How do you feel about the concept of AI gaming

[NightmareFarm]

I don't mean the "AI" we know now which is just a preset bot or CPU programmed with a set range of actions and responses. I mean AI that are able to think for themselves used for gaming purposes. AI being implemented in the future to enhance the gaming experience.

 

By this I mean AI in place of preset NPCs, AI dialogue, AI cities, AI used to determine how NPCs fight you, AI being used to give games dozens of story paths which differ greatly depending on what you do. The possibilities are endless. I think this would really bring games to life and console makers and devs alike should invest in this. 

Edited August 21, 2022 by NightmareFarm

[runswithspatulas]

i don't even really understand the purpose of an ai. why do we need them in gaming?

[Withywarlock]

I'm not familiar with how proper artificial intelligence is being done behind the scenes of games, or software in general, but my guess would be that the bigger companies are waiting to see its practical applications before they fully invest money and time into it. There's a lot of procedurally generated crap out there, and while from a technological standpoint it might be marvellous, it doesn't look all that impressive from a consumer's perspective. Who wants to be the dev known as the first one to make NPCs less socially competent than The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion through the power of AI, for instance? Leave that to the indies.

...and so they did, bringing us projects like AI Dungeon. It's text-based so it doesn't require that much horsepower, and it's come a long way from older AI storytelling devices which quickly forget your inputs, meaning progress is more akin to a treadmill than a road that has the possibility of a satisfying end. Despite journalists' claims of it potentially replacing Dungeon Masters for Dungeons & Dragons or other roleplaying games, it's just not clever enough to create that cohesive an experience. In my current playthrough of AI Dungeon, I am fighting the game about putting a wizard's staff down, and picking it(s shards) up again, for instance. Talk about railroading! 😅

I wholeheartedly believe that it will be good enough to go beyond text-based adventures: as you go on to say, it may well suit dialogue (which has been done with NFTs, with a lot of voice actors claiming they have not given consent to their voices being used for AI purposes), cities, and I particularly like the idea of enemies using tactics learned from playtesters and responding to the current player's ideas the longer they play.

It's just a matter of when.

3 minutes ago, runswithspatulas said:

i don't even really understand the purpose of an ai. why do we need them in gaming?

That's a really good question, and I wish I could give you a better answer than the one I will. I hope others here can take the time to give their own perspectives, because it deserves to be discussed.

My answer would be that it saves developers work. Need the art, mesh, lighting, particle effects, animation, programming and sounds to be designed for a city? Get the AI to do it, let them work on something else. Need authors, screenplay writers, storyboards, voice actors, directors, recording equipment? No need, get the AI to do it.

I don't think it'll replace jobs, at least not immediately, because AI can and will go wrong and someone's got to come in and apply percussive maintenance (read: slapping it on the head like it's an old TV). The automation may help with game development... or it may just be in addition to the condition game developers are already working under.

Edited August 21, 2022 by Withywarlock

[Shagger]

6 hours ago, NightmareFarm said:

I don't mean the "AI" we know now which is just a preset bot or CPU programmed with a set range of actions and responses. I mean AI that are able to think for themselves used for gaming purposes. AI being implemented in the future to enhance the gaming experience.

 

By this I mean AI in place of preset NPCs, AI dialogue, AI cities, AI used to determine how NPCs fight you, AI being used to give games dozens of story paths which differ greatly depending on what you do. The possibilities are endless. I think this would really bring games to life and console makers and devs alike should invest in this. 

 

I'm a little confused by this topic because a program with programmed responses and sequences of actions is what AI is. The ambitious idea you present that I've highlighted is not only practically impossible (as what you describe is basically sentience), but is also something potentially very dangerous, something that sci-fi was warned us about time and again. Detroit: Become Human, The Terminator, Horizon Zero Dawn, The Matrix, 2001 A Space Odyssey, the list goes on. Technology capable of independent thought is technology that is literally alive, and that creeps me out.

Edited August 21, 2022 by Shagger

[NightmareFarm]

2 minutes ago, Shagger said:

 

I'm a little confused by this topic because a program with programmed responses and sequences of actions is what AI is. The ambition idea you present that I've highlighted is not only practically impossible (as what you describe is basically sentience), but is also something potentially very dangerous, something that sci-fi was warned us about time and again. Detroit: Become Human, The Terminator, Horizon Zero Dawn, The Matrix, 2001 A Space Odyssey, the list goes on. Technology capable of independent thought is technology that is literally alive, and that creeps me out.

