When it comes to competitive gaming, a lot of problems are at play: frames per second (FPS), which depends on the computer’s graphical and processing power; lagging, which occurs due to high ping rates of weaker internet connections, and, of course, the player’s mistakes while in-game. A Turkish company named Falcon AI has come up with an innovative solution that aims to better players' skills all the while acting as an artificial intelligence (AI) coach for gaming: SenpAI.gg. The “gg” in both the product’s official website URL and its name is a reference to an abbreviation commonly used by gamers: “good game.”
Berk Özer, one of the founders of Falcon AI, told Daily Sabah that their aim is to provide gamers with a tool that will help them improve in competitive esports games, namely the League of Legends, Valorant, DOTA 2 and others.
“We founded Falcon AI in 2017. Our main aim was to improve our AI capabilities. Seeing the high demand in esports, we decided to focus on it completely,” Özer said.
“When I say esports, people may misunderstand me. We are not focusing on only real professionals. Our focus includes both professional gamers and up-and-coming gamers who just want to improve their skills,” he added.
So how does SenpAI.gg actually help gamers improve their skills?
“When players log in using SenpAI.gg, we use AI to analyze their match data. Both before and after their matches, we provide them various recommendations, analyses and other types of content,” Özer said.
“For example, when a player is about to begin a match, we provide them crucial information such as which champion will suit their skills better or which champion will be more beneficial in their efforts to defeat the opponent team,” he said.
Özer added that SenpAI.gg makes comparisons between the user and more professional players and determines whose skills and playing styles are similar to theirs.
“Thus, we tell the user: ‘Look, this professional esports player chose this item, this champion, and played like this. So maybe give that a try.’ We can even import all the necessary data as SenpAI.gg can be integrated into the game,” he added.
What games will SenpAI.gg support?
At the initial stage, Riot Games’ League of Legends and Valorant are the main focus of SenpAI.gg, but the startup is planning to expand to include more games in its system. I asked him if Overwatch will get AI support soon, too, as that is a game I love to play.
“Unfortunately, we have no plans for Overwatch now. But we are planning to expand to the Blizzard world, with the upcoming Overwatch 2,” he said, to my dismay.
This kind of in-depth gaming analysis also brought another issue to mind: Wouldn't in-game assistance, if offered, count as cheating? I got the answer I was expecting.
"(In-game assistance) is considered cheating, so we do not do that even if we do actually have the infrastructure needed to realize that. Our main focus is pre-match and post-match analyses,” he said.
I couldn’t help but ask if they were planning to implement a real-time assistance system for unranked, practice matches, as that would not do much harm.
“That’s a good point. If we did such a thing, we would consider that for more professional teams. As you know, Elon Musk developed Open AI and that bot defeated real teams in DOTA 2. But our main focus, for now, is on competitive gamers and ones who want to develop their skills, rather than fully-fledged professionals,” Özer responded.
Turkish names behind the scenes
Although the company is based in Boston, Falcon AI says it has many engineers in Istanbul.
“Our goal is to make this product, which was developed by Turkish engineers, globally successful. Our Turkish engineers are developing SenpAI.gg, and we are here in the United States for marketing purposes,” Özer said.
“We have tens of thousands of users from all over the world. The U.S. takes the lead, western and eastern Europe (come next). We also have many users in South America, especially in Brazil. In fact, we have nearly as many users in Brazil as we have in Turkey. Our system also has Portuguese language support,” he said. A few unexpected countries are also in the mix, such as Indonesia, even though the company has never advertised there, which goes to show the universality and growing potential of gaming across the globe.
Özer also stated that they have two patent applications awaiting finalization in the U.S.
SenpAI.gg is currently free to use, but paid premium and platinum subscription services, along with their respective perks such as monthly face-to-face discussions with a consultant, are also available.
“Our main goal is to make SenpAI.gg a prestigious esports brand. Our first and foremost aim is to make our AI-based product successful all over the globe," Özer said.
