A Panorama of Artificial and Computational Intelligence in Games

Abstract

Abstract-This paper attempts to give a high-level overview of the field of artificial and computational intelligence (AI/CI) in games, with particular reference to how the different core research areas within this field inform and interact with each other, both actually and potentially. We identify ten main research areas within this field: NPC behavior learning, search and planning, player modeling, games as AI benchmarks, procedural content generation, computational narrative, believable agents, AI-assisted game design, general game artificial intelligence and AI in commercial games. We view and analyze the areas from three key perspectives: (1) the dominant AI method(s) used under each area; (2) the relation of each area with respect to the end (human) user; and (3) the placement of each area within a human-computer (player-game) interaction perspective. In addition, for each of these areas we consider how it could inform or interact with each of the other areas; in those cases where we find that meaningful interaction either exists or is possible, we describe the character of that interaction and provide references to published studies, if any. We believe that this paper improves understanding of the current nature of the game AI/CI research field and the interdependences between its core areas by providing a unifying overview. We also believe that the discussion of potential interactions between research areas provides a pointer to many interesting future research projects and unexplored subfields.

Exploring Deep Recurrent Q-Learning for Navigation in a 3D Environment

“…Artificial intelligence in commercial games is often programmed using state machines, search algorithms, and hand-crafted features, whereas recent research in artificial game intelligence is more focused on machine learning techniques like evolutionary strategies and reinforcement learning [1]. Using these machine learning techniques can lead to more advanced and diverse behaviour for game agents, making them more believable.…”

CiF-CK: An architecture for social NPCS in commercial games

“…This is the result of academic research and commercial game development trying to solve different problems: academic researchers want general solutions to generic and preferably deep problems, whereas commercial developers want something that works well enough and looks good enough in a particular context [8]. For example, as a result of researching Interactive Storytelling(IS), the video game "Façade" [9] was created and became regarded as the future of IS (and still is widely cited in IS research) [10].…”

A Spatially-Structured PCG Method for Content Diversity in a Physics-Based Simulation Game

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