The video game algorithms are as old as video games themselves. But they were only able to generate ‘throwaway’ content, such as terrain, common enemies and side quests according Mark Riedl, a 42-year-old associate professor at Georgia Tech. Such algorithms could be observed in Skyrim’s randomly generated quests and the whole No Man’s Sky.
Yet, with the utmost advancements in the field, these Algorithms and AIs are able to create ‘memorable’ content such as boss monsters and major plot points. Thus, such an AI can build a whole game all by itself, eliminating the human effort.
A research paper published by University of Lyon, Purdue and Ubisoft describes how the process of making games has evolved and continues to evolve faster than ever.
Michael Cook, a 30-year-old senior research fellow at the University of Falmouth, has built an AI capable of imagining new video games from scratch. Cook calls the machine Angelina, a recursive acronym that stands for “A Novel Game-Evolving Labrat I’ve Named Angelina” (a joke that Cook says got old pretty quickly).
The goal for Angelina is that it will dream up completely new elements of games—a form of computational creativity. Angelina feeds on text and image-based information from the internet and creates various games from scratch.
In its initial days, Angelina was able to create only simple platforming games such as the likes of Super Mario. But in the recent days, Angelina designed levels in which a player controls multiple adventurers simultaneously and must get some of them killed in order to rescue the remainder.
The AI is capable of not just imagining, but creating games that are beyond human imagination. Thus, it can spice up the industry by introducing new mechanics, settings, story and gameplay. It wouldn’t be long before it will create new genres as well.
At the moment, the AI will work best with human collaboration. For an example, the developers shall feed the AI with desirable information in form of images and texts. Then the AI will create various levels and scenarios in just a day. It’s also worth noting that these levels aren’t polished and thus, the task of the developer would be to pick a desirable level each day and then refine it. The collaboration among developers and AIs will not only make the process of making a game drastically simpler and quicker, but it’ll also reduce the cost of video games by remarkable margins.
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