CONTENT

W HAT IS 01
A RTIFICIAL I NTELLIGENCE ?
H OW D OES AI W ORK ? 01
I T S A LL A BOUT L EARNING , M ACHINE L EARNING 02
M AJOR D RIVERS OF THE AI R EVOLUTION 04
E MERGING AI E CONOMY 09
U SES OF AI IN C OMPUTER 09
A NIMATION AND G AMING
AI IN THE S IMULATION OF THE 10
H UMAN M OTION
AI IN THE S IMULATION OF C ROWDS 12
AI I N THE S IMULATION OF P HYSICAL P ROCESSES 13
P ROCEDURAL C ONTENT G ENERATION (PCG) 14
WITH M ACHINE L EARNING
AI T O C REATE G AME L EVELS AND 15
S TY LES
AI AND N EW G AME P ATTERNS 16
AI I N P LAYER M ANAGEMENT 17
B ENEFITS OF AI- BASED G AME D ESIGN 18
 Issue 01

What is A R T I F I C I A L
INTELLIGENCE
From ancient times, scientists dreamed to
create machines that can reason, learn, plan,
? technology. The AI revolution
spilled over into the
market, making AI systems, such
as Apples Siri, Google Assistant,
Facebooks image
consumer

recognition
s o f t w a r e , a n d G o o g l e Vo i c e a n
see, and move in much the same way as inherent part of our daily lives.
humans do naturally. The prospect of working Rather than pursuing an
Artificial Intelligence (AI) became tangible in ambitious agenda of General
the twentieth century with revolutionary Artificial Intelligence aimed to
breakthroughs made in computer technology, reconstruct the human mind in
neuroscience, and mechanical engineering. full scope, modern AI is much
A l t h o u g h A I t e c h n o l o g y i s n o t n e w, i t r e c e i v e d more specialized, which means it
a powerful momentum in the 2010s when is business-oriented and
global digital infrastructure and science consumer-centric. Contemporary
became ripe for incorporations of AI magic into AI no longer needs robots and
business. For many observers, 2015 was a machines to run; it may be
landmark year for AI technology . Funding for embedded into various desktop,
AI projects grew exponentially with major tech mobile, or SaaS
companies, such as Google, IBM, and (Software-as-a-Service)
Facebook, investing vigorously in the new applications.

How does AI WORK?

AI uses advanced mathematical, statistical, computational, and logical
approaches to model the human thinking and planning process, find hidden
patterns in data and solve optimization problems, predict trends and make
decisions under uncertainty. Although humans excel here, machines powered by
thousands of CPUs, and joined in complex networks are capable of finding solutions
to some problems faster and more efficiently than them. AI cracks the most
complex puzzles by using heuristic and optimized solutions that are suitable for
unstructured data which is hard to visualize in human mind and language. AIs
ability to retrieve patterns and build models is useful in diagnosing deceases,
making data-driven predictions of creditworthiness, volatility of financial markets,
weather, or consumer behaviour. AI has already been used in network security to
identify patterns of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, or in data mining
to predict consumer behavior, financial performance, probability of earthquakes, or
running out of stock. However, AI is not just a version of human intelligence on
steroids. Its power depends more to cold calculation than intuition; although using
AI to produce intuitive insights is not that far off either.

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 Issue 01

ITS ALL
as a method that gives computers the ability to
learn without being explicitly programmed . Unlike
standard programming that uses a series of if/else

ABOUT statements, ML algorithms make predictions and

devise complex analytical models from raw samples
of data. In a typical ML setup, a human operator lets

LEARNING, the computer optimize some

hypothesis by making it fit real data, and fine-tuning
initial random

MACHINE model parameters until a proper solution is found.

To m a k e c o m p u t e r s l e a r n , s c i e n t i s t s c a m e u p w i t h a n
idea of artificial neural networks (ANN). ANN is a

LEARNING digital approximation of the human brain that

AI ecosystem is
enormously complex and
diverse, but Machine
Learning (ML) plays a
pivotal role in the new
generation of AI. In 1959
Arthur Samuel defined ML
consists of a network of neurons that compute and
exchange information, extract features from data,
and construct optimized solutions to complex
problems. Unlike the human brain though, ANN may
include just one hidden layer of neurons, as in the
perceptron algorithm first implemented in the late
1 9 5 0 s . To s o l v e c o m p l e x p r o b l e m s , s u c h a s i m a g e
or speech recognition, ANNs are designed with
multiple layers of artificial neurons (hidden layers)

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 Issue 01

that process data in

complex non linear ways,
which even their creators
are struggling to
understand.

