The Use and Prospect of Artificial Intelligence in Games

 In today's world, artificial intelligence is gaining more and more momentum, becoming indispensable in various spheres of life. It is not yet an ideal tool for work, but it can already do many things automatically and with high accuracy, which requires significant time and human resources. It is also important to note the ability to train artificial intelligence. This will enable systems to improve and evolve quickly to increase results.

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AI and Games

The gaming industry has been developing for a long time and currently has a huge audience that spends a lot of money, making game development a highly profitable business. To increase profits and keep the audience engaged, developers need to create something new and large-scale while maintaining quality. Big companies need to blur the line between the real and fictional worlds to make the interaction between players and the game unique and less predictable. Artificial intelligence can help solve these challenges by being integrated into games. Of course, AI is already used in games for certain purposes, but these are very simple tasks compared to its potential.

AI applications and possible examples

The use of artificial intelligence can be divided into 2 types, each with its own functions: 

• AI that plays is a type of AI that is developed to participate in games, whether virtual, tabletop, or smart games. Such systems analyze game scenarios, develop strategies, and react to the actions of the opponent.
• AI that creates is a creative AI that generates new ideas and objects. It can participate in the creation of original content, often inspired by the data or patterns it has been trained on.

Playing AI

NPC

 You have often encountered characters called NPCs in games. These characters give you information that is needed in the story, assign quests, or accompany you during a certain period of the game.  The main problem is that they have already programmed answers to certain questions, which makes them predictable.  The use of artificial intelligence opens up the possibility of making characters more alive by influencing the character's state, actions, and behavior. Using voice chat or messaging will allow you to communicate with NPCs, asking any questions. Of course, each non-playable character will have its limited personality beyond which he will not go out.  Some developers are already trying to realize this and show ready demo versions. One such smart NPC was made in Unreal Engine 5.

Autoplay

At first glance, this feature might seem unnecessary and pointless, as games are designed for players to experience them on their own, gain new emotions, and face new challenges. However, there are some nuances. Some games have a lot of grind mechanics, which can become boring in the long run. In such cases, this mode could be useful. AI can also be helpful in boss fights and training. It can adapt to your playstyle by analyzing your actions and preferences, allowing it to imitate your approach in a way that feels natural. 

This kind of mechanic is already being patented by the well-known company Sony. According to a patent, AI will learn to mimic a player's gaming style using the PSN cloud service. You’ll be able to activate auto-play for specific tasks or mechanics for a certain period. After the task is completed, the player will receive a notification for confirmation. 

It is also said that this model can be used in third-party games, which opens up additional opportunities for players and game businesses like WoW boosting services. Campaigns providing WoW boosting will be able to improve bots based on this technology to perform various actions, such as collecting gold, leveling up characters, items, and other boring mechanics. This is also relevant for more complex tasks. Players will be able to order WoW boosts for raids, where you will be in the campaign of AI characters or your character will be under the control of the AI.  

Smart opponents

This is another promising use of artificial intelligence in video games, which aims to create more challenging opponents. These AI opponents can analyze a player's actions, learn their strategies and tactics, and then adapt to them, making gameplay more exciting and unpredictable. In addition, such smart opponents can interact with each other, creating teams that work together and use their abilities to achieve a common goal. At the same time, you need to take care of the game balance, because such enemies can create a strategy that will not allow the player to win.

Creating AI

Environment generation and landscape modification

Artificial intelligence that can generate environments and change the landscape in real-time is an exciting prospect for future video games. Such AI can adapt game worlds based on actions and preferences. In No Man's Sky, for example, it is now possible to procedurally generate 18 quintillion open worlds that do not repeat themselves.

Real-time Rendering

Real-time rendering is a process that allows graphics to be created and displayed instantly, which is critical for video games and interactive applications. Artificial intelligence plays an important role in improving real-time rendering. It can analyze the scene and adapt graphics settings based on device characteristics and current system load. For example, AI can dynamically change the quality of textures and the level of detail of objects, or even handle lighting to ensure optimal performance without noticeable loss of image quality. An example of this use of AI is Nvidia's DlSS. Since the introduction of Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), this technology has been actively developing and gaining new features. Now it's not just AI-based scaling but also frame generation and smart noise reduction with ray reconstruction. The campaign wants to further develop this technology, making DLSS a full-fledged replacement for traditional rendering methods. The game engine can be used to create and configure the world, and the AI will help bring that world to life. 

Content generation

Machine learning algorithms can be used to generate items and quests, which helps to keep games fresh and interesting. Procedural generation means that artificial intelligence creates content based on predefined rules, with developers controlling the process to avoid ethical violations. This prevents unethical situations from occurring. In turn, generative adversarial networks function as an improvement mechanism where the generator and discriminator interact by “competing” with each other, resulting in more realistic and creative content.

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Conclusion

Artificial intelligence is already having a significant impact on the gaming industry and opening new horizons for its development. Through their use, games are becoming more dynamic and adaptive, providing players with a unique and immersive experience. Smart NPCs, automated traversal, challenging enemies, and content generation—all these aspects demonstrate how AI can improve the quality of games and increase their appeal to a wide audience.