Michael Puscar of NPCx On The Future of Gaming
An Interview With David Leichner
Our mission is to make video games and animated films more realistic. I painted a scenario above to make NPCs more lifelike and intelligent, but it doesn’t start or end there. I believe that in future generations of video games, you will feel more like you’re participating in a live-action movie than playing a video game. The way characters move in games, how they act and react, AI is about to change the paradigm completely.
As a part of our series about what’s around the corner for the gaming industry, we had the pleasure of interviewing Michael Puscar, Founder and CTO of NPCx.
Michael is a serial entrepreneur, investor, technologist and published data scientist who has spent 30 years building cutting edge applications that challenge existing technological paradigms. He has three patents (one of which is still pending) for his groundbreaking work in AI and machine learning. As a serial entrepreneur, Michael has had three prior startup exists, most notably Yuxi Pacific Group in 2013. He is also a philanthropist and the founder of the Puscar Buritica Family Office, a private group that invests in communities throughout Latin America.
Thanks for joining us! Before we level up to the future of gaming, our readers would love to know more about you. Can you share an interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
In 2013, I sold my first startup, Yuxi Pacific Group, to a private equity group named Blue Loop Capital based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. I was head-down with work and didn’t have time to meet them, but they insisted I listen to their offer.
At the time, I was heading for the Mark Logic Users Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, and then to visit a customer named DeGruyter in Berlin, Germany. I told them they would have to wait eight weeks to meet me. They had other plans in mind:
“You go straight from Las Vegas to Berlin?” they asked.
“Yes”, I told them.
“Is it a direct flight? Do you go straight from Vegas to Berlin?”
“Well, no. I did have a stopover in Newark, but it was less than 90 minutes.”
“We’ll make it work.”
Sure enough, they met me at Sbarros in the Newark Airport Food Court, with no luggage, just a simple briefcase. We sat down, ordered drinks, and they made their offer. It floored me.
I boarded the plane to Germany, knowing that I was about to sell my company of 120 employees located in offices in China and Colombia. After a blazing 45-day due diligence period, the company was theirs.
We can only achieve success with some help along the way. Is there a person you are grateful to who supported you in getting to where you are?
Absolutely. I was not an outstanding student — I spent my youth as a black-hat hacker who skipped classes to crack video games, and I taught myself to code when I was 15. It wasn’t that I was not bright; it was that I was interested in programming and not in whatever I was learning at school.
When I eventually graduated from Temple University, I was lucky to be in the mid-90s when Internet startups were bursting onto the scene everywhere. I got a job at one of the early success stories, a Philadelphia-based company named Infonautics, that was building search engine technology.
The problem during those days was that people needed to learn what they were doing. Search engines were very new, and anyone with Internet experience was under the age of 30. I worked at Infonautics for two years before the CEO, Van Morris, took a chance on me. Van was an old-school CEO, Duke-educated, and a brilliant man who, like everyone else, was adapting to this new era of technology.
Van saw something in me and promoted me to Director when I was only 24. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but I was packed with youthful vigor. I took full advantage.
I made many mistakes in the preceding two years, and Infonautics didn’t fare so well through no fault of its own. You see, the Internet bubble burst, and like most Internet companies, we were not profitable. Tucows acquired Infonautics in 2000, and my journey at the company ended.
But, the lessons that I retained under Van were invaluable. Things that you just couldn’t learn in a classroom — I saw working with him as an enormous privilege. Van was a visionary, seasoned technology executive who saw what I didn’t see in myself.
That experience served as the springboard for the rest of my career; I was already a great developer, and while at Infonautics, I obtained two of my early patents for search engine technology. I learned the business side, trial by fire, and in 2006, I navigated a startup, Yuxi Pacific, from scratch to exit, thanks to the lessons from Van.
To this day, when I see him or write to him, I still call him “boss.” Van was the best leader I ever had, and he altered the trajectory of my life.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I come from a relatively humble family. No one had graduated college; we were a family of lower-middle-class machinists and labor workers. Once, I begged my father for a computer, but we didn’t have the money. Then, on Christmas of 1985, my dad surprised me. He bought me a used $50 Commodore 64. That computer changed our lives.
After realizing how one computer can change a family, I started a charity called Oiga Cares (now the Puscar Buritica Family Foundation). The foundation donates computers to underprivileged children in Latin America who wouldn’t otherwise have the means to acquire one. At all of my companies, I grant our employees additional vacation days to help in the community by distributing the computers, showing teachers how to use them, and setting up the network.
If we can change the life of even one child, it’s worth it. And for my employees, it’s a way to show them that their company doesn’t just care about them — it cares about their community. It’s a way for them to feel proud of their work, company, and colleagues.
A lot of the work that we do is in Latin America. I owe much of my success to Colombia, a country that welcomed me with open arms and where I based several firms.
OK, fantastic. Let’s now move to the main focus of our discussion. Can you tell us about the technological innovations in gaming that you are working on?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is not a recent phenomenon — as I noted earlier, we’ve known how to do much of what we do since the late ’90s. What changed is the increase in computing power and the explosion of available training data.