Figure # 1
Architecture of a
Neural Network

Example of Cancer Classification Problem Using Machine Learning

To i l l u s t r a t e h o w A N N s w o r k ,
let us take an example of a cancer
SCENE
classification problem. Lets
assume we have a training set of
1000 patients with malignant and
benign tumors. Our task is to teach
AI how to find patterns and
features that differentiate one type
of tumor from another, and,
hopefully, construct a model that
would help doctors automatically
predict the likelihood of cancer in
p a t i e n t s . To p r o c e e d w i t h t h i s t a s k ,
we construct a hypothesis (cost
function) and feed tumor data
labeled with 1 for malign tumor
and 0 for benign tumor to the ML distinguishes medical data of patients with
algorithm, which optimizes our malignant and benign tumors, which may be
initial hypothesis to make it fit fruitfully used in medical diagnostics. For
tumor data. Afterwards, the example, using a similar procedure,
computer runs thousands or even researchers at Stanford University have
millions of iterations and gradually created a learning algorithm to identify skin
adjusts parameters (weights) of cancer. The program trained on nearly
our hypothesis until the right model 130,000 images of rashes, lesions, and
is found. At the end of the day, AI moles, could perform at least 91% as good
manages to infer function that best as human doctors .

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 Issue 01

MAJOR DRIVERS OF AI
REVOLUTION

The rise in relevance of AI in D IGITALINFRASTRUCTURE PAVES THE WAY FOR

recent years owes to FASTER AND CHEAPER COMPUTATION
increasing synergies Unlike their predecessors, modern
between electronic computers have multi-core CPUs with immense
engineering and computer technoloy, Big processing power, large volumes of memory,
Data, and Cloud infrastructure, which and high bandwidth. Contemporary processors
simplify the task of running complex ML produce millions of operations per second
algorithms, making M L- e n a b l e d (MIPS) required by neural networks and ML
infrastructure more affordable, and algorithms in order to learn efficiently.
providing data for training AI on the Unprecedented progress in computing is
internet. largely due to Moores law, according to which
a number of transistors in CPUs doubles

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approximately every two years. B IG D ATA F UELS AI AND M ACHINEL EARNING
Similarly, recent advances in ML R ESEARCH A LGORITHMS A RE B ECOMING
GPUs productivity (Graphics B ETTER
Processing Units) have been Internet, mobile
shown to speed up training applications, and IoT (Internet
algorithms by orders of of Things) generate huge
magnitude decreasing time of volumes of structured and
learning dramatically. Today, unstructured data that fuels AI
leading GPU manufacturers, research, predictive analytics,
such as NVIDIA, sell GPUs with and strategic management.
in-situ AI architectures (e.g
Data farms and databases
NVIDIA Jetson TXI) that simplify
running complex artificial provide training sets of data as
networks in the enterprise diverse as medical records,
setting. Other companies, such stock market prices, and
as Google, are ready to provide images that are mined for
ML-enabled computation in their patterns and business insights.
cloud offerings (Google Cloud Big data solves the problem of
Platform) . Cloud IaaS data shortage that was a
(Infrastructure-as-a-Service) and barrier to earlier research into
PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) AI. For example, neural
solutions make computing
networks for image recognition
power cheaper via
pay-as-you-go model that require millions of labeled
allows companies and images to learn how to tell a
researchers to use huge server cat from a dog. This is no
farms of cloud providers for AI longer a problem with such
research and production. With visual databases as ImageNet
such cloud providers as Amazon providing over ten million
AWS or Google Cloud, images hand-annotated to
enterprises can easily launch indicate what objects are
hundreds of computer instances pictured .
to train their neural networks
Today, data providers
without making any upfront
investments in the in-house IT report a surge of requests for
infrastructure. big data for AI research and
analytics. For example, in
2015 a major structured data
provider CloudFlower sold a
hundred million spreadsheet
rows of data compared to only
two millions in 2012 . Also, it
becomes easier for companies
to obtain data. In 2015 only
51% of data decision-makers
were able to easily obtain data,
whereas in 2017 this figure is
expected to rise to around
66%.
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Issue 01
Modern ML algorithms
use sophisticated mathematical
and statistical models that
allow process complex data
structures and solve non-trivial
problems under uncertainty.
Neural networks based on
reinforcement learning teach
machines to take right
decisions in uncontrolled
environments, such as road
traffic. Self-driving cars using
this technology are
successfully tested these days,
and the time of their
commercial production is not
far off. In the same vein, new
architectures for neural
networks are becoming more
suitable for handling language
generation and processing
tasks that were beyond the
realm of possibility until very
recently.
Modern neural networks
are able to retrieve the most
complex patterns from data.
Based on the novel technique
of deep learning, they are
organized in hundreds of layers
that create a long chain of
data transformations known as
credit assignment path (CAP).
Passing data through multiple
layers allows us to construct
better models and identify the
most opaque patterns in data.
By virtue of these advantages,
deep learning has became a
state-of-the-art technology in
computer vision and speech
recognition. Deep learning
05
 Issue 01

