Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) in computer games covers the behaviour and decision-making process of game-playing opponents (also known as nonplayer character or NPC). Current generations of computer and video games offer an amazingly interesting testbed for AI research and new ideas. Such games combine rich and complex environments with expertly developed, stable, physics-based simulation. They are real-time and very dynamic, encouraging fast and intelligent decisions. Computer games are also often multiagents, making teamwork, competition, and NPC modelling key elements to success. In commercial games, such as action games, role-playing games, and strategy games, the behaviour of the NPC is usually implemented as a variation of simple rule-based systems. With a few exceptions, machine-learning techniques are hardly ever applied to state-of-the-art computer games. Machine-learning techniques may enable the NPCs with the capability to improve their performance by learning from mistakes and successes, to automatically adapt to the strengths and weaknesses of a player, or to learn from their opponents by imitating their tactics.