Paper: Expressive AI: Games and Artificial Intelligence

Michael Mateas. Expressive AI: Games and Artificial Intelligence (2003). Proceedings of International DiGRA Conference.

In this paper, Michael argues that game AI should be considered as an interdisciplinary agenda linking games studies, design practice, and technical research. The author call this new interdisciplinary agenda expressive AI.

A good example is how Space Invaders enemies behave. They move purely mechanically and appear to shoot randomly – they don’t require a psychological read (goals, emotions, and so forth) in order to make sense of them. From this perspective, the enemy ships in Space Invaders are really part of the physics of the game, not AI. Game AI lies at the intersection of player perception (the player is able to read part of the game behavior as alive) and the game code that supports this perception.