Nowadays when we talk about art no matter if it’s video games or movies or even any other type of art the reality is that one of the most talked about subjects is artificial intelligence. While many companies are thinking that artificial intelligence is the future for their industry the reality is much different underground where many developers as well as filmmakers are starting to have issues with the proponents of artificially generated products in their industries. Video games are one of the industries that can still get away with using artificial intelligence in a way that is both ethical and essential. So, let’s look at what artificial intelligence means for the video game industry and how it can shape video games.
First and foremost, it’s very important to understand what artificial intelligence means for the video game industry. While a lot of the conversation around artificial intelligence currently is about algorithm-generating content the reality is that for the video game industry, artificial intelligence for many years meant the algorithm that controls the behaviors of non-playable characters in their games. This means that when we talk about video game AI in most cases, we are talking about our enemy’s behavior or our environment changes based on the player and the product. While it may seem like these two things are very different the reality is that when you come down to it AI in the traditional sense of the word for the video game industry and the new trend of AI boiled down to very similar concepts.
When we talk about artificial intelligence currently both in the video games industry and just generally the reality is that it is not true artificial intelligence as intended by the actual term. What we mean by this is that what we are currently calling artificial intelligence is very far from being actual sentient artificial intelligence. What this means is that artificial intelligence currently is nothing more than a marketing label used to make a very simple technology sound much more impressive than it is. The way artificial intelligence works both to generate NPC behaviors as well as generate images based on prompts is through the use of an algorithm.
What this means is that through a lot of training, algorithms are trained to understand user behavior patterns. This is why for example when you play a video game if you use grenades or if you decide to shoot at an enemy behind cover they will have code that has been both prepared and engineered in a way that the algorithm that’s behind the artificial intelligence of the nonplayable enemy can recognize the player’s behavior and pick and choose among its catalog of own behaviors out to respond to those actions. It is the same thing when you decide to generate an image on a website where the algorithm will pick and choose pieces of images it was trained on to respond to your prompt.
One of the most useful a way that artificial intelligence is being implemented in video games is as a moderation tool for online video games. The way artificial intelligence works in this case is that basically what the developers will do is train the algorithm to recognize normal behaviors when it comes to players interacting with the video game and catalog them as normal interactions with the video game code. Then once the artificial intelligence is fully loaded with all these data it will be diploid online and flag every single behavior that is considered suspicious or outside of the realm of possibilities based on its training data. This is something that older versions of cheat prevention software are unable to do. This is why currently it is possible to cheat at Tarkov very easily while it is nigh impossible to do the same thing on Fortnite.
While there is a margin of error when it comes to pattern recognition algorithms the reality is that in most cases developers can then train data based on both normal behavior by excluding the suspicious yet legitimate interactions with the game and including data trained on how cheating software interacts with the video game. This is why in many cases video game companies can learn from cheating software by reverse engineering them and allowing their anti-cheat to learn to tear apart these new programs. This is why in many cases you will see people who develop cheat programs constantly update and create new programs to be able to constantly be ahead of the curve when it comes to beating the anti-cheat programs to the punch. For many people using AI in this way is probably one of the most productive ways it can be used. Many gamers hope to see technologies like this make the gaming environment safer and fairer for everyone.
