SOURCE – https://www.teslarati.com/openai-bots-defeat-pro-dota-2-players/
You will be surprised to know that AI just crushed a pro-level human professional in the game Dota 2, taking technology and gaming to the highest level. The Artificial intelligence researchers left everyone in shock by winning against the top human players in a video game at Elon musk’s open AI project. This is a big deal for hundreds and millions of gaming fans who are crazy for online multiplayer battle games.
Before moving ahead, let’s take a quick glance at what Artificial Intelligence is?
Artificial Intelligence is a wide range in computer science that replicates significant human intelligence into machines. The AI systems are powered by machine learning based on algorithms, perceptions and actions. There are generally two categories of this: Narrow AI (weak AI) and Artificial General Intelligence (strong AI).
Artificial intelligence in gaming is not a recent innovation. Ever since 1949, when a cryptographer Claude Shannon contemplated the one-player chess game in a computer (known as “minimax” today), there has been no turning back for AI and gaming as a couple. If you ever played a video game, you have already interacted with it.
SOURCE – HISTORY OF AI AND GAMING
It’s been decades for researchers to employ their technology and give us games that are beyond our imagination. Today, you name a technique, and the next thing you know, it’s in your video game. Right from ultra-power graphic cards, headsets, and VR to consoles, cloud, and connectedness, the algorithms have blown our minds by creating real environments and virtual characters that are smarter than us. It is hard to remember all the endless milestones covered by AI in the field of web development. Not only that, even every mobile application development company is also following the same path now by incorporating virtual AI features in their apps to make it more interactive and personalized.
How It Started
From DeepBlue to AlphaGO, AI rocking your virtual world.
SOURCE- Garry Kasparov And the Artificial Intelligence
To be honest, the games of the 70s were not as impressive as they are now. Back then, the machines portraying AI were only as intelligent as we made them. But with rolling times, it started getting better and created history in 1997, when IBM’s DeepBlue defeated world champion, Garry Kasparov in a six-game chess match by fair rules. Since then, it’s pretty much a hit in the gaming industry, making headlines for all the right reasons.
Fast Forward to the time when another algorithm triumphed over the human brain in 2016, by Google Deepmind’s AlphaGo against Lee Sedol taking over four games to 1 in a five-game match.
What Changed?
What do you think made a software win a game that is entirely spontaneous and unpredictable?
DeepBlue started with information stored in a single database that contained every possible chess move in the arrangement. With the power of unique algorithms, it took down a legendary player.
On the other hand, AlphaGo doesn’t just work on databases; there are next to infinite pieces that run on a task-specific program. The game learns from its previous failed moves, improvising its strategy after every match, just like any human player does. A machine that depicts human behavior and has a computational strength on its back is now loved by every second member in the house.
It is surprising, but this is what changed, the approach of reinforced learning. AI has allowed machines to learn every possible human behavior and response. It is not only adapting our “ability to think” but getting better at it. Thanks to innovative game designs and extraordinary hardware systems, the bots can now differentiate between right moves and wrong moves in a game, updating themselves after every game.
How it is Going
Source – https://www.eventadvisor.com/event/game-developers-conference-gdc-2019/
According to Artificial Intelligence, the video game industry was worth US$139 billion back in 2018, predicting an annual growth rate of 12 percent through 2025. With the 35% spike rate in the gaming industry since lockdown, it is significant why companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are investing millions and billions of dollars in order to create superhuman AI bots in digital games.
The AI developers and researchers believe that video games offer a unique way of interaction between AI and the human brain. With this interactive response and psychology connect, the developers come up with even better models with faster decision making systems.
Since we are talking about the role of Artificial intelligence in web development, the following are the points that will help you understand how AI has taken the gaming industry to the next level.
- Characters generated through content
Games are nothing without characters. They play the most significant part in creating a space in your mind but creating a character takes time. Although with AI, things have become much more manageable. The independent game developer Remedy Entertainment recently came up with an automated real-time learning technique that helps create 3-D facial animation models from audio with low latency. This technique is now used for creating virtual avatars, telepresence, and in-game dialogues.
- New game inventions
This is such an exciting job done by researchers at George Technologies, inventing new games by just modifying already developed games.
How??
By taking input on different levels from the video games that are already launched and then making a conversion that lays out new objects, rules, and real time environment, resulting in a completely new model.
That’s how Nintendo game SuperMario Bros created output for The Megaman.
- Enriching experience with AI
The primary goal of AI in a video game is to understand and learn how a player reacts to its moves during the game. This helps in gauging the in-game experience where engagement is an essential factor. Developers take this response to discover frequent patterns and sequences, classify the behavior to personalize the match, develop more human-like software for better player interaction.
- Creating new maps and levels
The newfound technique of generative adversarial networks (GAD) produces excellent results by generating similar content styles based on the existing content. This has become the most popular method researchers use to create instant new levels and rules that work as building blocks of any game.
This year, a productive network was also created to compose rooms, the height of the walls, the overall size, and other measurements resulting in an AI generated map. The results were brilliant as the AI-generated map looks very similar to old school style graphics created by humans.
Top Most AI-Driven Games That Went Viral on Social Media This Year:
- The Last of us
An absolute classic gem of action and adventure, horror video game, published by Sony Computer Entertainment and developed by Naughty Dog. The story revolves around a post-apocalypse in the US, where a mutated fungus infects cannibal creatures and humans. Further, they are made hostile as the “Last of the us species” to protect each other from the fungi strain. Although, the game still doesn’t know Coronavirus is a lot worse than some fungus.
2. Days Gone
The “Days Gone” game showcases how people in the city turn violent after the spread of a virus. Three people try to strategize their way out but somehow end up in the carnage to escape this. The graphics deployed in the game are the main center of attraction. The story plot is very similar to our real-time situation. We wonder if the next level of the game creates vaccines faster than us.
3. Resident Evil 2 (Remake)
The game is a rebuild of the original ground up, set in the raccoon city, where humans turn into zombies after an outbreak of a bioweapon virus called T- virus. “Resident Evil 2” created a flood of tweets on social media and was considered one of the best games in 2019.
4. A Plague Tale : Innocence
We cannot talk about viral video games and miss this one out. “A Plague Tale” is so underrated in the genre of horror. It takes us back to 1348, where a young girl goes out hunting with her father and discovers changes in herself. After their home invasion, the girl and her younger brother escape to the nearest village, all covered in the plague caused by rats. How does she save her family from all of this? Well, you will have to play and let us know.
5. Plague Inc: Evolved
While people are obsessed with games where they get to be a superhero, this one is a little controversial where you get to be the bad guy. You are responsible for the outbreak of a deadly plague that ends humanity. The game started as a joke on a YouTube channel to predict Coronavirus’s outcomes, but people started enjoying it, which is not a good sign. Later, the game developers apologized for the same, and the model was removed from the App store.
On top of this, iOS development companies are responsible for launching more than 75% of the games this year.
Twitteratis Cracking up Social Media by Creating Memes on These Games
CONCLUSION
All of us are familiar with the evolving technology at a rapid pace. The mobile application development companies are taking the visions and ideas from our heads and making it real. In the coming years, the shape of gaming will be entirely changed by the virtual reality and augmented reality industry. We are slowly approaching the era where technology knows no limitations. From racing games to an actual human bot, there is always an AI working behind the scenes. The question to keep in our mind is, how to adapt to such overwhelming advancements and move forward?
We can only hope for the best for the “AI revolution” significant to its web development industry.