algorithms are fruitfully applied to teach intuition, planning, and decision-making in complex
combinatorial decision spaces with astronomical amounts of solutions. For instance, combining
intuition and calculation has helped AlphaGo AI, a program designed by Deep Mind beat the best
human players in the old Chinese game Go which has been considered an impossible feat for a
computer to master anytime soon.

https://deepmind.com/blog/exploring-mysteries-alphago/

AI REACHES WIDER DEVELOPER AND BUSINESS COMMUNITIES

AI is entering a syndication stage with more AI solutions and applications included in B2B
(Business-to-Business) and consumer offerings. Popularization of AI technology is supported by major
tech companies who spread it across wider developer and business communities by open-sourcing
ML libraries and APIs. Such ML libraries as TensorFlow, originally developed by the Google Brain
project, provide basic ML functionality, such as neural networks, classification, and optimization
algorithms out of the box. Open-source ML software with optimized algorithms and standardized
solutions makes the threshold of entering into the booming AI market much lower.

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 Issue 01

Emerging AI Use Cases of AI in

Economy Computer
Animation and
Ascent of AI technology creates numerous economic and
investment opportunities in the emerging AI economy. AI Gaming
adoption across a broad range of industries will increase global
revenues from approximately $8.0 billion in 2016 to over $47 Unfortunately, traditional
billion in 2020 . The annual growth rate of 55.1% over the animation and gaming have
2016-2020 period is promising to attract billions of failed to appreciate the
investments in industries as diverse as pharmaceutical research, power of Artificial
medical diagnostics, recommendation systems, fleet Intelligence. In the opinion of
management, and logistics. Big investments into AI have been Dave Mark, the founder of AI
already made by banking and retail, manufacturing, and consultancy Intrinsic Algorithm,
healthcare sectors. standard game AI has more to
The emerging trend is that the growing amount of AI do with artificial behaviour
investments goes to ML software and applications (neural nets, than artificial intelligence ,
filtering, visualization, data mining), which facilitates the because it makes characters
development of data-driven and intelligent systems that support be exactly as intelligent as it is
businesses. ML software will generate the largest share of needed to be predictable and
revenue, which is projected to reach $18.2 billion by 2020. provide fun, drama, or
AI is beginning to gain traction among the leading tech enjoyment for players.
companies. At its recent Google I/O annual developer meeting, Nowadays, however, the trend
Google announced that the company is moving toward the is for a deeper convergence
AI-first approach integrating many AI features in the companys between game AI techniques
major software products, such as Gmail and Google Assistant . and state-of-the-art AI and ML
Also, Google is one of the leaders of AI research with such methods in academia and
projects as Google Brain and Deep Mind standing behind some business. Pure AI is coming to
of the most exciting innovations in General Artificial Intelligence the foreground of animation,
and natural language processing. IBM and other tech giants game design, and player
have managed to keep pace with these rapid development of experience. AI and ML
AI. In 2011, IBMs question answering supercomputer Watson technologies have a strong
managed to win the quiz show Jeopardy! competing against the potential to improve simulation
former winners Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. of human motion, physical
Apart from revolutionary AI R&D in major tech processes, and crowds. With
companies, AI adoption grows among non-tech enterprises as AI technologies, we can also
well. According to a Narrative Science report based on the create new game patterns,
survey of 235 businesses, 38% of them are already using AI rich PCG (Procedural Content
solutions, and 62% will be using AI by 2018 . Growing AI Generation), unique game
adoption across the broad range of industries will drive a 300% styles, and human-computer
increase of investments into AI in 2017 compared to 2016 . interaction. In what follows, we
Standardization and popularization of AI make it easier for describe these use cases of AI
businesses to integrate AI solutions into their operations and in animation and game
products. As AI is gradually entering all spheres of life, its development.

09
economic potential becomes almost boundless.

