GAMERS DECIDE - ai

[Top 10] Most Important Video Game Design Elements

Adranski — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 13:36:41 +0000

10. Accessibility

Have you ever had a hard time getting into a video game, even though everybody says it’s amazing? (I’m looking at you, Dark Souls)

It’s not your fault. Sometimes games are poorly optimized for the average player - which could be a design choice - often times players feel a stronger connection to their favorite game precisely because it took them considerable effort to discover its secrets and master its mechanics.

Accessibility refers to the ability of a game to appeal to a wide variety of players - this might mean including a colorblind mode and subtitles. But it extends to having intuitive controls, the ability to adjust your difficulty, and even making its core values more easily digestible.

Some games revel in their ability to introduce their core slowly. But frequently, this leads to some players quitting. Here, knowing your audience is key. Whether you’re making a game for hardcore players or a more accessible one for casual ones, intentionality matters.

However, games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. offer a completely different experience depending on difficulty, which is a method that can engage both new and seasoned players.

9. Artificial intelligence (AI)

AI can make or break a video game - whether it’s because it makes the enemies too easy to kill or simply act unnaturally. Developers have established some AI mechanics that have stuck around for years. And knowing the rules is essential before breaking them.

In order to have satisfying interactions with AI (enemy and friendly NPCs), they have to feel real, or at least realistic, within the context of the world they live in. In most cases, developers make AI predictable - usually, they have patterns the player can learn from and develop strategies around. This can also mean that NPCs signal their thoughts to players, making it easier to recognize how our actions affect their routines. This often happens through body language or verbal exclamations like “I think I heard something” upon the player exposing themselves or making a noise.

There are many great ways to create fascinating AI that compliments the game’s central mechanics. But some of these ways might not always fit a certain title. AI is essential to a video game because it makes its world feel alive and responsive. A dev should choose its inhabitants’ behavior accordingly.

8. Balancing

Balancing a game is an extremely difficult task. Especially in multiplayer games, it’s a continuous and never-ending process, and it’s on the developers and the players to maintain a healthy balance.

When weighing the scales on the viability of a gun, character, or enemies, among others, the first thing to look at is their win rate or effectiveness compared to other units of the same category. Of course, realistically - that’s not enough.

Sometimes, the true value of a game component is shown through its performance in different contexts. Some characters in Overwatch, for example, were overpowered but remained at a 50% win rate. In reality, the hero had a 100% pick rate and was usually picked on both teams, rendering the win rate irrelevant.

No matter the unfair element in a game, balancing is important because it affects player experience tremendously. Some people may even leave the game permanently because of its “broken” state. But due to the nuanced nature of balancing, players must leave feedback to the developers - because no one knows the feel of the game more than you - the player.

7. Level design

While the level design is one of the first things a player experiences in a game, there’s an intricate science to it. And it’s very easy to mess up a game world.

This is because what we see from the player’s perspective is a finished, often smooth, and engaging experience. Behind the scenes, talented level designers work tirelessly to research the setting, optimize the lighting for performance, create quality assets, and actually model the world. They add story elements and easter eggs and place friendly and hostile NPCs.

You may have toys to play with in the sandbox. But it doesn’t matter if the sandbox isn’t interesting too. That’s why level design is crucial to a great game. It’s the setting where we create memories, cherishing them for decades.

6. Adaptive music & sound

Music and sound design are what stick with a lot of players for a long time. You know that feeling when you hear a song from a game you finished 5 years ago? All the memories flood back because when you used to hear that one song or sound, it set the tone for your journey.

In order for great soundtracks to feel natural and enhance (and even reshape) your experience, it needs to be adaptive and dynamic. Ever wondered why it feels so clunky when you fight zombies in the dark wilderness of Minecraft, only for C418’s relaxing and beautiful music to continue playing?

When sound adapts to what’s happening on-screen, it recontextualizes the whole scene and adds depth, a sense of immersion. If you ever happen to be in a room full of video game sound designers, don’t be surprised if they geek out about adaptive music and sounds.

5. Progression

Progression is something that a lot of games get wrong, despite good intentions. Some old titles have established very robust and consistent progression curves that have carried on through the years but which a lot of gaming communities have now become bored of.