I'm only talking about them being used for gaming, not for anything else. 

[ForwardSlashDownPoke]

8 hours ago, NightmareFarm said:

I don't mean the "AI" we know now which is just a preset bot or CPU programmed with a set range of actions and responses. I mean AI that are able to think for themselves used for gaming purposes. AI being implemented in the future to enhance the gaming experience.

 

By this I mean AI in place of preset NPCs, AI dialogue, AI cities, AI used to determine how NPCs fight you, AI being used to give games dozens of story paths which differ greatly depending on what you do. The possibilities are endless. I think this would really bring games to life and console makers and devs alike should invest in this. 

There's already AI involved in gaming; which is what NPC's and a variety of other factors are. You are pitching the idea of extremely advanced AI taking over the video game itself and/or having nearly full control over that and I just don't think something like that is necessary at this time. I personally like a linear title as opposed to a title with endless possibilities, etc. If I play Final Fantasy 17, I'd prefer it to have a story that I -- in combination with an AI -- do not create, but one of which was crafted by the best developers in the JRPG field and then properly presented to me.

 

In reference to the guy above; AI has gotten extremely advanced and it's a field that I actually study (a little bit). They more than likely have the (privatized) ability to process more information and make more calculations than the human brain itself, which of course is obviously quite dangerous. Stuff like that is in military possession and/or private control as I've said, and who the private guys are you might as well pick a random number out of a hat to determine what their true motives are. All one of those groups would need to do is take their really advanced AI and apply it to the gaming world, which is what they're already doing slowly -- but I don't think this is the route that gaming shoudl take at all as far as how far the TC claims it could be taken.

[ForwardSlashDownPoke]

7 hours ago, Withywarlock said:

I'm not familiar with how proper artificial intelligence is being done behind the scenes of games, or software in general, but my guess would be that the bigger companies are waiting to see its practical applications before they fully invest money and time into it. There's a lot of procedurally generated crap out there, and while from a technological standpoint it might be marvellous, it doesn't look all that impressive from a consumer's perspective. Who wants to be the dev known as the first one to make NPCs less socially competent than The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion through the power of AI, for instance? Leave that to the indies.

...and so they did, bringing us projects like AI Dungeon. It's text-based so it doesn't require that much horsepower, and it's come a long way from older AI storytelling devices which quickly forget your inputs, meaning progress is more akin to a treadmill than a road that has the possibility of a satisfying end. Despite journalists' claims of it potentially replacing Dungeon Masters for Dungeons & Dragons or other roleplaying games, it's just not clever enough to create that cohesive an experience. In my current playthrough of AI Dungeon, I am fighting the game about putting a wizard's staff down, and picking it(s shards) up again, for instance. Talk about railroading! 😅

I wholeheartedly believe that it will be good enough to go beyond text-based adventures: as you go on to say, it may well suit dialogue (which has been done with NFTs, with a lot of voice actors claiming they have not given consent to their voices being used for AI purposes), cities, and I particularly like the idea of enemies using tactics learned from playtesters and responding to the current player's ideas the longer they play.

It's just a matter of when.

That's a really good question, and I wish I could give you a better answer than the one I will. I hope others here can take the time to give their own perspectives, because it deserves to be discussed.

My answer would be that it saves developers work. Need the art, mesh, lighting, particle effects, animation, programming and sounds to be designed for a city? Get the AI to do it, let them work on something else. Need authors, screenplay writers, storyboards, voice actors, directors, recording equipment? No need, get the AI to do it.

I don't think it'll replace jobs, at least not immediately, because AI can and will go wrong and someone's got to come in and apply percussive maintenance (read: slapping it on the head like it's an old TV). The automation may help with game development... or it may just be in addition to the condition game developers are already working under.

AI is already so advanced that it likely has thought interface technology, so that will probably be an area of gaming later -- of which I hope people would protest against due to some very, very obvious dangers.