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 Issue 01

AI IN SIMULATION
of

HUMAN
MOTIONSince the 1970s, motion capture has been the main technique for motion
animation in computer graphics and video games. In motion capture, motion data
is obtained via specialized electromagnetic or electronic devices placed on
human actors to detect motion features and geometry. Motion data retrieved this
way has to be manually edited by animators to create believable 3D models of
movement. This technique has obvious disadvantages, such as high price of
equipment, complicated operating procedures, constraints in actor movement, and
more. Consequently, alternative motion capture methods were designed to address
these difficulties. In video-based motion capture, for example, a single camera
taking a series of shots of human characters and applying automatic feature
tracking to extract movement patterns is used. Similarly, in silhouette analysis a
video space is searched for human gestures and correspondence is built between
extracted image features and a 3D human model. Despite their advantages
vis-a-vis traditional methods, both video-based approach and silhouette analysis
require individual characters to do a motion capture and thorough hand-made
fine-tuning of resultant animations.
Unlike traditional motion capture, AI methods allow for algorithmic learning
of human movement patterns with the end result of more precise, realistic and
flexible human motion. In fact, high-fidelity motion and facial animation may be
created without any motion capture at all. For example, researchers from the
University of Edinburgh and Method Studios created a machine learning system
that trains on a large data set of motion capture clips to learn various types of
locomotion, such as walking, running, jumping, and climbing in virtual environments.
The system uses Phase-Functioned Neural Networks for Character Control that
models motion based on numerous parameters, such as the previous state of the
character and geometry of the scene . As a result, AI is able to produce smooth
motions where the character automatically adapts to various geometric .

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 Issue 01

environments, including walking and running

over rough terrain, jumping over obstacles,
and crouching under low ceilings. The neural
network makes flowing transitions between
these types of movements. Another benefit is
that a training process has minimal computing
requirements: it takes the system milliseconds
of execution time and several megabytes of
memory to produce these excellent results.
Modern AI is also powerful in simulation
of highly dynamic and rich motion patterns,
such as dancing. In the early days of computer
graphics, animators struggled with animation of
dancing. However, with the arrival of advanced
machine learning, computers can learn to
generate dance movements that look realistic
to an average human observer. This ability was
demonstrated by the neural network software
l a b Pe l t a r i o n a n d t h e L u l u A r t G r o u p t h a t
created a self-taught dancing human skeleton
named Chor-rnn. Spending two days learning
from dancing clips featuring dancing people
shot with depth-sensing Kinect cameras for
Xbox, AI learned the overall choreographic
style of motions and even managed to create
new improvisational dance styles.
By virtue of new ML solutions, modern AI
systems solve many problems usually faced by
game designers and animators. The problem
with traditional animation techniques is that
they have little flexibility. If the animator
discovers that the right motions were not
captured in the studio, it will be needed to
retrack and capture some more. For video
games the situation is even worse. Here, all
motions that might conceivably be needed must
be captured beforehand. With AI technologies,
animators no longer need to envisage all
potential movements working with libraries of
motion. Starting with a given amount of
captured motions, they may procedurally
generate more data that fits the style of the
original. At the same time, specific aesthetic
requirements of animators can be also taken
into consideration

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AI in CROWD SIMULATION
In the early days of computer graphics and VFX
(Visual Effects), directors used thousands of extras
in battle and sport event scenes. The world record
belongs to Richard Attenboroughs 1982 film
Gandhi in which 300,000 extras were used in the
f u n e r a l s c e n e . To d a y , w i t h n e w A I c r o w d s i m u l a t i o n
technologies available we cant afford the luxury of
drawing crowds in games, or hiring extras.
On a large scale, crowd simulation AI was for
t h e f i r s t t i m e i n Pe t e r J a c k m a n s L o r d o f t h e R i n g s
premiered in 2001. Crowd simulation software
MASSIVE (Multiple Agent Simulation System in
Virtual Environments) used in the film allows to
generate thousands of extras that act as individuals
without being explicitly programmed, or animated.
The system uses fuzzy logic to make characters
realistically respond to surroundings and other
characters. In MASSIVE, crowd behaviour patterns
are retrieved from pre-recorded animation clips that
are made in motion-capture sessions, or drawn by
hand.
Modern ML techniques push the limits of crowd
simulation technology even further by using learning
to track crowd behavior patterns from real crowds.
In the state-of-the-art crowd simulation, motion of a
real human crowd is first recorded from an aerial
view to form a training set of data. Then,
two-dimensional moving trajectories of each
character in the crowd are learned by powerful
neural networks. By studying real crowd footage, AI
system can assess the impact of environment and
nearby agents more precisely than in hand-made Crowd Simulation. Source:
animations and motion capture. As a result, AI-made http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/research/crowds/)
crowds behave much the same way as real crowds.
With crowd behaviour patterns learned via ML learning algorithms, game
designers can blend existing crowd data into new crowd animations, selecting their
own virtual environments and characters. This makes crowd animation in games
more flexible and creative. Characters in AI-based crowds may also express social
and emotional intelligence reflected in a rich palette of facial expressions,
emotions, and gestures. Using reinforcement learning, crowd agents can learn from
their mistakes and alter behavior in response to rewards and punishments received
from the environment. Thus, incorporation of learning into crowd simulation allows
to combine group and individual realism and introduce fuzziness of behavior one
may find in real crowds. AI crowd as a living and changing organism becomes a
powerful tool of experimentation in social dynamics and creates opportunities for
new interactive methods in gaming.

