAGE3 engine, AI People and autonomous agents, including NPCs and drone swarms. His most recent post there is dated 23 October 2026.
That mix is why we say “unclear” and not “ended”. The creative director still names AI People as something he works on, while the game’s own website and the company’s home page no longer point to it. It may be paused, renamed, folded into a larger project or still available by another route. We did not find a statement either way, and we did not sign up to find out. If you want to play it, check GoodAI’s own site first.
What It Is
Two posts, five months apart, describe the game.
In April 2024 Rosa announced AI People as a sandbox in which you create and play scenarios with NPCs that learn, feel emotions, pursue goals and produce emergent stories. The announcement says the characters run on large language models inside an in-house cognitive architecture, with long-term, working and episodic memory and spatial reasoning. The characters have personalities and biographies, perceive their surroundings, use tools and items, manage inventories, interact physically and adapt to feedback. An AI Director is meant to steer what they do into coherent plots.
It was announced as single-player and PC first, with a workshop for sharing user-made content. The developer said it was not planning multiplayer, and typically about five characters per scenario, because large-scale simulations were not the target. The developer rated it 18 plus and said it was looking at a version for children.
How a Turn Works
The announcement describes the loop in plain terms.
- The game sends the language model a prompt that describes the scene, the characters, their biographies and the memories that seem relevant.
- The model replies with actions.
- The game carries them out.
- New memories are stored for the next prompt.
- If an action fails, the failure goes back to the model as an error message so that it can correct itself.
That is a short loop, and it is the same family of design as Generative Agents, with far fewer characters and a game engine doing the acting. The announcement admits the obvious weakness: the characters can hallucinate, for example by referring to an item they never gave the player.
What It Costs to Run
Language models are paid for by the word, and a game that keeps several characters thinking is a heavy user. The announcement says AI People generates thousands of tokens an hour, and that this creates large infrastructure costs.
That is why the game has two cost models.
| Cloud (September 2024 alpha) | Local (December 2024) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the model runs | Developer’s servers | Your PC |
| What you pay | A subscription: $10 a month with 1,000 credits at launch, unused credits roll over, more can be bought | Nothing in credits for scenarios, if speech recognition is local and text-to-speech is off |
| What you need | An internet connection and a waiting-list invitation | At least 12 GB of graphics memory (about 8 GB for the model, 1 to 2 GB for speech recognition) |
| Catch | Credits run out | Characters answer in text only if you turn text-to-speech off |
The December 2024 post also says the whole game can be set to run offline. It does not name the local model. The developer said the first versions of AI People were prototyped with GPT-4 and GPT-3.5-Turbo and that it was fine-tuning open models toward running on a player’s device.
The Alpha, as the Developer Described It
When the alpha launched on 19 September 2024, the post was honest about its limits:
- Access came in batches from a waiting list, to avoid overloading the servers.
- It was an early proof of concept with minimal challenges and no end goals in the scenarios.
- Sessions were capped at about ten minutes.
- Character behaviour could be surprising, and stayed inside each scenario’s structure.
- It used mouse and keyboard only, with no controller support.
- Long-term memory and evolving personalities were described as aims, not features of the alpha.
The developer told players who wanted a polished experience to wait for later updates.
February 2025: The Developer’s Own Verdict
The most useful source we found is a development diary dated 13 February 2025. In it Rosa writes that AI People was, at that point, closer to a scene-creation tool than the living world the team had in mind, and that its characters lacked depth, memory and goals.
He listed three changes for a new internal version called MVP 1:
- Long-term memories and evolving personalities for the characters.
- A dynamic goal system, so they pursue their own plans.
- Wildcard Events, which are random events to keep things unpredictable.
The stated aim was a world in which characters form alliances, start rebellions, fall in love and create stories players want to share. The deadline for MVP 1 was the end of February 2025. In the comments, Rosa said he did not know whether the same technology would reach Space Engineers 2, and would not promise it.
A January 2025 post on GoodAI’s site describes a new level editor for the game and two new characters. We read this only in a search summary of the page, so we do not rely on its details.
Where It Sits Among Similar Ideas
| AI People | Generative Agents | Project Sid | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind | A game, in alpha | A research paper and code | A research paper |
| Characters | About five per scenario | 25 | About 3 to 500 |
| Who plays | You, in a scenario | Researchers | Nobody, it is observed |
| AI runs | Cloud, or locally with a strong GPU | OpenAI model through your own key | Not clear from the paper for every test |
If you want to play with AI characters that have goals and memory right now, the choices are narrower than the headlines suggest. See games with AI NPCs for those we could verify.
What We Could Not Confirm
- Anything about the game after February 2025. We found no later update, no release date for MVP 1, and no Steam page. A newer version, a rename or a shutdown may exist.
- The current price. The $10 figure is from the launch post.
- Whether the memory and goal systems shipped. They were plans in February 2025.
- What the 18 plus rating covers. The developer’s posts do not say.
- How well it plays. We have not played it.
How to Check It Yourself
- Go to GoodAI’s own site, not a store, and look for a current page for the game with a date on it.
- Check whether there is still a waiting list.
- Read the price and credit terms on the day you sign up.
- If you plan to run it locally, check the graphics memory requirement against your card first. The December 2024 post said at least 12 GB.
For the people behind AI character work, see The People Shaping AI RPGs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is AI People?
AI People is a sandbox game from GoodAI, in which you build a scenario and play it with AI-driven characters that talk, set goals, use items and react to each other. The developer’s posts describe a language model running inside GoodAI’s own cognitive architecture, with an AI Director that tries to shape what happens into a story.
Is AI People still available?
We could not confirm it. On 26 October 2026 the game’s web address from the developer’s April 2024 announcement redirected to GoodAI’s home page, and the home page text we read did not name AI People. Marek Rosa’s blog biography, checked the same day, still lists AI People among what he works on. We found no statement that the game has ended.
Is AI People on Steam?
We found no sign that it is. When the alpha launched on 19 September 2024, the developer said it was available only through its own platform, not Steam or other stores. We found nothing newer than February 2025, so check the developer’s site for the current situation.
How much does AI People cost?
At the September 2024 alpha launch the developer’s post gave a subscription of 10 dollars a month with 1,000 credits, rolling over unused credits, and extra credits for sale. We have not checked the current price, and the developer said in December 2024 that running the language model on your own PC uses no credits.
Can AI People run offline?
The December 2024 update added a local language model option. The developer’s post says it needs at least 12 GB of graphics memory, about 8 GB of it for the model and 1 to 2 GB for local speech recognition, and that the whole game can be set to run offline in the options.
Is AI People finished?
No, according to the developer. In February 2025 Marek Rosa wrote that the game was closer to a scene-creation tool than the living world the team had in mind, and described plans for long-term memory, evolving personalities, a goal system and random events. We found no later update.
Is AI People an adult game?
The developer rated the alpha 18 plus and said it was exploring a version for children. We have not played it and cannot say what the rating covers.
Is AI People the same as Generative Agents or Project Sid?
No. Those are research papers. AI People is a game from a company, with a similar goal: AI characters that remember, pursue goals and interact. It runs about five characters in a scenario, according to the developer, not a town or a civilization.
Sources
Checked 26 October 2026. Marek Rosa’s blog: AI People: Announcing the next evolution of gaming AI NPCs (29 April 2024); AI People Alpha Officially Released! (19 September 2024); AI People: Now with local LLM (5 December 2024); Marek’s Dev Diary, 13 February 2025. The January 2025 level editor post is on GoodAI’s site. Current status: GoodAI home page, a redirect from www.aipeoplegame.com and Marek Rosa’s blog biography, all checked 26 October 2026.