- A new EA patent wants to completely automate playtesting in games using AI agents that can exhibit many playstyles.
- The studio argues that game designers can use these AI agents to replace manual and costly playtesting in games.
- EA has been exploring this idea for a few years now, causing concerns across the gaming industry about an AI takeover.
We have found a new patent by EA that wants to automate one of the most crucial aspects of game development, QA and playtesting, using AI. These AI agents are capable of adopting various playstyles for efficient testing.
The recently published patent describes employing AI agents with multiple models, each exhibiting a different persona and playstyle to replace manual human testers.
It is of great interest for game designers to be able to model playstyles used during gameplay. By incorporating different personas in playtesting, game designers can better test how players can interact with one or more aspects of a game.
Why it matters: EA wants to automate playtesting in games, citing concerns about costly manual QA and playtesting processes during game development. This suggests EA may replace playtesters with AI bots in the future.
The patent, ‘Generating Personas with Multi-modal Adversarial Imitation Learning,’ discusses evolving the playtesting scene by automating it with AI. EA argues that manual playtesting is costly and requires extensive management for AAA-sized projects.
Playtesting can consume about half a year for AAA titles. Developers can easily mitigate these concerns by using AI agents to speed up that process. These AI agents are also much cheaper than human testers.
Manual playtesting […] is both expensive and time-consuming, especially for large and intricate games. […] Game creators can easily and intuitively configure agents for automated playtesting.
We could see EA potentially replacing human QA and playtesting in the near future with these AI agents. The gamers are concerned because the studio has been exploring automating playtesting in the last few years through some of its other similar patents.
EA has also patented many other innovative ideas over the years, including a new system to provide a personalized guidance system for players to help them become pros in games and another one to automate the animation of in-game characters.
Do you think EA’s patent to automate the playtesting and quality assurance phases in game development will lead to humans being replaced by AI? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or join the discussion on the Tech4Gamers forum.
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Shameer Sarfaraz has previously worked for eXputer as a Senior News Writer for several years. Now with Tech4Gamers, he loves to devoutly keep up with the latest gaming and entertainment industries. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and years of experience reporting on games. Besides his passion for breaking news stories, Shahmeer loves spending his leisure time farming away in Stardew Valley. VGC, IGN, GameSpot, Game Rant, TheGamer, GamingBolt, The Verge, NME, Metro, Dot Esports, GameByte, Kotaku Australia, PC Gamer, and more have cited his articles.
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