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 Issue 01

AI In Simulation
of Physical
Processes
Physically based computer
animation aims to simulate physical laws
of a system for graphical purposes.
It is widely used in water, smoke,
explosion, and character animation.
Real-time simulation of physical
substances and processes, such as
fluid or smoke, is one of the hardest
problems in computer graphics.
High-fidelity simulation of physics requires
immense computational
resources, which makes
real-time applications
impractical. With AI, however,
we may use a data-driven
approach that combines deep learning methods with classical fluid and gas equations to obtain
highly realistic and computationally cheap results. For example, Jonathan Tompson from Google and
researchers from New York University proposed a semi-supervised learning approach in which a
Convolutional Network (ConvNet) is trained on a data set of smoke and fluid simulations. At the end
of the training, AI learns to produce relatively fast simulations of smoke and fluid that outperform
standard non-AI simulation. Using statistical data of fluid and smoke dynamics, new AI-based
simulations can create high-resolution animation that accounts for numerous unseen properties of
gases and liquids and complex interrelations between substance particles.
Not just simulations of physical objects and processes, but game characters, as well, should
obey Newtons laws. This problem is addressed by the physically based character animation. Since
1999, AI played a crucial role in emulation of physical properties of characters. For example, a
NeuroAnimator approach used a neural network to observe and interpret physics-made models in
action in order to synthesize motion that suits animation goals. ML used in NeuroAnimator allowed
to produce faster computations than traditional numerical methods . In pair with simulation of
physical processes, physically based animation of characters allows for more realistic rendering of
human response to physical shocks, such as explosions, and simulation of other dynamic
environments that experience the impact of physical forces (wind, earthquakes, floods). Flexibility of
ML approach also allows simulation of motion under new perturbations, different from those in the
training sample, which opens opportunities for experimentation in sci-fi games.

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PROCEDURAL
CONTENT
GENERATION
(PCG) WITH
MACHINE
LEARNING
Procedural Content Generation (PCG) is
widely employed in game design for algorithmic
generation of content in the runtime. PCG may
be effectively used to increase replay value,
save storage space, reduce game production
efforts and costs, personalize narrative for
players, and create infinite diversity of quests
and game environments. In the early days of
video games, memory shortage was the main
reason behind using PCG. To reduce memory
usage, conventional PCG employed pseudo
random number (PRN) generators that initialized
pre-defined parameters of game space size,
texture, color, or character appearance.
These days, with AI and ML offering
innovative methods to create content in games,
conventional PCG approach becomes outdated.
Such ML techniques as generative adversarial
networks are more efficient in generation of
such game artifacts as music, speech, or
animation. In the state-of-the-art ML methods,
music and speech in games may be generated
with ML algorithms that use raw waveforms
instead of sound samples. Increase of
computing power allows neural networks to
process thousands of sound frames in
milliseconds and output more realistic speech
and music content that perfectly simulates
physical properties of sound.
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Issue 01
One example of such approach is the
WaveNet neural network developed by Deep
Mind, an AI research company bought by Google
in 2014. WaveNet generates human voices that
sound more natural than existing Text-to-Speech
systems (TTS) based on large datasets of small
speech fragments. In contrast to TTS, WaveNet
directly models the raw waveform yielding more
natural-sounding speech. Speech generated by
WaveNet is also more natural by virtue of
non-speech sounds, such as breathing or mouth
movements. Similarly, WaveNet is able to
produce creative musical samples in styles of
classical or popular music, which sound as though
they were written by a human composer. With
such a technique at their disposal, game
designers will be able to generate more
naturally-sounding NPCs (Non-Player Characters)
and create rich sonic experiences for gamers.
Today, AI solutions may also be fruitfully
used in procedural video and animation
generation. In one of experiments concerning this
idea, researchers from MITs Computer Science
and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)
used a deep learning algorithm that could learn
to transform still images from a scene into a brief
video that simulates the future of the scene. To
achieve this, researchers trained the neural
network on two million of unlabeled videos that
contained a years worth of footage. In gaming,
such approach could be used to simulate
diversity and relationships between objects (e.g
trees) in complex structures (e.g forest). Its still
hard to develop a good script that covers a
variety of tree species (e.g birches, palm trees).
It is even harder to generate a realistically
looking forest by simply assembling trees,
because forest trees tend to form complex ties
and grow unevenly. AI-based PCG solves this
problem by learning on large samples of real
trees to identify real-world patterns and relations
between them. As a result, AI-based PCG
becomes a powerful alternative to hand-made
animation that falls short of expressing the full
complexity of our world.
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 Issue 01

