Beautiful girls play LOL with you, and Tencent enters the AI game to accompany you. Will it follow the old path of MiHoYo?

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Beautiful girls play LOL with you, and Tencent enters the AI game to accompany you. Will it follow the old path of MiHoYo?

DataEye

2026.11.10 18:05

· From Guangdong

Full text 2914 words

Text | DataEye

On October 21, Tencent announced on the entire network that its AI game companion agent [Goose Dimension] has started recruitment testing.

Recently, [Goose Dimension] launched the "First Test of Vitality". What is the specific situation and why Tencent entered the AI accompanying this track? DataEye Research Institute analyzed this.

1. What is the Goose Dimension?

[Goose Dimension] is Tencent's first AI game companion agent for the end game market. It is homophonic to "second dimension". It focuses on understanding the game and understanding you better. It runs on the Windows platform in the form of an independent client. It relies on screen recognition, multi-modal dialogue, and character memory systems to achieve real-time companion interaction in game scenarios.

Currently, the "First Beta of Vitality" version provides 4 types of characters for players to choose from: Xia Xia, Shen Lubai, Guyu, and Bella (Bella is not available yet). The four characters are differentiated and positioned in terms of personality, personality, timbre, background story, behavioral preferences and other dimensions to avoid homogeneity. Each character is equipped with an independent memory bank, which can remember the player's past games, preferences, and chat content to form a continuous companion narrative, rather than a tool-based question and answer that is reset after a single conversation.

At the interaction level, [Goose Dimension]'s virtual companion digital person supports text messages, asynchronous voice messages, real-time voice calls, and dialogue links open up multi-modal images, text, and voice. In addition to conversational interaction, the product also comes with lightweight companion functions such as desktop pets, desktop wallpapers, and AI-generated pictures. When not playing games, the digital person can also stay on the desktop to chat and interact with players, extending the user's online time.

Since the positioning is to accompany the game agent, the game scene ability is the core barrier. The current first beta version already supports 4 PC games, including "League of Legends", "Fearless Contract", "CS2" and the recently launched "Shadow Blade Zero". Officials simultaneously revealed that they will continue to promote access to more games and maintain the rhythm of iterating new experiences every week.

During the game or land reclamation process, the AI partner relies on the screen recognition ability to understand the current situation: in MOBA and FPS games, it can identify the lane and give timely suggestions; when clearing the level alone, it will give tips on the difficulty of solving puzzles, and will adjust the speaking style according to the character, so that it will not be a blunt strategy broadcast. AI will independently judge the timing and intervene in the conversation at the appropriate node. It will neither interfere with the game by over-swiping the screen nor remain silent throughout the entire process, taking into account both the value of the tool and the sense of companionship.

2. MiHoYo has "failed", why did Tencent enter the game?

On August 11, miHoYo announced the suspension of "BSide: Olivia Lin" on the Steam platform. The product was launched on Steam for early access on July 13, 2026, and was officially discontinued on August 11. The overall online operation lasted less than a month, breaking the positive expectations of MiHoYo's entry into the AI accompanying track.

From the perspective of the underlying logic of the product, there are obvious differences between "BSide: Olivia Lin" and "Goose Dimension". "BSide: Olivia Lin" is an independent desktop companion application. It is not bound to a game scene. The core is centered around character design. It focuses on healing chatting, writing letters, and music interaction. It is a purely emotional companion agent.

Although the product's reputation is not bad, after players' novelty wears off, there is a lack of scenarios that continuously trigger interactions, putting pressure on long-term retention. At the same time, continuous dialogue brings high computing power costs, and ultimately it is difficult to form a positive business closed loop.

However, MiHoYo's trial and error does not mean that there is no chance for AI companionship on the track itself. Instead, it has helped the industry step out of the boundary: companionship that purely sells emotions and does not have scene anchors may be a false proposition. Only companion agents bound to high-frequency rigid scenes have room for survival. This is also the underlying logic behind Tencent's choice to enter the game at this time.

First, Tencent has a large domestic end game product matrix. LOL, Fearless Contract, etc. are long-term products with high DAU and long game duration. [Goose Dimension] can be used as a universal AI plug-in across games to serve existing game users and improve players’ stay time and activity in its own game ecosystem. It is a value-added tool for existing users, rather than an independent companion product to be introduced from scratch.