There are a few main progression systems that game studios use as a foundation, further tweaking to fit their titles. A very popular one is the survival game curve, which guides the player to gather materials, craft gear, gather stronger materials, and craft stronger gear (e.g., Minecraft or even Monster Hunter). Others, like the standard MMORPG system, make the player grind content, dumping numerous hours into the game for a chance to get gear.

Depending on the game and the world, these systems can work; however, it usually extends the playtime without adding any new and interesting content to enjoy.

Luckily, many modern game devs are starting to revisit progression systems to enhance the overall experience for players. Valheim is an indie game that took inspiration from classic survival curves, introducing a fresh and exciting alternative.

Progression also includes learning skills, professions, and even acquiring cosmetics. It’s very important for a game’s progression system to fit the game’s themes and genre. Players need to feel a sense of accomplishment and growing power as they invest time into their characters while at the same time continue being challenged and engaged. It’s also dangerous to unlock too much content right off the bat, as this tends to overwhelm players, especially new ones (like how Black Desert Online thrusts you into the game with thrilling skills and combos instead of unlocking them one by one).

With the exploration of new and player-friendly progression curves, it’s inspiring to see that progression systems themselves are progressing.

4. User interface (UI)

The UI of video games is an element most of us take for granted, not realizing how much it shifts our perception in-game.

Exceptional UI isn’t grandiose - it lets the other components of the game shine. But it can contribute to an overall aesthetic continuity while making the game easier to navigate and enjoy.

A common approach to video game UI design is diegetic UI. In other words - UI elements that are part of the game world and can be interacted with. Like the iconic Pip-Boy in the Fallout series, which is a lore-friendly way to display quests, status effects, the map, and even the inventory. UI also includes the HUD (heads-up display), vital to understanding the limits of your character and their surroundings.

Overall, designing quality UI/UX is more complex than it looks, but that’s its point - communicating as much as possible to the player without overwhelming them. It glues the technical elements of a game to the actual gameplay itself. It’s there all the time - and because of UI’s omnipresence, it sits high on this list.

3. Gameplay mechanics

Gameplay mechanics literally define the identity of a video game when it comes to its core gameplay.

The reason you might enjoy Crash Bandicoot more than other platformers is most likely due to the way it plays - the jumps or the unique physics, for example. A lot of people never find the “WoW killer” simply because they don’t like the movement or combat systems of other MMOs.

Gameplay mechanics are the systems or rules that govern how a game plays. Of course, we experience mechanics through the story, the world, and the visuals. Still, mechanics are the building blocks of everything you do in a game, so trying to list all the examples would be an impossible task.

Instead, let’s mention this - many games have similar gameplay mechanics - most shooters have almost identical combat when you break it down. For them to feel unique, studios add a lot of nuances and subtle alterations, sometimes even revamping the whole mechanic’s concept with the goal of launching an unparalleled, groundbreaking one.

Next time you play a video game, focus on a single mechanic and appreciate it! The Last of Us 2 introduced an incredibly satisfying grappling hook mechanic that’s fun and physically realistic; however, it didn’t get as much screen time as players would’ve liked. Some mechanics are ahead of their time, and studios don’t even realize it.

2. Storytelling

There are so many great stories that video games have told; it’s hard to count. But what makes a memorable video game story?

A video game has to approach storytelling in a way that, let’s say, a movie or a book can’t. Talented writers can systematically write compelling narratives, but in games, they need to work with the level designers, the devs that develop mechanics, the music directors; literally, the whole team.

Telling the story through environments, for example, is something you can’t do with other forms of media, at least not to the extent that games can. This multi-channel storytelling is a game’s unique inherent quality and allows us to experience a story in an immersive, slow-burning way. Even the most talented directors can’t truly adapt Red Dead Redemption 2 to TV. How can you, as a viewer, experience the interactions, songs, love, and hate around the campfire if you’re not Arthur Morgan?

Even MOBA games, such as League of Legends, have developed backstories for their champions so you can understand your main character’s motivations, origins, and lore. The story invests the player emotionally. And while we sometimes love to run and gun just for the fun of it, the plot gives our actions meaning.

1. Art direction

Do you remember the good old Harry Potter games? Now you’re all nostalgic, aren’t you? The first one of the series fills the memories of many 90s and 00s kids, and the strange thing about it is that… it just looks better than some of the other ones in the series.