AI To Create
Game Levels
and Styles

The power of AI may be leveraged to generate realistic game levels and

innovative game aesthetics. For example, research has been conducted into
creation of new Super Mario Bros. levels by adapting functional scaffolding for
musical composition (FSMC) learning approach used in the generation of musical
samples. In the original FSMC technique, music is represented as a function of time
and relations between voices in a musical piece. Amy Hoover and her colleagues
creatively adapted this technique to break up each level of Super Mario Bros. into
sequences of columns with a tile-sized width. Each column is treated as a unit of
time, which allows us to represent a series of tiles in the game as a sequence of
musical pitches and durations. This data is then fed to the ANN to generate new
levels . The idea that AI can retrieve hidden patterns from human-authored levels
based on just little starting data, such as the layout of a single tile-type, is, indeed,
very intriguing for game designers.
In addition to game level generation, machine learning makes it possible to
transfer or imitate certain styles and game genres to create unique game
aesthetics. MIT Nightmare machine is an interesting project that probes into this
direction. In the Nightmare Machine, deep learning is used to transform famous
a r c h i t e c t u r e s i t e s , s u c h a s B i g B e n , t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s C a p i t o l , o r To w e r o f L o n d o n
into the haunted locations one would see in horror movies .
To g e n e r a t e h o r r o r i m a g e r y , M I T n e u r a l n e t w o r k s t r a i n o n t h o u s a n d s o f
images retrieved from horror movies and thrillers. Over time, AI learns horror
aesthetics and develops strong neural connections that may later be excited to
generate new horror images from any visual content.

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AI AND NEW GAME PATTERNS

Shooters, real-time-strategies (RTS), RPGs (role-playing game), fighting and
survival games are just a few game types that have earned high reputation among
gamers. AI technologies promise to create new game patterns that enrich gaming
experience and discover innovative ways of human-computer interaction . AI-based
game design creates new intelligent NPCs who learn as you play, adjust game
difficulty to the players skills and style, and interact with players and each other
through the gameplay.
O n e e m e r g i n g g a m e p a t t e r n i s u s i n g A I a s a r o l e m o d e l , l i ke i n S p y Pa r t y
Game, where one player is a spy at the party whilst another is a sniper trying to
identify him in the crowd of AI agents mimicking human behavioural cues. AI learns
to emulate human behaviour to make it harder for players to identify the spy. Each
new player leaves his mark on AI tactics that transforms as it gains new
experience.
Game AI may be also thought of as a trainee taught by the player to perform
certain tasks. In this pattern, the player trains AI to generate game content in
order to solve puzzles or develop skills needed to proceed in the game. For
example, in Black & White god game that implements this pattern, the player trains
a creature to act as his autonomous assistant in spatial regions with no direct
access to the player. The AI is taught to obey his commands through positive or
negative reinforcements; the player rewards it by petting and punishes by slapping.
In Editable AI games, players can change internal models values until
acceptable piece of content is generated. For example, the player may tweak
weapons and ammunition to create a combination that helps destroy the enemy, or
d e s i g n n e w t y p e s o f w o r k e r s w i t h https://www.thesims.com/media?page=3
properties that allow for more productive use of
limited resources. Editable AI moves procedural content generation to the next
level by allowing gamers to generate their own content. In this approach, a human
player leverages the power of AI to boost his own creativity.
In its turn, a guided AI game pattern reflects upon the fact that many AI
algorithms are brittle and prone to collapse if not used in a highly limited
environment. However, rather than avoidind placing AI in situations that could harm
them, one may build games in which players act to protect AI in such situations.
One may find this pattern in the The Sims game series published by Electronic Arts
company. In The Sims, AI agents have a set of basic needs and wants that should
be met by players through food, work, shelter, socialization, and self-actualization.
I n t h i s w a y , T h e S i m s p u t s t h e c o n c e p t i n i t i a l l y i n t r o d u c e d i n Ta m a g o t c h i t o a
qualitatively new level.
Even more exciting scenario is viewing AI-based games as a spectacle where
AI or a group of AI agents creates a complex social hierarchy which the player may
observe, or interact with. Such approach would allow for more innovative

16
interaction between AI and players, and promote autonomy of AI agents in game
design.

