Charles
dk.charles@ulster.ac.uk
Enhancing Gameplay: Challenges for Artificial Intelligence in Digital Games
Abstract
Although Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been required in the majority of digital games over the past four decades of game development, the technologies utilised for its implementation have generally been very limited. Game designers and developers have had to be pragmatic in the use AI within games due to the limited processing power allocated to AI - the great majority of processor time being required for rendering and general game logic. Increased sophistication in game mechanics and graphics in recent commercially successfully computer and video games have led to a higher expectation of game AI both among game designers and players. Enhanced computer power and in particular advances in video card technology has provided the game designer with the possibility to meet these desires by using more sophisticated AI within games. This paper proposes several keys areas of opportunity for future innovations in digital game AI including: Story-telling, Dynamic Learning and Affecting Emotion. These topics will be reviewed by first discussing the current context for the utilisation of AI in digital games, then by outlining a few recent and potential future applications of AI within digital game technology and gameplay.
One of the primary goals in producing a commercially successful digital game is to create a game with a high quality of gameplay - that the game plays well. Ultimately, this also has to be the primary purpose for coming up with new uses of AI within games and exploiting AI technologies within games. Innovative AI approaches may bring increased responsiveness or speed in the game control mechanism, more believable AI, flexible character behaviour, or enhanced graphics, but in general the prospective game player will not care about these improvements except they are an integral and obvious part of what makes the game enjoyable to play. So the goal of AI innovation within digital game design and development must be to enhance gameplay while maintaining or improving game efficiency.
In this paper we discuss a few novel approaches to the use of AI in digital games which may be employed to enhance the gameplay experience where previously more straightforward methods have been used due to lack of processing power or simply limited understanding. New issues arising from enhanced use of AI in digital games and the gameplay implications will be explored, such as affecting player emotion and moral dilemmas, player created stories, dynamic and adaptive game worlds, and character believability.
Short Biography
My PhD was obtained in the field of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Paisley (Scotland), and I have published a number of papers specifically in the area of Unsupervised Artificial Neural Networks. While lecturing at the University of Paisley I performed a leading role in the development a Computer Game degree. Since 2001 I have been lecturing in the Informatics Faculty of the University of Ulster (Northern Ireland), and have been specialising digital game AI research and teaching. Perhaps more importantly, from a game research perspective, I have been playing games additively for the last 30+ years - from "Pong" to "Doom 3".
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