It’s not graphics. “The Chamber of Secrets,” naturally, had better graphics. It’s the art direction.

Perhaps even due to its graphics limitation, the first game managed to be creative with its colors, the lighting and use everything at its disposal to create a beautiful representation of Hogwarts.

Art direction compiles all creative decisions that govern the game’s visual identity. And it lasts much, much longer than graphics.

Using Valheim as an example again, the game is no bigger than 1GB. But using its lighting, color palette, and overall artistic direction, it trumps games with much higher graphics, hardware requirements, and budget.

Art direction also determines how the visual aspects of the game will reflect its themes. If a game’s narrative and world are dangerous or dark, the tone of the game’s art style should communicate that to the player.

The overall personality and identity are shaped by art direction too. Bad direction is often fine for its time but forgettable or even unenjoyable as time passes. Right now, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind sticks out as if I played it yesterday, with its over-the-top fantasy art style - the huge mushrooms, the villages built in the tall trees. No wonder my dreams are seldom set in Vvanderfell.

Main Image caption:

Video games are more than what meets the eye - they're complex infrastructures, usually developed by teams of professionals. Each design decision must be intentional in order to create an immersive experience.

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Google’s Artificial Intelligence Progressing at Unbelievable Rates

KurtissL — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 03:25:45 +0000

From developing senses to learning how to walk, Google’s DeepMind AI is making extraordinary progress. Where did it all begin?

DeepMind was founded in 2010 in the UK and was bought by Google in 2014 for $500 million. They are currently the world leader in AI (Artificial Intelligence) research.

DeepMind aims to “push the boundaries of AI,” “developing programs that can learn to solve any complex problem without being taught how.”

What Developments Has The DeepMind AI Program Made?

Google’s AI was teaching itself new things without a human counterpart late in 2016. The Ai increased its ability to control pixels and has also learned how to recognize rewards it earns in games based on prior experiences.

In February of this year, a set of algorithms created by Google DeepMind’s development team allowed AI to determine “the odor of particular molecules based on their chemical structure”, giving the program a sense of smell.

In early June, Google announced another project for DeepMind: auto-machine learning (AutoML.) This has allowed their AI to create a base model that can be trained and evaluated on a particular task. For example, when learning how to move (more on that below,) the AI created an avatar with legs, capable of walking as a person does. This is the base model. The task is movement. The more the AI tries to move, the more it learns and can figure out how to best control the model to move fluidly, fulfilling the task. When the article was published, Auto-machine learning was only being used for speech and image recognition, and surpassed Google’s Experts when running speech recognition tasks, which is a computer's ability to understand words and phrases that are spoken to it. So when you ask Siri a question, Siri is using speech recognition to convert your words into a machine-readable-format (aka data) in order to determine what exactly you’re looking for.

Earlier this month the DeepMind AI taught itself to run and jump. In a video game with the simple incentive of going from point A to point B. An avatar was created by the program which was then utilized to mimic walking, running and jumping motions with various obstacles thrown in the way. All of this was done without any human intervention. The program was given the incentives and the goal and the rest is history.

Less than a week ago, on Wednesday the 20th of June, the Google AI system managed to reduce one of the company’s data center’s cooling bill by 40%. This is a huge step forward for the problem of energy consumption. In an article on the DeepMind web page it was stated that for 20 years the company has been focusing on reducing energy use. In the article it’s stated that “by applying DeepMind’s machine learning to our own Google data centres, we’ve managed to reduce the amount of energy we use for cooling by up to 40 percent.” In other words, Google and every company under the colorful G umbrella will be able to improve energy efficiency.

Google continues its research on developing more and more complex algorithms for their AI tech. While some may say that they’re creating our future robot overlords and bringing about the apocalypse as we know it via ultra advanced self learning technology, it’s hard not to be excited about the developments.

How Does This All Work?

DeepMind’s AI learning processes consist mostly of playing simple games. In December of last year the team was using maze style games focused on logic, item pick ups and observations.

In April, a publication was released on the improvements of simulated environments (which is pretty much the landscape/location within a game) with an analysis of “factors affecting performance” (obstacles such as walls, trees, buildings people, other players, etc) in order to help the AI to plan, predict and act efficiently “hundreds of time-steps into the future.” In other words, the AI is able to predict what’s going to happen and how it should act 100 steps before it gets to the point of action. This was done using Atari games, a 3D car racing game and more mazes. Throughout these various games and simulators the bot was able to predict and correct its actions ahead of time, with results that can be “used to improve exploration and is adaptable to many diverse environments.”

