Introduction
The gaming industry has made incredible strides in recent years. Tech advancements, continuously changing trends, and growing demand from gamers for more engaging experiences have all contributed to this rapid change.
The global gaming market is worth over $300 Billion and is continuously growing and connecting millions of players worldwide. The enormous amount of data that games collect is another revenue-generation resource now.
AI-Powered game Creatures was a tremendous breakthrough in artificial life research. Here a player “hatches” small furry animals and teaches them how to behave. The game characters can talk, feed, fight and protect themselves against vicious creatures. Now many startups are coming-up in the gaming industry. For instance,
- In January 2021, Latitude, a firm that creates video games with AI-generated infinity stories, raised 3.3 million USD in venture funding.
- An interactive play business called Osmo has raised 32.5 million USD in investment. Another Lithuanian AI gaming firm, Gosu Data Lab, has acquired $5 million in funding.
- Gosu primarily focuses on analyzing gaming data for AI to aid players in improving their skills.
Use cases of AI in the Gaming Industry
Non-Playing Characters (NPCs)
The most common application of game AI is with NPCs or non-playing characters. These in-game characters behave intelligently, as though actual players were controlling them.
AI engines and algorithms control the actions of these characters. AI algorithms direct the behavior of these NPCs based on the steps the human player takes.
As AI’s use in gaming increases even further, we will witness more realistic and progressive NPCs. NPCs that develop, learn, and adapt throughout the game will be more sophisticated. AI NPCs will make the game challenging, lengthen the overall playtime, and open new opportunities to optimize video game mechanics.
Image Enhancement & AI Upscaling
AI creates realistic visuals from photographs made through 3D modeling. Grand Theft Auto 5 tested such a method. They created a neural network that can precisely reproduce the environment in southern California and Los Angeles.
The most slashing image improvement AI algorithms can transform synthetic 3D images into lifelike representations.
One more application of AI is to improve visuals in video games through the technique of “AI Upscaling.” The technique’s core concept is to convert a low-resolution image into a considerably higher-resolution image with a similar appearance.
Cloud Gaming
Instead of playing games locally on the computer system, the future of gaming is streaming. You may play your favorite games on any device with a display and an internet connection. Cloud computing enables one to play high-end games online, even on smartphones.
AI is helping these cloud servers perform better so that outdated hardware will keep up the gaming experience.
AI algorithms are based on The Deep Neural Network (DNN). DNN has the potential to learn from the enormous amounts of data from earlier iterations of the games. Then, DNN can assist with video compression for such video bits. These can be sent over the lowest network available and upscaled at the device’s end for ultra-HD gaming.
AR/VR and Metaverse
While AI can contribute to developing a seamless cloud-gaming experience, there are other ways in which technology can influence the gaming industry.
Think about compelling use cases in game development. Imagine a world in which you, as a player, could design your virtual world and invite your friends to join you inside it.
AI is capable of creating virtual scenes. NVIDIA researchers have developed a new deep learning-based system that can produce photorealistic images from high-level labels and create a virtual environment. This enables the players to alter a scene.
Competitiveness through PEM
PEM (Player-Experience Modeling) is a technique to mathematically model players’ experience and foretell players’ preference for or liking a video game.
AI can determine the player’s skill level and emotional status to adjust the game appropriately. According to the player’s competence, this feature can increase a video game’s complexity in real-time. In-game AI features such as gesture recognition may also be used to deduce player intent.
Data-Mining & Real-Time Analytics
Globally, approximately 2 billion gamers generate more than 50 terabytes of data per day. Cloud-based gaming companies have behavioral data of their players, like who they are and how they engage with each other in the gaming world.
It is a big challenge to monitor this data in real-time and take action before opportunities pass and players exit the game. Game companies are now mining data by integrating AI and ML in live streams and extracting actionable insights. AI enables game developers to design around these analytics and take quick corrective actions.
Online multiplayer games like DemonWare is a perfect example of such real-time AI data analytics.
Content & Module Generation
Each video game features countless variations of 3-D characters, outfits, powers, music, game environment, and other elements. Producing modules and content for them takes a lot of time and money. These assets may be made quickly and cheaply using AI on a large scale using a variety of artistic styles.
AI systems may also produce interactive narratives utilizing text-generation tools and already-learned plotlines. The text-based fantasy simulation AI Dungeon 2 is one of the most well-known examples of this type of application.
Players can enter any action and advance through the game by typing their inputs and guiding AI to create unlimited content for their character to interact with. The story game offers AI-driven adventures and infinite options.
Linking to Fintech
AI has transformed the FinTech industry completely. Read the complete article on How AI has benefited the Fintech sector.
Including AI in games has opened new opportunities and new ways for revenue generation. Every player has different likability, demographics, psychological behavior, and purchasing power in a game. Games that continuously keep their player engaged can better craft monetization streams.
There are many new ways to link Fintech applications to gaming and create new business opportunities like affiliates, hyper-customized subscriptions, in-game purchasing, and many more. For instance, after analyzing a player’s playing behavior and activities, the system can accurately predict the hook points for that player and where and how he takes purchasing action. Presenting that at the right time may give a higher conversion rate.
Cheats In Multiplayer Games and Their Detection
Cheating is a severe trend in online multiplayer gaming that can harm gaming platforms and have significant repercussions for game developers.
Many players feel vulnerable to opponents who have unfair advantages worldwide. Therefore, there is a race to find cheaters in video games and a need to incorporate better cheating detection methods.
Many video game companies have started using AI to analyze the patterns of player movements and keys to detect whether a user is cheating.
What is the future of AI in the Gaming Industry?
One sector that has benefited immensely from AI technologies is online gaming. When considering the relationship between AI and gaming, it is clear that AI will continue to empower the development of online games by providing increased involvement, limitless story and landscape options, superior graphics and images, more lifelike and individualized experiences.
Gaming companies might further improve the outstanding analytics skills of AI to investigate player behavior and forecast the winning team using statistical and ML techniques. AI is an exhilarating new way that can impact the gaming business forever.