[NightmareFarm]

Just to clear things up, the AI can only be used to do things within games like generate stuff like dialogue and building composition and enemy fighting patterns and stuff like that depedning on certan variables. It cannot have any sort of control outside of that. It cannot access the user interface or anything. Would you guys consider this still too dangerous?

[Empire]

One big thing is that better AI is not always more fun. For the game I'm working on, we did a huge AI overhaul. As part of that we tested 3-4 flavors of new AI code. One of them was this super advanced almost human like AI. It was amazingly hard, enemies would flank you efficiently, they'd hide from you and sneak attack, they'd pick up weapons off the ground, they'd communicate with each other, at one point I thought they were just fucking with me and we were secretly playing multiplayer.

[m76]

The code that controlled NPCs in games has been called AI since the first games. But in reality for the most time that code had very little or nothing in common with what computer science calls artificial intelligence.

NPC "AI" in games work based on a predetermined set of parameters and triggers,  there is no actual intelligent thinking involved.

On the other hand making NPCs actually intelligent, doesn't necessarily mean  a better gaming experience. We do not want a carbon copy of reality in our games, we want an isolated haven where the rules of engagement are clear. Intelligent enemy AI would make the games way too frustrating and unpredictable. Preventing the game from fulfilling it's purpose as escapism.

Edited August 22, 2022 by m76

[Kane99]

I think what OP may be trying to say is more advanced AI in video games, to the point where AI in video games learn from the player and the actions they do in game. I don't think he meant like adding AI, as we already have AI in games. I think it's more to do with making advanced AI in games, where it learns from the gamer, changed tactics and tries to twist the game on the player. 

Personally I'd like to see more advanced AI in games, where it makes the gameplay different each time. Kinda like how Left 4 Dead's AI system pretty much decided when the best time was to send hoards of zombies your way. But more advanced than that where enemies learn from the players. idk. That's my guess anyway. 

[Empire Of Sight]

On 8/22/2022 at 12:54 AM, NightmareFarm said:

I don't mean the "AI" we know now which is just a preset bot or CPU programmed with a set range of actions and responses. I mean AI that are able to think for themselves used for gaming purposes. AI being implemented in the future to enhance the gaming experience.

 

By this I mean AI in place of preset NPCs, AI dialogue, AI cities, AI used to determine how NPCs fight you, AI being used to give games dozens of story paths which differ greatly depending on what you do. The possibilities are endless. I think this would really bring games to life and console makers and devs alike should invest in this. 

Well it's good to see people questioning this haha,

 

I think it will be more than epic, something self learning and able to judge and react as if its apart of a real world. Imagine an NPC that doesn't know its apart of a program or virtual world interacting with the environment, aging, contemplating and progressing as if the players around them are exactly the same as themselves. This is such a deep rabbit hole but a great one to play with haha.

Right now we are working on creating an NPC that can kill players and each player they kill rewards them experience to level up + killing players reward a possible loot table based on their currently owned items, their levels, and class type. It's far from completion IMO but its def something that's already in the works however its farrrr from an AI as thats in concept within this topic.

 

EOS

[Heatman]

On 8/22/2022 at 5:37 PM, m76 said:

... Intelligent enemy AI would make the games way too frustrating and unpredictable. Preventing the game from fulfilling it's purpose as escapism.

This is exactly where the excessive use of technology would kill the game by all means because it's going to make it extremely impossible for gamers to really make any identified progress on the game. It all supports the notion that too much of everything is bad. 

[killamch89]

I'm a bit confused myself as you have several tiers of AI. Are we talking the most advanced level of AI? The ones that are close to being fully sentient?

[Heatman]

On 8/22/2022 at 11:54 AM, Empire said:

One big thing is that better AI is not always more fun. For the game I'm working on, we did a huge AI overhaul. As part of that we tested 3-4 flavors of new AI code. One of them was this super advanced almost human like AI. It was amazingly hard, enemies would flank you efficiently, they'd hide from you and sneak attack, they'd pick up weapons off the ground, they'd communicate with each other, at one point I thought they were just fucking with me and we were secretly playing multiplayer.

I believe that it's a system that's set up to really give gamers a very rough and tough one with the game. There are some gamers that would welcome such challenge and give it their very best. But I'm sure that most gamer would struggle with it and eventually get bored.