Wolf Games’ genAI-backed Public Eye aims to shake up daily gaming

The news: Move over Wordle, a new daily game is coming to town—startup Wolf Games announced that its flagship title, Public Eye, is set for a summer release.

The game, aimed at true-crime fans, lets users play detective and solve daily whodunits. It uses generative AI (genAI), including Google’s Gemini, to create storylines, video clips of interviews, and still images.

Elliot Wolf, executive producer of Amazon Prime Video's “On Call” (and son of TV megaproducer Dick Wolf), along with co-founders Andrew Adashek (CEO) and Noah Rosenberg (CTO), raised $4 million in the startup’s seed funding round.

Capitalizing on mobile: While Hollywood has been vocal in its opposition to AI, a TV producer expanding into the world of games seems like a natural shift, combining the creativity of TV shows with the ubiquity of mobile gaming.

It’s a large market, too—69% of US gamers use mobile phones or tablets for gaming, per Attest, and mobile games stand to be more lucrative for startups than console-based or VR games.

The pros and cons: AI in gaming can take the place of developers, artists, and voice actors, which will make room for funding expensive genAI compute power. But because Public Eye is free and includes in-game purchases, it might be a challenge for Wolf Games to see a return on its investment.

Our take: Wolf Games is breaking new ground with Public Eye. Combining role-playing games (RPG) with new storylines every day will attract users who are looking for more instant gratification than long-form titles offer.

However, it's not likely to take the place of short daily puzzles like The New York Times’ Wordle or Connections because of the attention required to watch and listen. Those users likely won’t have time to solve a game while waiting for their next task to hit their inboxes—but it could attract nighttime doomscrollers who are looking for something (moderately) lighter on their screens.

Dive deeper: Read our Worldwide Digital Gamers Forecast.