The intelligence that we humans display is natural. In other words, it’s developed on its own. The term ‘artificial intelligence’, or ‘AI’, refers to intelligence that’s displayed by computers or even robots run by computers, like for example Google AI.
Electronic cannot reason for itself without any human interference; they need human programming. This article will look at AI and how growing computer intelligence could affect the gaming industry.
Sectors That Will Directly Benefit From AI
There are many sectors in the video games industry that are sure to benefit greatly from AI. These include several areas in the development cycle, as well as some areas post-release.
AI can improve the creation process, and once a game has been released, it can continue making that game immersive, unpredictable and engaging. The entire lifespan of a video game can be enhanced in some way by AI, which just goes to show how impressive this technology is.
Tailoring the Gaming Experience
Video games these days tend to offer huge amounts of content. Some are incredibly ambitious projects that immerse players into highly realistic worlds and demand hundreds of hours of playing time, if not more.
Games, especially open-world ones, can be very personalized in the sense that one player’s experience can be vastly different from another’s. AI can make the gaming experience even more personalized.
It can use data from players’ past actions and decisions to create unique scenarios. The more you play, the more the AI will get to know you and the more the gaming experience can be tailored to your playing style.
Testing Games
It’s common practice for video games to undergo rigorous testing before they’re released to the general public. Many games that come out these days are incredibly complex and require significant amounts of testing to ensure that everything works properly.
AI algorithms can be used to test games’ technical aspects, but where this falls short is in the way games affect humans. No matter how advanced AI may get, it can never fully recreate a human’s reactions.
So, while AI can iron out faults with programming and coding, it can’t give developers things like the emotional reactions or feelings of excitement that often come with playing video games.
Improving PCG
The term ‘PCG’ refers to ‘Procedural Content Generation’, which many video games use nowadays. It’s where programmers create guidelines for content generation, and a computer program, following these guidelines, automatically makes data. A prime example is the mobile game Temple Run.
In this, you’re constantly running through a vast temple, being chased by demon monkeys. Every time you play, the level is different because the computer generates each element as you play.
AI can improve PCG by making better decisions about what content to generate. In other words, the content that’s created can be less random and more tailored to the player to make the game easier or more challenging.
AI And NPCs
An NPC is a Non-Player Character. It’s any character in a video game that the player doesn’t control. A typical video game can have hundreds or even thousands of NPCs. They’re usually designed to be as lifelike as possible. Some may only briefly interact with the main player character and have few lines of dialogue; others may repeatedly appear throughout the game’s storyline.
NPCs are limited in what they can say and do. They have set responses based on what you do or don’t do. It’s believed that thanks to AI, NPCs could become a lot more realistic and that they could have lots more actions and phrases to make them react in considerably more ways to what goes on in the game.
Updating Graphics
For many video game players, graphics are of the utmost importance. Even though today’s consoles are very advanced pieces of hardware with advanced graphics cards, there’s always room for improvement.
Upscaling is where low-resolution videos or images are displayed in a much higher resolution. AI can do this much more effectively than existing programs can. It can upscale videos and images by looking at vast numbers of photos and using them to create new, more detailed graphics.
AI upscaling has the ability to make video games look more realistic and immersive than ever. It can also produce these high-quality video/image graphics quicker than existing methods, thereby reducing development time.
It’s not just video games that can benefit. Casino games may one day have AI upscaling. This could make popular slots such as Starburst even more eye-catching than they already are.
Improved Safety
For many people who play multiplayer games, toxicity is a big problem. What game developers want is for their online game environments to be safe and welcoming for everyone. AI can improve safety by looking out for offensive language and issuing warnings to those that use it.
Those who have been warned may even be banned if they continue being offensive towards others. The challenge with this, however, is deciding how to program AI systems – who decides what counts as abuse and which words/phrases should be considered offensive?
No More Cheating
Cheating always happens in video games. Some players are so desperate to make progress that they’ll use known cheats or try to come up with their own to deceive the game and get further ahead.
Cheating during solo play isn’t much of an issue; it’s problematic when people try to cheat while playing against others online, especially in major competitions and tournaments.
AI can clamp down on cheating simply by looking out for irregular patterns and analyzing data traffic. Basically, it’s a matter of picking up on the signs of cheating when it takes place and acting accordingly.
Conclusion
It’s clear that AI has the potential to give the gaming industry a wealth of benefits. Technology is constantly being developed, and video games are becoming increasingly advanced. This makes the gaming experience more immersive, impressive, engaging and enjoyable for players around the world.
It’s an exciting time to be a video games fan as AI certainly has the potential to take video games to the next level.
