AI in Gaming: Enhancing Player Experience or Changing the Game?

AI works the same way for other gaming genres, with one of the biggest breakthroughs being its ability to improve the player experience through Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment or DDA. As a gamer plays, AI analyzes their behavior and adjusts the game’s difficulty level in real time; that way, the game never becomes too easy or difficult for them. Non-player characters (NPCs) have also improved significantly thanks to AI. Instead of standing around and acting more as decoration in a game with pre-defined paths, NPCs powered by AI can adapt to a player’s actions and interact with them in a realistic way. Some of the best examples of this can be seen in games like The Last of Us, which use AI to make NPCs respond intelligently to their environment and players’ decisions. Too often, tools and systems created to aid disabled people are done with good intentions but fail to account for the disabled experience.

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At GDC, though, I did see some visions for AI in gaming that captured my attention. There are companies investing in healthy AI that aim to either aid creators or open up new possibilities for creators, and I had the privilege of seeing some of those potential futures, as well as talking to some of the people behind them. AI still poses a lot of unanswered questions and is rightfully restrained by controversy (at this point, we’re still too reliant on corporations being responsible), but it was refreshing to see the other side of that equation. In true AI, a game’s response to a player’s action would be artificially generated by the computer’s large language model. But as Shults confirmed, “I haven’t run across that at Gen Con yet.” In the case of Freelancers, the app just presents content that was written out, voiced, and scored beforehand by humans. While the potential benefits of AI in gaming are enormous, there are also challenges.

AI in Gaming: Enhancing Player Experience or Changing the Game?

This creates the possibility of deeply personalized experiences for players. Lastly, companies like HeraHaven are offering AI girlfriends and AI boyfriends — a more spicy twist. You can read more on Ubisoft’s website about how the company’s NEO NPCs specifically focus on how AI characters can contribute to this, but it’s not just limited to that. Players may interact with something in their environment that may dynamically engage AI systems, creating the sort of evolving gameplay experiences we’re typically only used to when our Dungeons & Dragons DM is particularly adept at spinning narrative webs. It’s certainly not perfect, especially considering how dependent it is on writers very carefully crafting the detailed outlines through which the AI works, but it’s certainly more dynamic than most narrative games can ever hope to be. It’s hard to truly determine how companions can further increase accessibility, especially since their roles differ between games.

Overall, it opens up a ton of possibilities for RPGs and still requires the work of writers to create the world and characters. According to Kotick, the integration of AI tools in video games can make them more user-friendly and enhance players’ learning experience. Using the example of “Call of Duty,” Kotick pointed out that players often play only a fraction of what the game has to offer due to its complexity, which could be improved with the use of AI. Multiplayer games have quickly become the preferred method of gaming for millions around the world, and AI is being used to make this online experience even better.

• Yes, that buzzword is something that you can’t walk two steps without hearing.
• We cannot accurately predict if AI will truly help or hinder their experiences.
• By addressing these issues proactively, developers can prevent churn before it happens.
• Targeting enemies and returning to the player after their defeat like Spirits in Elden Ring, flanking and surprising people like Ellie in The Last of Us Part I, and even Atreus’ constant hint suggestions for puzzles in God of War Ragnarök are possible because of AI.
• He also explained that modern-day AI, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, started with the idea of beating games like “Warcraft,” “Dota,” and “Starcraft.”

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For years, disabled individuals have actively fought to have their voices included across all facets of gaming. From studio work, to content creation, to even what I do, journalism, disabled people are undoubtedly the best advocates for themselves. We cannot accurately predict if AI will truly help or hinder their experiences.

One of the biggest is the concern that while AI can greatly assist, it is still best utilized augmenting human developers, rather than replacing them, freeing developers to focus on strategy. For example, consider a player who quit after repeatedly failing to beat a tough boss level. An AI-driven system could detect this frustration and send a personalized message offering tips, a temporary power-up or even a free skip for that level. On the other hand, a player who left because they ran out of things to do might receive an update about new content or an exclusive preview of an upcoming feature.