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AI's Role in the Game Industry: From Development to Administration

While artificial intelligence (AI) and video games appear to have little to do with each other at first glance, in reality, they are inseparable. AI not only plays a part in the creation of video games, but also helps users have a better gaming experience.

Reinforcement Learning: Usurping the Human Realm

Something amazing happened at the Blade & Soul Tournament 2018 World Championship, an e-sports competition held in September of this year. An AI player trained by NCSOFT using reinforcement learning took on a professional gamer—and won. Reinforcement learning is a type of computer learning that does not require human input. AlphaGo, which took the world by storm in 2016, learned the game Go through a type of artificial learning. The most recent triumph of the AI player at the Blade & Soul Tournament signifies that Korean game companies have reached a global standard with their AI technologies. In the future, game companies will be able to develop AI characters customized to match the skill levels of individual users. This means a leap forward for matching systems, which locate suitable opponents for players in games.

AI: Transforming the Game Production Process

While AI takes the center stage in simulated fighting games of strategic skill, AI is also the unsung hero of game production. All major Korean game development companies, including NCSOFT, Nexon, and Netmarble, have dedicated AI divisions that research AI technologies for game production. AI is used the most aggressively in the visuals field. Netmarble recently placed second at the ‘COCO DensePose Challenge’ held in Munich, Germany. The competition evaluates different companies’ implementation of DensePose technology, which recognizes human figures in 2D images and maps them in 3D. Using this technology, it is possible to turn a few 2D images into numerous 3D characters. In short, the technology turns character sketches into actual moving characters.

NCSOFT is also researching ways to use AI to reduce the manual steps involved in animation. Basic animated actions such as walking and jumping are programmed into AI, which then implements ‘rolling to the side’, ‘zombie-like walking’ and other actions without any further human input. Nexon has also relied heavily on AI to develop its mobile game ‘o,’ launched at the start of the year. For ‘Durango,’ AI was placed in charge of some of the game world coordination tasks, reducing the workload of human game administrators. ‘Durango’ features dinosaurs and other prehistoric flora and fauna, all of which are automatically generated in the background as the user passes by. Once random island climates and environments have been generated, the appropriate terrain, grass, and trees are created. Even without separate programming, carnivorous animals will hunt, and herbivores run away from them. When the animals are full, they sleep; when they are hungry, they hunt or gather. ‘Durango’ represents Nexon’s increased efforts to use AI in games.

Progress in Game Administration Through AI

The main objective of game administration is to prevent players from cheating and to maintain a pleasurable play environment. In this way as well, AI is proving to be a useful in-game policing tool. According to Nexon’s Abuse Detection Team, their AI-based ‘foul language detector’ is able to detect more foul language with higher accuracy than conventional methods. The conventional method, which catches users who use foul language that is listed in a predefined glossary, was able to detect 231 cases of foul language use over 10 minutes. About 41% of the cases detected were actual abuse cases subject to sanctions. Meanwhile, an AI-based foul language detector was able to detect 246 cases of foul language over 10 minutes in the same game. Of the cases detected, some 96% actually involved the use of foul language.

KIM, Shi-so | Correspondent, Electronic Times | siso@etnews.com