These are not the bots you're looking for

Bots are cast as villains—exploiters of loopholes, cheaters in a system built for humans. But is that the whole story?

In reality, bots are unsung heroes of gaming, constantly working in the background to make systems more dynamic and engaging. They might not be heroic in the conventional sense—they’re often more like targets or fodder—but their contributions are too significant to ignore. On top of that, when combined with blockchain’s permissionless deployment and data availability, they can become even more interesting.

At their core, bots are just process automations. They handle tasks that, in theory, humans could do themselves, but with unmatched scale and efficiency. Most bots are far from autonomous agents. They’re scripts that react to specific inputs, adjusting to state changes or data feeds. They are tools: as good or as bad as who wields it.

Consider Googlebot. This ubiquitous web crawler isn’t exploiting websites. It’s a silent worker, indexing the internet and keeping our search results relevant. Similarly, spam filters that scan emails or arbitrage algorithms that keep financial markets efficient are rarely criticized. Even though humans can go over an inbox deleting spam or tag websites in a long list, it is not something they are usually eager to do.

In games, bots are more present than most people realize. They can, for instance, provide services in a game. Non-playable characters (NPCs) in single-player games are, essentially, bots. Whether they are quest givers, enemies, or friendly allies, they enrich the game world and provide content that the player can interact with. Think about games like Zelda or Dark Souls—without bots, these immersive worlds would feel hollow, empty.

They can also masquerade as humans, filling empty slots in a lobby during matchmaking, ensuring that a game can start quickly. On top of that, they can also be fodder for less skilled players. In Fortnite, for instance, a large percentage of players in any given match are bots, placed there to balance the difficulty making sure you get that dopamine hit when you outlast an opponent—whether human or bot. Other games, like Clash Royale or Marvel Snap, do the same in a head to head game. They do use the human’s deck but make sure that the game can be played asynchronously for optimal convenience.

Yet, when identifiable bots transition from being facilitators to direct competitors with human players, the ban hammer gets called. The problem is less in the bots themselves and more in the context in which they operate. First is that they are unbound in the exploitation of their unique differentiators from humans, namely speed and endurance. They can react to a game state change in a few milliseconds and can hold their attention without ever sleeping or doing anything else. Second, they are competing with humans for some form of scarce reward. Nobody is complaining about the sparring bots from Fortnite who have artificially slow reflexes or about the hyper efficient Googlebot who is not after anything that a human cares about, it is just doing a very boring task for our benefit. When these two features coexist we get bots that steal the “fun”.

Blockchain Bots

Enter MEV bots (Maximal Extractable Value bots) in blockchain-based environments. These bots operate in competitive, decentralized financial systems, using their ability to read the mempool and execute transactions faster than humans to extract profit.

But here’s the thing: MEV bots are not breaking the rules. They exist because of the rules—the scarcity of blockspace, the visibility of mempool transactions, and the prioritization of transactions through gas fees. They’re simply playing the game as it was designed. People may feel cheated when a bot swoops in to grab an opportunity that a human wanted, but the bot is just exploiting an existing system more efficiently. This dynamic is no different from factory workers who feel replaced by robots on an assembly line. The robots are better suited to the task—faster, more consistent—but they operate within the framework created by humans.

This tension between humans and bots in games becomes clear if we look at the core mechanics. Games are built around Objective, Challenge, Reward loops, known as OCR loops in game design lingo. Players are offered to complete a task, overcome a challenge, and earn a meaningful reward. Often, players focus more on the reward itself—the XP, the gold, the loot—than on the challenge. But the real fun comes from overcoming the challenge, even if it doesn’t always feel that way at the time.

Depending on the way the challenge and the player’s capacities are structured, bots may easily bypass the challenge and go straight for the reward. This creates a conflict with human players who are grinding through the game’s challenges. Take gold farming bots in MMOs—these bots perform repetitive tasks to collect in-game currency that can be sold to other players. While this doesn’t directly harm other players, it disrupts the game’s economy and bypasses the intended gameplay loop, making it a problem for game developers.

Bots as content

However, the real missed opportunity here is that bots, especially in blockchain games, could become content themselves. By carefully thinking about how we design games, we can turn bots from exploiters into targets—players could fight bots for resources, compete with them strategically, or even collaborate with them in new and creative ways. The issue isn’t that bots are efficient; it’s that the systems they operate in haven’t adapted to integrate them as part of the fun.

Let’s take a hypothetical mmo-like game, where resources are gathered in some locations and transformed into items that can be used to attack other entities (players). This is a very generic system that we have seen skinned in different forms (heroic fantasy, pirates, spaceships, etc) with varying degrees of complexity. My point is that if this system has some fundamental rules crafted that bind and limit the bots, they can be content for the game. At the end of the day, they are limited by the same rules as the human players, so the challenge is to craft rules that only leave room for vulnerable and interesting automations. In that sense, these are some principles that I find fundamental. There are probably more but these ones are quite obvious.

• Vulnerability and Ownership: a wallet (or entity) would be able to lose what it holds from a life meter reaching zero. This means that any bot is a possible target and can be looted. Carrying a reward can make them a valuable challenge.

• Geographical constraints: a wallet (or entity) would be bound to a position and only be able to interact with elements in adjacent positions. This creates a huge limitation where bots have to move around in order to interact with different game elements.

• Inventory limits: a wallet (or entity) has limits on the assets it can carry. This also limits the impact a bot can have, forcing choices when combined with the geographical constraints.

• Energy consumption: a wallet (or entity) has to spend energy to perform actions. This is another one that creates choices and most importantly, priority switching. As fuel gets low it becomes a higher priority than the original goal of the bot, forcing it to switch behavior and adapt.

This is not a recipe for a perfect game that will solve all bot problems and make them a new kind of UGC. These are some ideas around rules that limit the overwhelming aspects of bots and make them another way to play the game.  Rather than designing rules that aim to nerf or eliminate bots, we should focus on creating systems that encourage human players to interact with them—whether through combat, trade, or cooperation.

For the eternal question “Why a game on the blockchain?”, bots could become one of the defining features, a natural part of the game world that adds complexity, challenge, and intrigue. They may not be heroes in the traditional sense, but they can still play a vital role—whether as targets, adversaries, or allies—in making games more dynamic and engaging for human players.

Bots, in the end, are what we make of them. They can be faceless competition, exploiting loopholes and frustrating human players, or they can be integrated into the game’s systems, providing content and creating new opportunities for interaction. In blockchain games, especially, this shift in perspective could turn bots from a nuisance into a powerful tool for innovation and fun.

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