Think back to the last time you played an open-world RPG game. You strolled up to a villager, probably expecting some intelligent dialogue, and they said something about the weather for the tenth time. You probably got annoyed at this repetition, and it snapped you out of the experience. You aren’t a powerful hero in a fantasy realm, you’re a lowly peasant clicking things in a beautifully-designed spreadsheet.
With the introduction of true Artificial Intelligence to gaming, this type of experience will be a thing of the past.
Even considering the tie-in of developing video game AI, Ghosts in the earliest Pac-Man games, the AI we are using is not up to par with other modern technologies available. AI, in gaming, is shifting from smart behaviors to generative creativity. We are shifting from smart AI opponents to open-ended worlds. AI will do more than improve graphics, it will completely change the way we interact with games at a fundamental level.
Goodbye to scripted NPCs
The most obvious impacts AI will have on gaming will be streamed to non-player characters (NPCs). A decision tree can easily outline steps for an NPC to be able to respond to a player, but these processes are rigid and repetitive. These systems are not very advanced, and do not take the interactivity of modern games very far.
Generative AI uses tools like ChatGPT to create real-time, unscripted dialogue for characters in games. Picture a detective game where you attempt to interrogate a suspicious character by asking any question you want. The game analyzes the interrogator’s personality, knowledge, and motivations, and responds appropriately. The character may tell a lie, get defensive, or even tell a hilarious joke. There are no pre-written scripts for characters. Instead, the AI has a contextual understanding of the conversation and behavior of the characters.
Gaming is no longer a multiple-choice scenario or a scripted performance. With these types of advanced AI characters and unscripted dialogue, each experience is tailored around the individual player.
Next Level Procedural Generation
Although procedural generation is a relatively old concept in the gaming industry, AI tools are giving it a new life. Procedural generation has been used in games like No Man’s Sky and Minecraft to create massive worlds. Traditionally, games that used procedural generation were perceived as repetitive and empty; however, artificial intelligent tools now inject creative purpose for procedural generation.
Using AI tools, developers can go beyond simply instantiating game objects such as trees or rocks in a game. AI can create realistic, cohesive landscapes, structures, and weather that are coherent and do not contradict the laws of physics.
Developers are employing these resources to construct enormous, intricate cities where every structure has an interior, or to build forests where the real ecosystem functions. This allows smaller studios to develop games with the same size and complexity that once took hundreds of people to create.
A Game That Learns You.
Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA), is one of the most thrilling applications of AI, and one of the most subtle. Weirdly, most of today's most popular games have difficulty settings that remain unchanged. You can pick Easy, Medium, or Hard. But the way a person plays the game is very unpredictable.
AI-driven DDA works to determine your preferred style of play and does so in real time. If the game sees you defeating enemies with little to no damage, it won’t simply throw more health at that enemy. That would be so boring, right? Instead, the AI would make that enemy a more intelligent being so that they will actively try to head to the sides and use cover. On the other hand, if you are stuck at that same puzzle for twenty minutes, it would highlight a hint or replace the puzzle with an easy one to maintain the overall flow in the game.
The focus of this AI is to be anything overly simplifying the game. The game is designed to keep you in that ideal flow state where the challenge is just right.
Security and Personalization in Online Gaming
AI influences more than just story-based games and shooters; it also has a big impact on online gaming and betting. In these industries, trust and experience are everything.
Using machine learning, operators are able to identify fraudulent behavior and ensure fair play. Compared to human teams, these systems are able to identify and create betting patterns to detect bots or fraudulent behavior. In addition, user interfaces are being tailored by AI.
Modern gaming systems, like Netfliz for movie recommendations, are able to recommend tables and slots. Using sophisticated analytics and blockchain technology, a crypto casino Betpanda will ensure its game suggestions are tailored to each user's preferences. Personalization, along with AI and crypto security, will change digital gambling as we know it.
Developer's New Best Friend
While players enjoy the output, the biggest change is behind the curtain. We all know game development is expensive and takes a long time to get an end result. Crunching is an industry wide problem in which developers will work until they are exhausted to meet deadlines.
- AI has the ability to create more than just assets. AI is able to create 3D models, textures and background art in seconds.
- Coding: AI coding assistants provide help with debugging and other complex scripting issues, which increases the speed of the technical build.
- Animation: New technology allows for real life human actors to be recorded, and then used to make characters that can be animated without the use of expensive motion capture suits.
Because of the amount of resources needed to make a good quality game, the use of these resources being more available allows for the creation of many new indie games, as the limit to the amount of creativity used is gone. Instead of a focus of making the game as cheap as possible, they can focus on making it as good as possible. When a group of three is able to make something that can directly compete with a big studio, there will be more creativity in the games that are made.
The Ethical Boss Fight
The new technology will allow for quicker integration of things into the industry, and while there is a lot of potential there, it also brings many ethical concerns, especially with the use of AI in gaming. Labor is the primary concern. Many voice actors have started to get concerned and raise alarms about the use of technology that allows voices to be cloned without their approval. Many concept artists have begun to notice image generators that mimic their style and use it.
The concern is that the big studios will begin to use AI to be able to cut costs by cutting staff, and replacing human creativity with algorithmic output, and for their industry to thrive, they need to find a way to balance things out. AI should be a tool that assists human artists, and not something that replaces them.
There are also risks involving copyright. Who has the rights to an AI-generated quest line? Who gets sued if an AI-generated character looks like a celebrity? The law has still not adapted to these technologies.
Leveling Up
A new age in gaming is here. The next decade's games will feel more intelligent and not just look better. The new games will have living and breathing worlds that react to the players in innovative ways.
AI is giving players the control. The type of game is set to provide customized stories to even casual players. The question is, what type of game will you play?