Second, AI game companion agent is a lightweight alternative to real-person companionship. It is not just for chatting, but it can also understand the game screen and provide tactical assistance. It has the dual value of "matching partner + strategy assistant" and covers the needs of single players who have sporadic games late at night that are difficult to cover with real-person companions.

Third, AI Agent is a long-term technology layout, and [Goose Dimension] is a scenario-based implementation test. Tencent has many years of technology accumulation in game AI and multi-modal visual recognition. [Goose Dimension] can be used as an external test carrier to accumulate general agent capabilities. More importantly, through this test, the Agent can collect more user needs and use this to improve the official version of [Goose Dimension].

Fourth, competition on the track is still in the early window period, and user needs are diverging. Some players refuse the companionship of a pure AI girlfriend, but there is an urgent need for "playing games without a partner". [Goose Dimension] aims at this segmented demand, uses the differentiated positioning of "game first", avoids the proven trap of pure emotional companionship, takes the hybrid route of tools + companionship, and explores new commercialization paths.

3. Three major research and judgments: In which direction will the game accompanying Agent go?

Based on the trends of game companion agents at home and abroad, DataEye Research Institute conducted research and judgment on this.

The case of miHoYo's "BSide: Olivia Lin" has proved that independent companion products that only rely on character design, dialogue, and emotional comfort have a very low ceiling. Independent cross-game agents that can survive in the future may be like [Goose Dimension], which puts game auxiliary capabilities first, and companionship is an additional experience, not everything.

The player's interaction motivation changes from "I want to chat with the AI" to "I need a partner who understands the game when playing games", forming a natural interaction cycle. Emotional relationships are built on shared gaming experiences, not conversations in a vacuum.

One route is an external independent agent such as [Goose Dimension]. As a plug-in client, it relies on screen recognition to achieve cross-game adaptation. The advantage is that it is highly versatile and can serve multiple games at the same time. It is suitable for multi-terminal players and multi-game players. Its shortcomings are that there is delay in screen recognition and an upper limit of recognition accuracy. It cannot deeply read the underlying data of the game, and advanced tactics and in-depth game interaction will be limited.

Another route is for game manufacturers to deeply embed AI Agents into the game itself. For example, "Unconventional World" launched by Chaoxi Guangnian some time ago, it is a native NPC that directly reads the internal data of the game and has complete worldview permissions, making the interaction more accurate and immersive.

Of course, there is no substitute for the other: native AI is part of the game content and serves the long-term experience of a single game; external cross-game Agent is an ecological tool that serves players' overall gaming habits and is suitable for platform manufacturers.

On October 12 this year, Character.AI issued an announcement: It voluntarily filed an application for Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in the Delaware Court of the United States, and started an asset auction process under the supervision of the court, which may be completed by the end of November or early December.

It should be noted that Character.AI, as a pioneer in AI chat applications, has gathered 163 million users in 5 years, with monthly active users reaching 20 million. The reason for its declaration of bankruptcy was also due to the excessive number of users. According to statistics, in 2024, under the high computing power cost structure of AI at the time, Character.AI’s monthly operating costs were estimated to be about US$30 million, and its revenue only came from the subscription fee of US$9.99 per user per month. However, there were only 139,000 paid subscribers at the end of 2024 - equivalent to burning more than US$400 million a year, which was completely a loss-making operation.

Too many users and too few user payments have led to the bankruptcy of Character.AI. The payment capabilities of [Goose Dimension] are also worthy of attention. If it is a subscription system, multiple users can open AI conversations 24 hours a day, which is also a large token expense for Tencent.

Judging from the long-term trend of the industry, the AI companionship track has bid farewell to the early fantasy of "as long as there are good-looking digital people who can chat, they can attract users." The appearance of [Goose Dimension] represents a shift in the thinking of leading manufacturers: AI Agent is no longer a separate emotional entertainment product, but an intelligent assistant embedded in players' existing entertainment behaviors.

The core of competition in the future is not whether the characters are good-looking or whether the dialogue is sweet, but whether they can understand the game, whether they can provide effective value at the right time, and whether they can naturally develop a credible and continuous companionship relationship based on the instrumental value.

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