AI Proxies in PvP: How Player-Created Bots Could Save Competitive Games

Why PvP Feels Exhausting in 2025

Once upon a time, competitive gaming was exhilarating. Climbing ranked ladders, studying matchups, building the perfect deck — it all felt like a thrilling challenge. But now, many players are quietly stepping back. Not because they’ve lost their competitive edge, but because PvP itself has become too demanding.

Three structural issues stand out:

• Shrinking active player bases
• Burnout from real-time competitive pressure
• A growing desire for more asynchronous, low-pressure play

In genres like mobile games, card battlers, and even fighting games, this shift is clear. Matchmaking takes longer. Meta stagnates. New players quit early. And even veterans admit they no longer have the energy to “log in and grind” every day.

At the same time, many strategy-focused players still love building, experimenting, and outsmarting opponents. What they don’t love is constantly being online to keep up. And that’s where a powerful idea emerges:

What If You Could Create the Population Yourself?

Imagine a game where you no longer need thousands of active players online at all times.

Instead, each player creates AI characters — bots — that reflect their own style, logic, and preferences. These AI-controlled characters fight on their behalf, even while the player is offline.

This isn’t just “auto-battler AI” or “PvE training dummies.” This is something far more radical:

A PvP world where the players themselves generate the ecosystem.
Not through matchmaking, but by designing AI agents who think and fight like them.

Suddenly, we’ve flipped the problem:

• Shrinking population? → Let players generate persistent AI agents.
• Competitive burnout? → Let your AI handle the grind while you design.
• Meta stagnation? → Diverse personalities encoded into AI agents = endless variations.

Fighting Games and Mahjong: Ideal for AI Personality Encoding

Games with strong “player habits” are especially well-suited to this model.

Think about:

Fighting games:

• Do you favor corner pressure or zoning?
• Are you conservative with meter or constantly burning resources?
• Do you bait reversals or punish on reaction?

Mahjong or card games:

• Do you play risk-heavy or defensively?
• Do you favor certain hand types?
• How do you respond to pressure situations?

These kinds of behavioral patterns are learnable by modern AI models — especially with reinforcement learning and imitation learning. If the system allows you to train and tune an AI with your own battle history or decision patterns, it becomes your proxy fighter — not just in name, but in essence.

And now, your opponent isn’t just “a bot.”
It’s someone’s bot. Their logic. Their mind.

Is This Already Happening?

Yes — at least in fragments.

• Street Fighter 6 allows players to train AI characters based on their own behavior. These bots can be shared and even entered into online tournaments.
• In games like Go, Shogi, and Mahjong, research-grade AI already simulates distinct play styles based on past human data.
• GPT-powered agents are now being tested in simulated environments, interacting with each other in persistent online worlds.

The pieces are already here. What’s missing is just the integration into a full game design — a system where player-created AI personalities become a core feature, not just a side gimmick.

A New Way to Win: Through Design, Not Reflex

When your AI proxy fights in your place, the definition of “winning” changes.

You’re no longer measured by your reaction time or how often you log in. Instead, victory comes from how well you trained, shaped, and strategized your AI. It’s like being a coach, engineer, or philosopher — not just a player.

Here are some entirely new forms of competitive achievement this opens up:

This is no longer PvP as in “I beat you today”.
It’s PvP as in “my way of thinking persists in this world — and it works.”

Hobby Fragmentation and Digital Loneliness — Solved?

Modern digital hobbies are increasingly fragmented.
Everyone plays different games, at different times, for different reasons. Real-time communities fracture easily. When interest fades or life gets busy, the world moves on.

This is especially hard on strategy-minded players — those who don’t mind a slow burn, who enjoy tweaking builds, or who’d rather observe the long-term evolution of ideas than grind daily matches.

AI-based proxies offer an elegant solution:

• You don’t need to be online to participate
• Your strategic influence persists
• Others can still interact with your thinking, even after you’re gone

In this model, the player becomes a creator of “game-world citizens” — bots who act as extensions of their logic and taste.
They populate the world.
They preserve playstyles.
They carry on your legacy.

In short, it’s a solution to digital disappearance.

The True Magic: Designing an Ecosystem, Not Just a Fighter

This idea isn’t just about replacing players with bots. It’s about letting players build a society of thinking, reacting, evolving agents.

Imagine:

• A “Zoning AI” built by a Street Fighter player known for frustrating keep-away tactics
• A “Mahjong AI” trained to bluff aggressively but always fold late game
• A team of bots, each tuned to a different philosophy: tempo control, chaos theory, resource denial…

And they don’t just exist.
They compete, influence each other, form counter-strategies, and populate a meta.

You’re not playing matches.
You’re engineering an ecosystem.

Final Thought: PvP as Legacy, Not Labor

What we’re seeing here is a possible evolution of PvP itself.

It becomes less about:

• Real-time inputs
• Constant presence
• Exhaustive playtime

And more about:

• Design philosophy
• Persistent influence
• Asynchronous creativity

This shift empowers players who may no longer have the reflexes, free time, or tolerance for stress — but still have ideas, styles, and tactical insights worth sharing.

So the next time you feel like “PvP isn’t for me anymore,”
remember this:

Maybe you don’t have to fight.
Maybe your mind still can.