MAGA ZINE Background image source: https://www.thesims.com

 Issue 01

AI in PLAYER MANAGEMENT
With rowing competition among video
game companies, it becomes harder to
attract and retain new customers.
Unfortunately, quality of game content is
not enough to create persistent attachment of players to
games. In a new environment driven by multi-player online and social games,
companies emphasize long-term gaming experience by offering products that
evolve over time and support player communities to produce more game buzz.
Married with this approach, AI technology may give another competitive edge for
companies in attraction and retention of gamers. One of the most promising areas
of innovation in this respect is game analytics. AI may be efficiently leveraged to
capture, process, and understand player behaviour, model player responses to new
game features, and manage player experience via customizable and adaptable AI
features. This expertise may be also used to create innovative player assistance
AI. This type of AI will play a role of
lifelong agents who learn about
players over time, recognize and
adapt to their changes, and use
history of interactions to improve
their gaming experience. Lifelong
agents can also assist players in
overcoming game challenges that
would otherwise make them quit playing a game. By knowing the players strengths
and weaknesses, game AI may intervene in a timely manner to provide them with
useful hints, automatically generated tutorials, and gameplay adjustments. In this
way, game AI may serve as a coach to new players along their difficult mission.
Using AI-powered Dynamic Difficult Adjustment (DDA), the AI coach will adapt
game parameters, enemy behaviours, and other game features to the players skills
and mood. Similarly, given the growing popularity of online games, new game AI
may employ user data, such as GPS location, social profile, and user preferences
to design a better gaming experience with more
adaptable gameplay. In this way, big data generated
by modern online and social games can become a
powerful training sample to be used by AI lifelong
agents to improve player experience and create
lasting and pleasant connection of players to
games.

MAGA ZINE 17
 Issue 01

Benefits of
AI-based Game
Design
Gaming is at the peak of its popularity. According to the ESA (Entertainment Software
Association) study, the number of gamers in the world has reached 1.8 billion people in 2016
. To attract and retain customers, video game companies should not hesitate to adopt
state-of-the-art AI solutions that enhance and broaden gameplay experiences. Advantages of
AI for gaming and animation mentioned above are too obvious to be ignored.

AI CHARACTERS AND GRAPHICS AI BASED CHARACTERS DO NOT

ARE MORE REALISTIC
AI-based techniques for animation
of human motion and physical processes
outperform traditional approaches.
Instead of fine-tuning animations
manually using standard motion libraries,
we can leverage the power of neural
networks to learn patterns of human
motion and physical processes from
data. This allows us to produce
animation models that account for a
variety of use cases that are hard to
envisage in the game design process.
MERELY RESEMBLE
INTELLIGENCE, BUT ARE,
ACTUALLY, INTELLIGENT
Unlike traditional game
characters, who only behave
intelligently, AI is able to create NPCs
able to learn from players, adapt, and
interact with them in various innovative
ways. Rich palette of behaviours, skills,
and emotions displayed by AI
characters will not only enhance player
experiences, but create new product
offerings for video game companies.

AI-BASED GAME DESIGN COMES AI GAMES BRING

WITH GAME DIVERSITY AND HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
VERSATILITY TO THE NEXT LEVEL

With new AI-based game patterns,

we may create an infinite number of
games with creative characters,
narratives, and player roles. Such
diversity can not be easily achieved by
hand-picking character traits and
features. AI-based PCG (Procedural
Content Generation) married with human
creativity promises to produce
unmatched abundance in video game
Being a playground for innovation,
AI games can revolutionize the entire
space of AI research. We may use
AI-based games to test future
relationships between AI and human
society and explore them as prototypes
of our digital future driven by new
technologies and artificial intelligence.

