Beyond Adversarial: The Case for Game AI as Storytelling

As a field, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been applied to games for more than 50 years, beginning with traditional two-player adversarial games like tic-tac-toe and chess and extending to modern strategy games, first-person shooters, and social simulations. AI practitioners have become adept at designing algorithms that enable computers to play games at or beyond human levels in many cases. In this paper, the authors argue that the traditional goal of AI in games - to win the game - is not the only, nor the most interesting goal. An alternative goal for game AI is to make the human player's play experience "Better." AI systems in games should reason about how to deliver the best possible experience within the context of the game.