Developer and publisher Bigpoint has chosen Artificial Technology's EKI One middleware for managing the NPCs and AI vehicles in its upcoming browser-based 3D MMORPG Poisonville. In the online action game, players are dropped into a virtual city filled with thousands of NPCs, ambulances, and cop chases. The city is ruled by four different gangs, which gamers can join and commit various crimes for, such as raids and assassinations. Poisonville takes advantage of EKI One Configurator to handle the 3D world's NPC behaviors, making sure that NPCs and AI vehicles move where they're supposed, as well as controlling their fight reactions and aggressiveness levels. EKI One runs on its own dedicated server, which Artificial Technology says makes it unneccessary for the game server and AI logics to share the same hardware resources. The middleware firm also claims that this allows NPC calculation performance to "increase dramatically". "One EKI One-dedicated server can control thousands of NPCs," says Bigpoint's CTO Jan Wergin. "In Poisonville, we can run the entire game AI with this software and directly determine and test NPC behavior by way of the EKI One Configurator." Wergin adds, "The expertise amassed by the people at Artificial Technology is vital to the game, especially when thousands of real players begin to fight for control of one of the four gangs."