MAGA ZINE 18
 Issue 01

References
Clark, Jack. Why 2015 Was A Breakthrough Year In Artificial Intelligence? Bloomberg.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-08/why-2015-was-a-breakthrough-year-in-artificial-intelligen
ce
Puget, Jean Francois. (2016). What Is Machine Learning?
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/jfp/entry/What_Is_Machine_Learning?lang=en
Vincent, James (2017). Artificial Intelligence Can Spot Skin Cancer As Well As A Trained Doctor.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/26/14396500/ai-skin-cancer-detection-stanford-university
Pardes, Arielle. (2017). The Slickest Things Google Debuted Today At Its Big Event.
https://www.wired.com/2017/05/slickest-things-google-debuted-today-big-event/
ImageNet. http://image-net.org/about-stats
Pres, Gil. (2016). Forrester Predicts Investment In Artificial Intelligence Will Grow 300% in 2017.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2016/11/01/forrester-predicts-investment-in-artificial-intelligence-will-grow-
300-in-2017/#55093b115509.
McCormick, James (2016). Predictions 2017: Artificial Intelligence Will Drive The Insights Revolution. Forrester.
https://go.forrester.com/wp-content/uploads/Forrester_Predictions_2017_-Artificial_Intelligence_Will_Drive_The_I
nsights_Revolution.pdf
IDC (2016). Press Release. http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS41878616
Pardes, Arielle. (2017). The Slickest Things Google Debuted Today At Its Big Event.
https://www.wired.com/2017/05/slickest-things-google-debuted-today-big-event/
Pres, Gil. (2016). Artificial Intelligence Rapidly Adopted By Enterprises, Survey Says.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2016/07/20/artificial-intelligence-rapidly-adopted-by-enterprises-survey-sa
ys/#b5b578c12dae
Pres, Gil. (2016). Forrester Predicts Investment In Artificial Intelligence Will Grow 300% in 2017.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2016/11/01/forrester-predicts-investment-in-artificial-intelligence-will-grow-
300-in-2017/#55093b115509
Graft, Kris (2015). When Artificial Intelligence In Video Games Becomes ... Artificially Intelligent.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/253974/When_artificial_intelligence_in_video_games_becomesartificially_i
ntelligent.php
Phase-Functioned Neural Networks for Character Control. http://theorangeduck.com
Templeton, Graham (2016). Deep-learning Neural Network Creates Its Own Interpretive Dance.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/227287-deep-learning-neural-network-creates-its-own-interpretive-dance
Yu, Jun and Tao, Dacheng (2013). Modern Machine Learning Techniques and Their Applications in Cartoon
Animation Research. Hoboken, New Jersey, John Wiley & Sons, p.3.
Grzeszczuk, Radek, Terzopoulos, Demetri, Hinton, Geoffrey. (1998). NeuroAnimator: Fast Neural Network
Emulation and Control of Physics-Based Models. http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~dt/papers/siggraph98/siggraph98.pdf
Deep Mind. WaveNet: A Generative Model for Raw Audio.
https://deepmind.com/blog/wavenet-generative-model-raw-audio/
Summerville et al. (2017). Procedural Content Generation via Machine Learning (PCGML).
https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.00539
Nightmare Machine. http://nightmare.mit.edu/
Treanor, Mike et al. (2015). AI-Based Game Design Patterns.
http://julian.togelius.com/Treanor2015AIBased.pdf
McKane, Jamie (2016). There Are 1.8 Billion Gamers In the World, And PC Gaming Dominates the Market.
https://mygaming.co.za/news/features/89913-there-are-1-8-billion-gamers-in-the-world-and-pc-gaming-dominates
-the-market.html

MAGA ZINE 19
About Team Absentia:

Founded by three BITS Pilani drop outs, Absentia consists of a small, highly skilled and electric team
partnering with knowledge partners from around the world. The team, with over 500 publications is
developing Norah AI, an artificial intelligence capable of generating premium games in a few
minutes.

Chief Mentor A.P. Parigi

Ex-board member, Bennet Coleman and Co. Ltd.
Ex-advisor at NEA, India
Ex-CEO and MD at Radio Mirchi
Ex-CEO at Network 18

Investors:
Exfinity Venture Partners LLP is focused on funding Technology Ventures but with a difference.
They seek to act as a strategic partner to portfolio companies through high impact interventions.
Their impressive portfolio includes Mad Street Den, Uniken systems.

TV Mohandas Pai
Leadership team and ex-board member of Infosys Ltd (1995-2011). Chairman, Manipal Global
Education Services. Board of Director National Stock Exchange of India (NSE). Prolific angel
investor in India & US.

V Balakrishnan
Leadership team and ex board member of Infosys Ltd. Ex-CFO, Infosys Ltd. Head of BPO, Finacle &
India Business Unit at Infosys.

Global Knowledge Partners

Natural Language Processing: Soma Halder InfoSec Specialist at Visa

Deep Learning: Denis Tarasov Co-founder at meanotek.io
Gaming: Nebojsa Brindic CTO at Bincode Entertainment