Machine learning will be a game-changer for esports

It's a total understatement to say that the growing presence of machine learning in games is big news. The technology promises to turn the industry topsy-turvy by changing our perception of what's possible in a gaming experience. "You can actually tailor game design and tailor levels to an individual's experience," George Dolbier, the CTO of Interactive Media at IBM, said at a talk at the Intel Buzz Workshop in Seattle last June. More interesting for us laymen, it's being used to create progressional curves that tailor themselves directly to each player according to their individual behavioral data. A simple example would be in a Tetris-like casual game where a player would first go through a few "seed" rounds of gameplay so that the machine learning element can first learn about how they play before it creates a customized roadmap that will ensure maximum engagement.