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- AI has been critical in game development since the initiation of games, visibly seen in NPCs, enemy fights, and character interactions.
- It reduces the development time by assisting with character design, helping test different prototypes and hypotheses, minimizing coding efforts, and much more.
- Using AI can enhance the game’s interactiveness, appeal, and overall player experience by making it more customized to each player’s unique skills.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly dominating all walks of our lives. Be it in research, academics, or game development, we can no longer ignore the influence of AI in this era. The use of AI in game development brings a fresh perspective to the field, as well as certain ethical concerns around it.
History Of AI And Games
Since the initial creation of games in 1948, AI has been an integral part of video game development. Even the earliest classic games, like Super Mario Bros and Crash Bandicoot, which I fondly remember enjoying relied on AI to some extent during the developmental stages. The tech made it possible for us to interact with the NPCs and different elements of the game worlds, making them more engaging.
Hence, there is no doubt that AI had made its mark in the industry even before its popularity. With rapid advancements in AI tech, it is definitely making waves in the gaming industry on a large scale.
AI In Game Development
AI opens the possibilities to make video games much more interactive and customizable to each player’s unique experience. The AI learning can adapt to the player’s progress, skill level, and chosen narratives to provide customized gameplay for them (Filipović, 2023). Consequently, the devs can create levels that adapt to each player’s gaming style, which could contribute highly to the game’s success as no two experiences would be the same.
The data collected in the 2024 Unity Gaming Report showed that an increasing number of gamedevs are resorting to AI to boost productivity, increase revenues, minimize code generation time, create artwork and game levels, test and automate gameplay narratives, and more.
Miha Rataj, Principal Software Engineer at Outfit7 Limited, mentioned to Unity, “I’ve used AI for quick prototypes when I wanted to test out something without writing any boilerplate code. It was super useful for me.” This is just one of the millions of examples of how AI has been streamlining different stages of game development in the modern era.
Furthermore, AI tools can process large amounts of visual data, allowing designers to create character concepts with ease and efficiency (Partlan et al., 2021). Thereby, shortening the development period by a drastic margin. With some manual adjustments, the character designs and game environments could be ready in no time.
Other than these AI can automate repetitive tasks, spot mistakes in long codes, and help figure out complex problems. Minmax, an AI-based algorithm for game theory and decision-making helps game creators and developers understand the active player interaction based on the most ideal player move.
Can AI Design Better Games Than Humans?
With such a growing use of AI in game development comes ethical concerns. The foremost issue is that it will cut down jobs. Machines are always learning through the various kinds of user inputs, and a day will come when they will actually become close to perfect.
AI tools, while powerful, have their limitations. One key challenge is their difficulty in accurately replicating real-life mechanics. For example, tools like OpenAI’s Sora often struggle with understanding complex concepts like physics, human emotions, and interactions, as per the official technical report.
This is a common issue across most AI systems. Getting these elements right is crucial for creating authentic and engaging game mechanics, which are essential for the success of any game.
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