From unlocking your phone and searching for something on Google to the games you play in your spare time – AI helps to create new exciting experiences for you.
One thing is for certain, we are interested in how AI is changing our favourite games, so below we are going to be talking all about how AI is finally invading the gaming world.
AI-Powered Gameplay Experiences
AI is used in games a lot nowadays. An AI assistant will learn about you from the way you play games, what you like to do, and what skills you have. It can use this information to progressively shape the difficulty and pace of the game and serve up new challenges that are more tailored to you, or even recommend certain games.
This could be applied in online casino games where AI can determine a gamer's preferences based on historical data in their account, and then recommend the sort of games the player is likely to enjoy. If they play a lot of blackjack or table games, and the site has a live casino offering blackjack with a dealer, this may be recommended to the player. This is in a similar method to how Amazon can recommend books you might enjoy or Netflix knows the sort of shows someone likes.
Additionally, NPCs (ie, non-playing characters) could be given simple behavioral patterns that would cause them to act in realistic ways as well as personalities that mimic elaborate human complexity, making these digital people significantly more realistic to interact with.
AI in Game Development
From procedurally generated content to spatial design, character animation, and bug-finding, new technologies are helping developers create living, breathing worlds faster and more accurately than ever before.
For example, advances in AI content generation enable developers to populate vast worlds, environments, and settings without creating each asset in advance. Such technical progress not only enables developers to bring products to market at a lower cost, it also fosters greater diversity and value in online gaming experiences.
AI-powered character animation also adds a new dimension to avatars, using machine learning to generate more organic animations that more accurately reflect true behavior, combining motion-capture data and real-world reference footage to produce more natural, fluid movement.
Automated bug-detection tools allow for faster identification and elimination of glitches and bugs in the software, speeding up the time it takes to complete game development cycles. Several creative and innovative tasks traditionally performed by developers could be automated with AI technologies freeing up their time (and their resources) for other creative and innovative tasks and activities.
AI and Player Engagement
AI technologies and technologies such as computer vision and speech recognition have a huge impact on player retention and engagement. For instance, machine learning algorithms along with predictive analytics are being used to analyze player data and behavior to serve the right gaming content to the right player at the right time.
For instance, AI-based recommendation systems can propose game, level, or in-game purchase recommendations based on player tastes and play styles. When gamers are able to experience everything they want from a game, satisfaction is maximized and they are more likely to spend more time, more frequently, playing the game.
Additionally, adaptive difficulty algorithms that adjust the game difficulty in real-time based on player AI can likewise help to retain players. AI providing adaptations to individual players keeps matches challenging but at a level that encourages rather than discourages continued playing, maximizing player retention and thereby loyalty to the game – whether they're a beginner or a professional gamer that competes in tournaments like the Tekken World Tour.
AI in Game Design
With a few guidelines, AI can generate various game worlds and challenges in real time. Adopting machine intelligence gives developers the freedom to play with new game mechanics, forms of storytelling, and player experiences that would otherwise be too costly or difficult to pursue.
Another capability made possible by machine learning is the ability to produce dynamic, branching narratives, which afford a greater sense of responsiveness to players' decisions and actions in the game world. Such narratives would heighten the intensity of the player experience and offer a far greater degree of player agency in shaping the game narrative.
With AI to hand, developers could craft new ways of playing and experiencing games, things like voice recognition, gesture control, and facial recognition that blur the boundary between real and fantasy worlds.
AI and Game Security
AI technologies can also increase the veracity of a game. 'Anti-cheating' AI software helps to keep play environments free from cheating and fraud by analyzing players' moves to see how they behave themselves and flagging known cheats by identifying patterns in how those players usually behave.
These AI-based systems can also be used for stopping financial fraud – for instance, credit card fraud and online identity theft; as well as virtual-currency fraud (associated with online gaming, but also more generally online crime).
