We live in a world where people consider AI as a productive tool that allows them to do a better job in a shorter duration or consider it to take over their jobs.
Irrespective of which school of thought you belong to, you cannot deny the fact that the advent of AI has changed the way we work on how certain industries are currently functioning, for the good.
The same has been reiterated by Gartner’s Top Strategic Predictions for 2024 and Beyond – Living With the Year Everything Changed report, which says that Generative AI makes people more powerful, both personally and professionally. While the gaming industry is one example, there are many other examples like the education sector, health, medicine, and many others.
Suppose you look at the top names in the gaming industry. In that case, the common factor among them is that they are completely embracing Artificial Intelligence which in turn is changing or revolutionizing their development process by enhancing efficiency while significantly cutting the development costs.
AI technologies today are more than capable of offering innovative solutions to deal with the complexity and scope of modern games. It also helps in streamlining various aspects of game development.
Let us look at some of the ways the games industry is currently leveraging AI to lower development costs.
Design and Development
Game designing and development is one of the most important processes of creating a game, be it a video game, esports, or any online game.
It is no surprise that AI is fast becoming a critical component of designing and developing a game, owing to its generative features. While AI is an efficient tool in this process, it is also utilized as a creative partner to design games.
For example, AI helps in the fast and creative creation of Non-Playable Characters or NPC without writing complex codes, which can take hours or even days. This removes the time and effort required to spend on an unimportant part of a game and still creates an engaging and intelligent NPC bound to enhance the gameplay experience.
In addition, AI is also used to create immersive and creative narrative designs to build a dynamic gaming industry. This effectively helps in creating rich narratives, engaging gameplays, and immersive world-building, all of which are essential in a successful game. This is especially useful for independent game developers who might not have the resources of a multinational giant.
Digital Assets
If you are involved in asset creation for marketing or a website, you will agree when we say that creating digital assets is extremely resource-intensive- the same for creating digital assets for a game, if not even harder. Again, AI is extremely useful in creating digital assets. As mentioned above, it helps create/develop characters, environment, and other in-game elements that enhance the player’s experience. All of this is possible with minimal manual inputs from a human.
This functionality allows the user to focus on other important elements of creating a game like creative and qualitative purposes, ultimately speeding up the development process while keeping the costs low.
Game Testing
While game development is an essential part of game creation, testing is also important to ensure the final product is functioning as it is supposed to at high quality.
While testing a game, or even a piece of software, is pretty manual and labor-intensive, AI can significantly reduce time and costs.
The manual testing process can be automated and tested numerous times in various scenarios to identify bugs and generate in-depth reports. While the automated process reduces the testing phase duration, it also ensures the process is consistent and in line with the standards. Today, many AI testing tools offer automated testing functionality. The tools also simulate unique users for different gameplays to detect issues in the early development cycle. This proactive approach helps reduce development delays and costs.
AI Solutions Tailored for Specific Industries
Integrating AI in the game development process in specific niche industries, for example, the gambling industry is proving to be a game changer. While lowering development costs is a clear advantage, many more use cases are helping in not only enhancing operational efficiency but also enhancing the player experience.
Some unique and helpful ways AI is helping niche industries like the gambling industry in game development are automating parts of the game development process, analyzing user data and behavioral patterns to predict the type of games or features that are preferred by players, tailoring game recommendations to improve retention, predicting server loads and in turn providing options to manage in-gaming resources effectively, and many more.
For instance, if you look at sweepstakescasino.net, an online gambling community that recommends top gambling websites and online games, you will see many popular games like Fortune Coins (link above), listed on their website. While on the surface, you might think these games are just gambling games, you will be surprised to know that many of these online casino games have utilized the power of AI to perfect their games. Whether in adding gaming features that players would prefer or designing bonuses to attract them, AI was intelligently used in one way or another.
Since gambling is a very niche and unique industry, it has its specific requirements for designing or developing a game. AI is helpful in such situations as well. AI can create solutions that understand the industry requirements of specific solutions.
The gambling industry is also using AI algorithms to track user gameplay, duration, and other patterns to suggest games to users who are more likely to enjoy them. This enhances user satisfaction and also increases engagement and retention.
Future of AI in the Gaming Industry
As we see the refinement of AI solutions and it being incorporated seamlessly into our daily lives, it is only sensible to understand that AI is here to stay and the integration of AI in game development and the gaming industry is only set to grow even further.
Soon AI technologies will be more sophisticated, efficient, and creative. These advancements will only enhance the way a game is created and tailored to a specific user’s preference. This marks the transformative shift in how games are created and delivered.
As the technology improves, the gaming industry’s requirements or reliance on AI will evolve to further reduce the gap between human creativity and technological efficiency.
Lastly, if you are wondering if the usage of AI in the gaming industry will risk your prospects of jobs, an article from BBC assures that more jobs will be created due to this technological advancement.
