Most video games of all genres today feature some kind of AI components or related applications. In single-player racing games, simple AI controls the player’s competitors. It also controls enemy bots in shooting games and gameplay in strategy games.
AI is continually evolving. It is evident when you try some of the most advanced games today. If you have played Splinter Cell: Blacklist or Halo: Reach, the impact of smart AI in them is apparent.
This is the kind of AI this post focuses on. This next-level intelligence used in games is not yet mainstream because it is still new, but we will encounter it everywhere soon.
What is Smart AI?
AI is an acronym for Artificial Intelligence. It is a software feature that generates adaptive, responsive, and intelligent behavior in non-playable characters in a game. Video games have used some kind of AI from as far back as 1952.
Smart AI takes intelligence to the next level because they do a lot more than make a game playable. Here are five ways in which smart AI has impacted the games of today.
Games Are Smarter Than Ever
Today’s games are adopting new technologies faster than the games of the previous generations. The market is ready for games running in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.
Smart AI is the puppeteer that manages the scope of intelligence in games and makes them work. Traditional code cannot deliver the kind of experience gamers expect from such games. This explains why playing some online games such as those featured on Playmgm is a whole different experience than they were a decade ago.
Smart AI is involved, not only in gameplay but in every stage of game development from design through testing. These games are literally smart through and through.
Games Are Very Realistic
Note that this point describes the games as ‘very realistic,’ not ‘more realistic.’ Imagine a shooter game where the NPC can analyze the game environment and learn from it. It can then apply what it learns to react to it.
Now, stop imagining it and play Batman: The Video Game to experience it first-hand. This is possibly the game with the most intelligent character in the market. The next generation of games may also make these characters more human complete with self-preservation.
Revolutionary Game Development
It is no secret that game developers have pioneered the use of AI. For instance, reinforcement learning, a popular neural technique used in video game development, is a subset of machine learning.
Today’s game developers are at the forefront of fine-tuning game development platforms that heavily rely on AI. These tools are crucial as they are the interaction point between human creativity and machine language.
As game development evolves, so do the games themselves. Behind the scenes, developers are presently focused on developing platforms that make it easy to create smarter, very realistic, and highly intelligent games.
Redefining Cheating in Games
Common AI is capable of beating a human player in every video game. In most games where the human player goes against AI, it is often dumbed down to make it practical for the human player.
This fact complicates the matter of cheating in games. It is almost impossible to define what exactly it is unless the human player is playing against another human.
Smart AI redefines cheating in games. Developers are now able to thoroughly test and debug games to make it almost impossible for humans to find their way around game rules. AI is used to find exploitable glitches and exhaustively run down NPCs to avoid surprises after the game release.
In Summation
Despite all the amazing things AI does in video games today, it is still at its early stages. We cannot conceptualize what Smart AI will be capable of five, perhaps ten years from now. We can just revel at how far it has brought the industry and play the games with its best features today.
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