What’s this about: The conversation around artificial intelligence (AI) often involves things like business applications, nefarious tools like deepfakes, medical advancements, government regulation, and other “serious” topics. But what about pure entertainment? AI is becoming increasingly prominent in the gaming industry, with nearly every game developer implementing some aspect of the technology. And what is more entertaining than highly realistic, open-worlds run by complex non-player characters driven by AI? With the help of AI tools, gaming is quickly evolving into a new realm humans have never experienced before.

Go Deeper to Learn More →

AI has often been developed with a focus on performing as well as human players, but its contributions are wide-ranging in nearly every aspect of gaming, especially improving the user experience. Developers can create unbelievably realistic environments full of AI characters, use AI to automatically adjust the difficulty levels, develop natural dialogues with natural language processing (NLP), and increase access to video games for disabled individuals.

More Complex Non-Player Characters (NPCs)

Why do we get bored of playing a game before ever reaching its conclusion? If you ask any video game player, the obvious answer is that the game, and the non-human characters in it, often become far too predictable. This is the death blow to so many games that never go on to become successful, many of which could’ve been saved with AI.

One of the biggest impacts AI has on gaming is its ability to control the behavior of non-player characters (NPCs). By advancing NPCs with AI tools, they can surprise the player with unpredictable actions.

Let’s take a look at some of the main aspects of AI and NPCs:

Pathfinding: AI enables NPCs to move around the map while analyzing terrain and obstacles, and it helps entities in the game avoid colliding with each other. Have you ever played a sports game where the non-human players run into each other? It can be quite entertaining at times, but the goal with AI is to remedy this common problem.

Finite State Machine (FSM) Algorithm: FSM is one of the top algorithmic approaches to controlling NPCs. The developer programs an NPC with specific reactions to every possible situation so that it is always prepared with the best response to a human player.

The Monte Carlo Search Tree (MCST) Algorithm: MCST relies on adaptive learning and uses random trials to react to situations. The algorithm looks at what moves it could make, analyzes all possible human player response moves, considers all possible responses, and continues this cycle.

Reinforcement Learning: Game developers often utilize reinforcement learning in advanced games. It takes place when an agent is trained through rewards and/or punishments, which is heavily relied on in industries like robotics.

Highly Realistic Open Worlds

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of AI in gaming for everyday players is its ability to enable developers to create highly realistic, open-world, and narrative-based games. AI’s role becomes even more important here as PCs and consoles continue to evolve and become incredibly powerful, with the ability to display detailed environments.

One of the best examples of these revolutionary open-world environments is the game Watch Dogs Legions by Ubisoft. It is considered by many as the first next-generation, open-world adventure.

The studio developed the Census System to create a highly authentic London environment with inhabitants that are highly individualized, and it established detailed biographies, daily routines, and relationships for NPCs. All of this means an action that you take one day could either come back to haunt or benefit you the next.

Take a look at the game trailer below to see what type of highly realistic and individualized world can be developed with AI:

AR and VR - The Next Horizon of Interactive Gaming

AI is the driving factor behind the development of today’s augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) games, which are the next horizon of interactive gaming.

Augmented reality (AR): AR games bring together virtual and real-world elements, with the best example being Pokemon Go, which has over a billion downloads since 2016.

Virtual Reality (VR): VR has been constantly evolving since first being introduced in the 1980s. VR is focused on player immersion through head-mounted units or headsets, and VR gaming is becoming increasingly more affordable to the masses, with the best examples being Oculus Rift and PSVR.

Dynamic Game Difficulty Balancing

AI-designed video games also enable player-experience modeling, which automatically adjusts the level of difficulty in real-time. Another reason players often give up on a game is that the difficulty level does not accurately match their current skill.

Have you ever played a game that is just the right level of difficulty? You stubbornly keep at it because you feel so close to beating it. That is exactly what dynamic game difficulty balancing attempts to achieve, and it does this by studying and memorizing a player’s actions.

One of the limitations in game design is that a gamer often “learns” to “beat” the game by picking up on patterns. Adaptive AI can reduce the risk of exploitation by adjusting its response to the player, making it more unpredictable.

One of the most notable games that implemented dynamic game difficulty balancing is Crash Bandicoot, developed by Naughty Dog. The game was actually the first to use such a technique and give it a name.

Image: Crash Bandicoot, Activision — Image: *Crash Bandicoot,* Activision

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Natural Language Processing (NLP), AI that simulates written and spoken human communication, enables AIs to speak naturally with players.

Here is a look at some of the ways NLP is used in gaming:

Natural dialogue: With NLP, there is no need for pre-recorded dialogue, and when paired with AI-assisted character animation, studios are able to develop incredibly natural characters that are responsive to the real-time environment.

Expanding player access: There is another major area of AI in gaming that doesn’t receive enough attention, and it involves the technology’s ability to expand player access to those with disabilities. NLP plays a key role in this matter, as it enables players to get text from speech.

Educational games: Educational gaming is not just for pure entertainment, but rather serves a purpose in schooling. In one example, NLP was deployed in an educational game to answer questions about English automatically. The research demonstrated that the NPC scored above 75% of users, and it was concluded that NPCs in educational games increase user interest, which is often lacking.

The World of AI Gaming

Artificial intelligence promises to take gaming to levels previously unimaginable, and as players demand more from developers, the latter will respond with expansive open-worlds; AI-controlled NPCs with incredibly believable emotions, relationships, and behaviors; automatically adjusted difficulty levels for amateurs and experts alike; expanded access for disabled individuals; and far more.

As AI and computing capabilities continue to expand rapidly, the gap between virtual and reality continues to shorten. Since the conversation around AI is often over government and business implementations, we can often lose track of its endless possibilities to bring next-level entertainment to the masses. AI, unlike any other technology we have ever seen, has an unprecedented value and ability to increase the entertainment of our modern gaming.

With the addition of AI, it becomes much more than gaming. New gaming technology provides us with the ability to enter alternate realities that are incredibly realistic. Many of us who play games have wished that we could be in them. With AI, we are no longer playing games, but rather we are becoming part of them, with each one of us having our own unique experience, giving new meaning to “immersive gaming.”

The AI-Gaming Revolution