First Person Viewpoint

I built AI story game number 500. Honest take.

I copied the formula. Took an open source AI model, fed it a lot of narrative data, did some finetuning, deployed it to a server, wired it up to a React Native app, spent a few days on the core loop, added AI-generated images, and shipped to the App Store and Google Play.

That is exactly what everyone else does. I am not going to pretend otherwise.

There are hundreds of AI story apps right now. Most of them work the same way I described. Some of them have better models, better UI, more funding. I am not the first. I am not the most technical. I am not doing something nobody has done before.

So why is First Person Viewpoint still worth your time?

The honest answer

Most AI story apps are built for a general user. They want to serve everyone: gamers, book readers, casual browsers. The product ends up generic because the audience is generic.

I built for one kind of reader specifically. The person who consumes romance manhwa and wants to stop just reading it and actually be in one. The person who reads dark fiction and wants the dread to be personal.

The format is different from most apps in this space. It is not a game with dialogue choices. It is not a chatbot with a fictional skin. It is a continuous narrative scroll, you are the main character, and the story moves based on what you type. Closer to webtoon than to anything else on the app store.

That is not a technology advantage. Anyone could build the same thing. But most apps in this space did not pick a lane and stay in it.

What I still do not know

Whether picking a specific lane is enough to stand out in a market this crowded is genuinely unclear to me.

The technology problem is solved. A few days of work, some finetuning, a server, an app. Anyone can do it. The real problem is finding the 1,000 people who want this exact format, this exact tone, in this exact genre mix.

I have no special answer for that. It is the same distribution problem everyone here is working through.

If you are building in the AI consumer space and you have cracked that part, I am genuinely interested in what worked.

First Person Viewpoint is free on iOS and Android - firstpersonviewpoint.com

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What actually moved the needle for you when finding your first 1,000 users?

So I built this little thing called an AI narrative story maker and I want to be honest about why.

I grew up on fantasy books, manga, manhwa, anime, JRPGs, MMOs, and like every kid who reads too much, I spent half my brain wondering what I would do if I were in there. What would I do at that tavern? Which side would I pick? Would I trust the cursed knight? Childish, sure, but if you're reading this you've probably done the same.

Then you grow up, you stop. You read a manhwa here and there. Life happens.

Recently I finally managed to leave my 9-5 and suddenly I had time again, and as a long-time fan of Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (if you know, you know), I had this stupid idea. What if I built a kind of story-RPG where the AI is the narrator and you're the character who decides what happens next. I know plenty of apps already do this. But I always wanted to make a game, always wanted to write a fantasy book, and I never did either. So this is more about doing the thing than about market logic.

The app is called First Person Viewpoint (FPV). It's on iOS and Android. You make up your own world, create your character, and the AI handles the narration while you take actions. Basically the same family as AI Dungeon and the others — but vertical-scroll, no chat bubbles, reads more like a manhwa than a chat window.

Genres are pretty open: fantasy, sci-fi, romance, manga, horror, custom, even NSFW (the app is 18+ only). There's a small community feed where users can publish their own worlds.

Honest about the business side:

• We don't own an LLM. We're not OpenAI. We use third-party APIs and somebody has to pay the per-token bill.

• Free tier has ads, just enough to cover token cost on free users so I don't have to sell a kidney every month.

• Paid tiers are ad-free with more actions and a better narration model.

• We don't sell your data. Sessions live mostly on your device; the server only has what it needs.

It's pretty fair I think. I'm not trying to flip it for a billion. I just wanted it to exist.