In video games, we often complain about “the AIs.” After playing a game for a few weeks, sometimes even a few days, learning how to outsmart most non-player characters (NPCs) is easy. That is because these NPCs, though we call them AIs, are not actually AIs at all. Decision trees govern them — effectively big IF/THEN/ELSE loops. Well, that’s not how the human brain works. Decision trees are explicitly limited because they can’t evolve or adapt like a human can. They simply respond to a given set of inputs with a pre-programmed set of outputs.
A few pioneering companies are trying to inject true AI into video games. But their goals are to create godlike AIs that can beat chess champions and GO masters.
The technology that we are creating at NPCx is different. We want to make NPCs more human. So, we model our NPCs off real-world players using techniques like behavioral cloning and adversarial networks. By monitoring these real-world players as they play the game, we aim to train neural networks. These neural network models override the decision trees, creating NPCs that act in every way just like the player from whom they were “cloned.” They play smart, but they also make the same mistakes.
How are these technologies disrupting the status quo?
This technology will change everything. We’re already seeing companies like Meta launch AI characters based on real-world people like Tom Brady or Kylie Jenner. Our technology will allow you to play with or against your friends even when they’re not online.
In fact, we envision a clone marketplace where esports players can create clones of themselves and make them available for a fee. We will also put these clones into the Omniverse and Metaverse, populating the world with NPCs that are impossible to discern from real-world people.
There’s also a chance to breathe new life into old video games. We get bored of playing games because we’ve beaten them and know how to beat them. But with NPCx’s BehaviorX technology, the NPCs in those games will now react unexpectedly and interestingly, making the games more challenging and fun.
Beyond providing games and toys as entertainment, what is your company’s “purpose” or mission?
Our mission is to make video games and animated films more realistic. I painted a scenario above to make NPCs more lifelike and intelligent, but it doesn’t start or end there. I believe that in future generations of video games, you will feel more like you’re participating in a live-action movie than playing a video game. The way characters move in games, how they act and react, AI is about to change the paradigm completely.
I’m very interested in the interface between games and education. How can parents, teachers, and institutions leverage games and gamification for schooling?
AI is going to change how we educate ourselves. I was disappointed when, during the pandemic, schools set out to teach children the same curriculums but from home through video conferences. It was a real missed opportunity.
We are seeing the end of 300 student lecture halls and standardized testing. Every student has strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and each one learns differently. With AI, we can understand these differences at a granular level and customize our experiences to accommodate them. Every student should receive a custom curriculum that focuses on developing them to succeed. Gamification is a large part of that, making learning fun.
However, look at our product, BehaviorX. In the same way that we’re cloning real-world players to put them into video games as NPCs, we can use the technology to learn and understand the education level of each student. Then, it’s about creating material that reduces deficiencies and advances strengths.
One important caveat is developing this technology carefully due to ethical concerns. I have shown here how this technology can drastically improve education, particularly for those who do not have access to the best schools and teachers. But you could easily see how this technology could also be used for nefarious reasons. For this reason, every AI company needs an ethics officer and must consider ethics alongside development, not after the fact.
How would you define a “successful” game? Can you share an example of a game or toy that you hold up as an aspiration?
I am a data scientist and AI specialist, not a game developer, but to me, a successful game is one you play repeatedly. I’m a huge fan of the Ultima series, especially Ultima IV. I loved Baldur’s Gate. I could go back and play those games again and again and never get tired of them. Nerd note here: I actually play Ultima IV music in my car sometimes when I want to relax.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Thank you for the kind words. I can tell you what I teach my children: To be critical thinkers.
If I can give you one reason why I’ve succeeded in my life, it is because I always dared to swerve left when others went right, and right when others went left. I haven’t been afraid to challenge the status quo and do something unorthodox or eccentric.
So, if I could create a movement, it would be to inspire and cultivate a society of freethinkers. I’d like people to feel encouraged to think critically, question everything, and not outsource their important life decisions to others blindly.
It would be a world where individuals invest time to make informed decisions and are brave enough to step outside their comfort zones, taking risks that resonate with their personal truths.
As a politician once said, “If you agree with 80% of what I say, vote for me. If you agree with 100% of what I say, see a psychiatrist.”
Let’s foster a culture of individual thought and encourage diverse perspectives because true strength and progress lie in that diversity.
Can you please share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote” and how that was relevant to you?
There are so many; I will give you one of my favorites.
The Hall-of-Fame wide receiver Michael Irvin, from the Dallas Cowboys, said on a podcast recently, “I measure men by distance traveled. I don’t care what you have; I want to look at your journey. Tell me what you had to go through, what you had to endure, to get what you have.”
When I invest in companies, this is what I look for in founders. I don’t care about what they have or who they know. I care about the road they’ve traveled and how they handled adversity. In fact, it might be the most critical attribute when investing in a company. Business models can change, but find me founders who can overcome adversity, and you’ll likely see a successful venture.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
You can find more information about NPCx on our website or follow me on LinkedIn.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.