Essentially the DeepMind AI program is put into a scenario or game and has objectives with rewards. The program goes about testing and trying different tactics to solve the issues at hand without human interference. The DeepMind AI has succeeded in tackling several real-world issues and is being utilized worldwide to help solve the big problems we face on our planet.

Why Does This Matter?

The DeepMind website lists its reasons for research as an attempt to tackle slow progressing issues such as climate change, healthcare, energy use and more.

Many of us when we hear about an advanced AI we think of Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Echo, which are able to process commands, questions and phrases and act accordingly, setting schedules, playing music, purchasing items and the like.

But the DeepMind is so much more than just a friendly character to guide us on our journey. It’s a symbol of not only the advancements within our tech, but also of where we could be in the next few decades. While many fear the presence of intelligent artificial life (the fear coming from an irobot/terminator style apocalypse) many hope to see the future of our welfare improved by the presence of artificial intelligence use capable of reducing waste, energy use, improving health and medical care and so much more.

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Google's DeepMind AI is growing every day, becoming more and more intelligent - and all on it's own.... (mostly) (image courtesy of Deepmind)

Artificial Intelligence Has 50% Chance of Doing Any Job Imaginable by 2140

Kitta — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 09:37:55 +0000

A Survey Completed by AI Experts

According to research entitled When Will AI Exceed Human Performance, there is a 50% chance that artificial intelligence (AI) systems will be able to perform any job imaginable by the year 2140. The research also shows that all human jobs are expected to be automated by AI.

The team of researchers from Oxford and Yale University conducted a survey. Over 1,600 academics who had previously presented at conferences on AI were asked to complete the survey. The researchers received responses from 352 academics.

The purpose of the survey is to assist in anticipating the innovation in AI and machine learning, in order to develop public policy. The predicted applications of AI should serve as a warning as to how the job market and economy will be able adapt with this growing increase in smart technology.

Questions in the survey asked the experts to predict probabilities to dates in the future when AI would be capable of performing specific jobs such as translating languages and folding laundry. The experts were also asked when machines could be predicted to be superior to humans in fulfilling specific human occupations such as surgery or writing. They were also asked what they thought the social impacts of AI dominating the workforce could be.

The responses taken were combined by the researchers to calculate the median number of years it would take for AI to reach key milestones in human capabilities.

The Results

The results predict that in just over five years truck and taxi drivers will be competing with ‘Johnny Cab’- like automated drivers. Robots will be more skilled at folding laundry then humans in about six years. In seven years AI will be better then all humans at playing the mobile game Angry Birds. Within a decade AI can be expected to win the World Series Poker series. AI can be expected to create a top charting pop song within twelve years and write a best-selling novel in 26 years.

The High Level Machine Intelligence refers to the point when artificial intelligence becomes better than humans at almost every task. Researchers have predicted a fifty percent chance for artificial intelligence being better than humans at almost everything. And they expect it to happen in just under fifty years. Experts believe by the year 2140 AI will be capable of doing any imaginable job possible.

Johnny Cab the Robot Taxi Driver from film Total Recall Released 1990

AI Smarter Than Its Creator

Acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking in 2015 was asked on Reddit on whether AI could become more intelligent than its creator. Hawking responded;

“It’s clearly possible for a something to acquire higher intelligence than its ancestors: we evolved to be smarter than our ape-like ancestors, and Einstein was smarter than his parents. The line you ask about is where an AI becomes better than humans at AI design, so that it can recursively improve itself without human help. If this happens, we may face an intelligence explosion that ultimately results in machines whose intelligence exceeds ours by more than ours exceeds that of snails.”

Experts appear to agree with Hawkings, as the survey also asked about the likelihood of a “AI Intelligence Explosion” which would be the point when AI becomes better at AI design than humans. The researchers were asked in specially about the chances of an intelligence explosion on happening within two years of machines outperforming their human counterparts in both skill and cost with a prediction given of forty-five years. These predictions are however only an educated guess and only time will tell if Skynet is humanity's future.

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Toyota Developed a Violin Playing Robot in 2007. (Image courtesy of Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images)