A Good Companion: GGQ

Have you ever wished for a gaming sensei? Someone to talk strategy, celebrate the wins, and debate the losses with? Community is a big part of this world, connections formed in-game can lead to lasting friendships, healthy rivalries, even romance. But what about someone who pays attention just to your game? Someone who supports your growth, cheers your development, knows your strengths and advises where to train harder or smarter? Someone who’s there every step of the way. That’s what GGQ is offering with their AI Mate, an on-call 24/7 AI gaming companion with a singular, exclusive focus: you. Yongsu Lee, founder and CEO of GGQ, dropped by Intel Gaming Access to tell us about how we can get someone like that in our corner.

“GGQ is a Korea-based startup building the world’s first personalized AI companion for gamers,” Lee explains. “GGQ was founded to give every gamer a sense of support—whether they’re climbing the ladder or just enjoying their favorite game. At GGQ, I lead product vision and development, working closely with engineers and creators to ensure our AI Mate enhances play, creativity, and connection. Today, over 800,000 players use GGQ to train smarter, create content, and connect with their AI Mate.”

AI coaching has been gaining traction as players look to beat the grind or transcend plateaus. GGQ aims to go beyond this, looking to enhance every moment of play—from gameplay guidance and highlight creation, to emotional support and player expression. Lee tells us how GGQ set out to stand out. “GGQ was inspired by a simple yet powerful idea: ‘what if every gamer had a companion who played with them, guided them, and celebrated their growth’? Unlike many AI tools that live entirely in the cloud or offer one-size-fits-all advice, GGQ captures over 180,000 gameplay signals per match, and leverages real-time processing directly on CPU/NPU to deliver personalized feedback and moments of encouragement—without delay. Our proprietary six-layer hybrid stack connects data capture, coaching, editing, and sharing in one seamless experience.”

Lee continues: “GGQ is a personalized AI companion that enhances gameplay, simplifies content creation, and deepens community engagement—all in real time. From champion select to post-game review, GGQ offers smart suggestions, auto-edits highlight reels, and engages in dynamic chat like a trusted teammate. It’s designed for gamers of all levels—from casual to competitive—who want to improve, express themselves, and connect without needing advanced tools or technical skills.”

Thinking of AI Mate as a teammate is key. Before a match, you can go over strategy, and get your own personal pep talk. “GGQ suggests picks, builds, and opening strategies tailored to your playstyle and the latest meta,” Lee explains. “During gameplay, your AI Mate offers timely encouragement—like ‘That was a great play!’, or ‘You should go for this item now!’—using voice and visual tips to guide and uplift you in real time. After the game, your personalized highlight reel is already waiting. Soon, players will also be able to customize and edit their highlights directly within GGQ. At any time, players can chat with their AI Mate, and voice chat functionality is also on the way.”

Cheerleading, tips, and a content reel at the end? That is a hardworking coach/companion. Lee lifts the lid on how GGQ keeps up to speed: “GGQ is built on a hybrid architecture combining on-device and cloud capabilities. While our on-device system handles real-time gameplay data extraction and video processing to reduce latency and cost, gameplay data is also securely transmitted to the cloud for deeper analysis and model refinement. Our coaching models are continuously improved through Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), guided by expert reviewers. We’re also launching a Creator Marketplace where users can contribute and monetize custom personas, voices, and overlays—with revenue share.”

With live gameplay analysis, one development challenge Lee faced was to maintain low-latency inference; “real time” in gaming is not the same as real time in other environments—a customer service chatbot, for example—delays won’t be tolerated. The solution, as Lee says, came when they “applied model quantization and offloaded core layers to CPU/NPU using OpenVINO™. This achieved 58% latency reduction across target titles.” To ensure smooth on-device processing without gameplay lag, Lee tells us that GGQ “applied engine-specific optimization techniques developed by our team of AI hardware engineers, fine-tuning our capture, rendering, and inference paths to minimize interference with the core gameplay experience. This delivered a seamless experience for over 85% of desktop users, verified via internal latency testing and user feedback.”

Those are impressive results; how can players best ensure that these translate to their own personal systems and gameplay? “With GGQ’s hybrid architecture, real-time tasks like data extraction and screen capture are processed directly on-device—ensuring fast, low-latency responses while preserving privacy and reducing server costs. For players using Intel® Core™ Ultra systems, AI workloads can run more efficiently thanks to built-in NPUs, helping games and AI run side-by-side with minimal overhead. We partnered with Intel in 2024 and successfully showcased GGQ’s NPU-powered capabilities at CES 2025, demonstrating live in-game inference on the first wave of Intel Core Ultra processors. Since then, Intel’s engineering team has helped us with system-level optimization, while the Gaming Access Program has extended our global reach through co-marketing and developer support.”

As ever, we’re glad to be on the journey. GGQ officially launches in North America and Europe this month; then what’s planned for the AI gaming companion? Later in 2025, Lee tells us, voice chat with AI Mate will go live. “We’re also in discussions with global OEM partners to pre-install GGQ on select PC lines,” he shares. “In 2026, the GGQ UGC platform launches—enabling creators to remix, share, and sell content across games. In 2027, GGQ expands across the Top 20 global games, becoming a community hub where gamers, creators, and AI companions come together.” You heard it here first.

Check out GGQ here