The AI is the Game: Crafting the Behavior that Creates an Experience that Drives Learning
At its core, the process of creating an educational game is ultimately one of crafting a software product that will engender a particular experience for the player – an experience that will cause the player to acquire the skills or knowledge being taught. There are many factors that contribute to such an experience, such as the subject-matter content, the graphics, the audio, the gameplay mechanics, the dialog… but one of the most important – and one of the most often overlooked – is the game’s AI. It is the AI which creates the behavior of both the characters in the game and of the game as a whole, and it is that behavior – the things that happen, the things that the characters do and say, and the times and ways in which all of these occur – that ultimately defines the experience. The experience is created as a direct result of the AI’s ability (or inability) to evaluate the situation, make appropriate decisions, and deliver an appropriate performance (much like a stage actor’s performance) on the part of the characters and other gameplay elements. Or, to put it more succinctly, the AI is the game. It is the AI which drives behavior, and that behavior is an essential element of both effectiveness (i.e. how well the player learns) and engagement (i.e. how completely the player is drawn into the game).
Recently there has been quite a bit of hype (and, in some cases, dread) around modern developments in AI, but the approaches used by games are quite different from those used in applications such as self-driving cars, speech recognition, cognitive modelling, or even world-class Go opponents. Nevertheless, the game AI community is vibrant, with numerous conferences, publications, and web sites. Over the past 15 to 20 years this community has made immense strides in techniques that can craft behavior that is appropriate to the particular type of game and the particular type of experience that is being envisioned by the game’s designers. At the same time, computers have become more capable, players have become more discerning, and games have become correspondingly more complex. With the increase in both expectations and complexity, it sometimes feels like a battle just to hold the line and deliver the same quality of experience that we achieved 20 years ago through simpler means!
This talk will present the state of the art in Game AI. It will begin with a discussion of what Game AI is and how our goals differ from those of many other disciplines of AI. From there, it will give a whirlwind tour of problem areas and techniques to address each one. Along the way it will discuss not only what is solved, but also exciting areas for future work and what solutions in those spaces might look like, all the while maintaining a strong focus on those areas that are crucial in games for learning rather than just games for entertainment. Last, but certainly not least, the talk will provide references to major sources of material in this field.
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