In role-playing games (RPGs), the level of immersion is critical-especially when an in-game agent conveys tasks, hints, or ideas to the player. For an agent to accurately interpret the player's emotional state and contextual nuances, a foundational level of understanding is required, which can be achieved using a Large Language Model (LLM). Maintaining the LLM's focus across multiple context changes, however, necessitates a more robust approach, such as integrating the LLM with a dedicated task allocation model to guide its performance throughout gameplay. In response to this need, we introduce Voting-Based Task Assignment (VBTA), a framework inspired by human reasoning in task allocation and completion. VBTA assigns capability profiles to agents and task descriptions to tasks, then generates a suitability matrix that quantifies the alignment between an agent's abilities and a task's requirements. Leveraging six distinct voting methods, a pre-trained LLM, and integrating conflict-based search (CBS) for path planning, VBTA efficiently identifies and assigns the most suitable agent to each task. While existing approaches focus on generating individual aspects of gameplay, such as single quests, or combat encounters, our method shows promise when generating both unique combat encounters and narratives because of its generalizable nature.

In the future, Microsoft suggests, you may be playing AI. No, not on the battlefield, but on games that actually use AI to simulate the entire game itself. As a first step, Microsoft has developed an AI model, called WHAM, that "beta tests" games early in the development cycle using AI instead of human players. Gamers know that realistic AI can turn a good game into something great, like how the older F.E.A.R. games would realistically model how soldiers might react to a hostile, armed player. Microsoft's World and Human Action Model (WHAM) takes the opposite approach -- it tries to figure out how human players will react in a given situation, right down to a specific frame or setup within the existing game world.

It took just a few years for AI art to evolve from text to 2D imagery to generated 3D video. Today, it's taken the next step with Google's Genie 2, which can generate playable 3D game worlds that are constructed on the fly, all from a simple text prompt. Google's Genie 2 is the evolution of its Generative Interactive Environments, which uses AI to construct new, interactive environments on the fly. Genie 1, which Google released in February, could construct 2D environments. Now, Genie 2, which Google announced today, takes that into 3D space.

Fun acts as a catalyst for learning by enhancing motivation, active engagement and knowledge retention. As social robots gain traction as educational tools, understanding how their unique affordances can be leveraged to cultivate fun becomes crucial. This research investigates the concept of fun in educational games involving social robots to support the design of REMind:a robot-mediated role-play game aimed at encouraging bystander intervention against peer bullying among children. To incorporate fun elements into design of REMind, we conducted a user-centered Research through Design (RtD) study with focus groups of children to gain a deeper understanding of their perceptions of fun. We analyzed children's ideas by using Framework Analysis and leveraging LeBlanc's Taxonomy of Game Pleasures and identified 28 elements of fun that can be incorporated into robot-mediated games. We present our observations, discuss their impact on REMind's design, and offer recommendations for designing fun educational games using social robots.

In 1985, brothers Dene and Simon Carter vowed to each other that they would one day start their own development studio together. The game they imagined was ambitious, as Simon outlined in a developer diary: a fantasy role-playing game, "populated with compelling and convincing characters with real personality, people who actually reacted to what you did … We wanted each and every person who played our game to have a unique experience, to have their own stories to tell." The idea of a living, reactive game world was an obsession for many game creators (and players) at the time, largely because it had never yet been done. In the 1980s, a virtual fantasy world like this was far beyond the realms of technological possibility. Thirteen years later, they got the opportunity to make the game of their dreams, at their own studio Big Blue Box.

The shift from professionally generated content (PGC) to user-generated content (UGC) has revolutionized various media formats, from text to video. With the rapid advancements in generative AI, a similar shift is set to transform the game industry, particularly in the realm of role-playing games (RPGs). This paper introduces a new framework for a text-to-game engine that utilizes foundation models to convert simple textual inputs into complex, interactive RPG experiences. The engine dynamically renders the game story in a multi-modal format and adjusts the game character, environment, and mechanics in real-time in response to player actions. Using this framework, we developed the "Zagii" game engine, which has successfully supported hundreds of RPG games across a diverse range of genres and facilitated tens of thousands of online user gameplay instances. This validates the effectiveness of our frame-work. Our work showcases the potential for a more open and democratized gaming paradigm, highlighting the transformative impact of generative AI on the game life cycle.

AI-generated game worlds: AI algorithms can be used to procedurally generate game worlds, creating unique and dynamic environments for players to explore. This can help reduce the time and resources required for manual world-building and allow for more diverse and intricate game worlds. Adaptive game mechanics: AI can be used to create adaptive game mechanics that respond to player actions and decisions. This can lead to a more personalised and challenging gaming experience, with enemies that respond and adapt to player behaviour. Improved performance optimisation: AI can be used to optimise game performance, such as reducing load times, improving frame rates, and reducing resource usage.

My name is Jim, and I'll be your instructor. Creating this course has been a dream of mine ever since I made the official tutorials for Bolt on Unity's Learn Site. In collaboration with Holistic3D, I took Penny's quintessential C# tutorial series The Beginner's Guide to Artificial Intelligence and adapted it to *drumroll*... Unity Visual Scripting! I've helped thousands learn visual scripting from the early years to today. Through an open-ended, practice-based approach you will follow along as each step is revealed for you to build two game worlds created with Unity 2021.3.9

Modern AAA video games feature huge game levels and maps which are increasingly hard for level testers to cover exhaustively. As a result, games often ship with catastrophic bugs such as the player falling through the floor or being stuck in walls. We propose an approach specifically targeted at reachability bugs in simulated 3D environments based on the powerful exploration algorithm, Go-Explore, which saves unique checkpoints across the map and then identifies promising ones to explore from. We show that when coupled with simple heuristics derived from the game's navigation mesh, Go-Explore finds challenging bugs and comprehensively explores complex environments without the need for human demonstration or knowledge of the game dynamics. Go-Explore vastly outperforms more complicated baselines including reinforcement learning with intrinsic curiosity in both covering the navigation mesh and number of unique positions across the map discovered. Finally, due to our use of parallel agents, our algorithm can fully cover a vast 1.5km x 1.5km game world within 10 hours on a single machine making it extremely promising for continuous testing suites.

Gaming has moved from a niche sector to the mainstream. Games have become a part of everyday lexicon like never before, and the technological progress evident within game UIs has played a role. The gaming landscape is highly diverse. You can play simple games such as Scrabble or Wordle that can be beaten by using online unscrambling tools such as unscrambled-words.com. You can also play highly immersive role-playing games (RPGs) that immerse you in alien worlds and leave you highly invested in their storylines.