In this day and age, when we think about artificial intelligence (AI) in games, we often think about games that use AI art, voices, and music. Some of these games, like Catly and Liar’s Bar, have stirred controversy online for such usage of AI. Historically, though, game developers have used AI since its creation in the 1950s, and the ways game developers implemented AI into their games have evolved significantly since. Let’s take a look at a brief timeline of this history and what it may imply about the future of gaming.
The birth of AI sparked revolutionary research and development that led to what it is today. It all started with the fascination of artificial intelligence and artificial humans in the early 1900s, which led to some breakthroughs, such as Makoto Nishimura’s "Gakutensoku", the first humanoid robot created in Japan. Eventually, this also resulted in the creation of programs that could learn independently, such as the first program developed by American computer scientist Arthur Samuel to learn checkers. AI’s popularity, research, and use continued to increase, even more so in the 1980s, due to the remarkable breakthroughs in AI research and more funding towards this research. In 1978, Taito published Space Invaders, which was not only the first fixed shooter game and the first game to feature endless gameplay but also one of the first games to implement early AI! By using AI to program its enemy alien movements, Space Invaders was able to support its endless gameplay feature and keep people playing. Pac-Man also does the same with its ghost enemies, which allow the ghosts to find and move towards the player.
This usage of AI can still be found in many other earlier games, such as The Sims (2000) and World of Warcraft (2004). Even modern games like Black Myth: Wukong (2024) use AI in their programming to track the player’s movements, adapt to the player’s abilities, and even create simulations in the real world to provide an immersive gaming experience (ex. Pokémon Go)! However, recent advancements in AI have shown to be controversial, especially in the media and game development. AI has been trained through being fed existing media to create artwork, music, voices, and even games! If that Oasis game (basically an AI model mimicking Minecraft), for instance, implies anything about AI’s capabilities, it’s that AI will eventually become fully capable of producing these things at a higher quality. But at what cost? Lots of people take issue with AI’s potential to take jobs away, such as those of artists and voice actors, despite AI learning from the works of people with these jobs without their consent. Many have called for more ethical use of AI, such as adding more moderation to what the AI programs are fed for training and using AI more responsibly (ex. Don’t use AI to write your essays or create your games! Using AI to check your grammar or be a part of programming in your game, for instance, maintains a human-in-the-loop approach that helps keep AI outputs in check for accuracy, reliability, and ethics). AI’s history ties into the issues it poses and the solutions to those issues, as its past hints that AI will only continue to grow and develop as it learns and adapts. Despite the immense amount of research on AI, more needs to be done, and a code of ethical standards on AI should be created and implemented worldwide. Because we know AI’s growth will not yield anytime soon, we should adapt to its progression and take/encourage more measures (whether you use AI or know people who do) to use AI more responsibly!
AI has and will continue to bring numerous innovations in many different fields, especially in games. However, AI cannot escape the controversies its creation sows, such as the use of AI to replace artists, composers, writers, voice actors, and people of other occupations. For example, training AI with art from artists who do not consent to the use of their work is a big no-no. Instead, we should be using AI as a supplementary tool (such as improving efficiency and helping with time management) and training it ethically. Though AI has continued to improve and grow its presence in games, we should consider how we use it in developing games and programs, as well as in our daily lives! By understanding its history, we can see the implications of the future of AI and what we can do about/with it to steer it towards more ethical standards of usage.
If you’re interested and would like a more in-depth look at the history of AI as a whole and/or in games, I would highly recommend the two sources for this blog! They do an amazing job of covering AI’s progression and achievements over the years, and this blog is just a super brief summary of some of the milestones they cover. Thank you for reading!
References
“What Is the History of Artificial Intelligence (AI)?” Tableau, www.tableau.com/data-insights/ai/history#:~:text=Birth%20of%20AI%3A%201950%2D1956&text=The%20term%20%E2%80%9Cartificial%20intelligence%E2%80%9D%20was,intelligence%20called%20The%20Imitation%20Game. Accessed 7 Feb. 2025.
“The Evolution of AI in Gaming.” Big Cloud, 14 July 2021, bigcloud.global/the-evolution-of-ai-in-gaming/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2025.
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