Many of us have been guilty of giving up on a game after a protracted grind or an obstacle that seems insurmountable, but Sony appears to be trying to change that, based on their most recent patent.
While it makes sense that certain masochists find enjoyment in the agony of constantly losing in games like Dark Souls—overcoming those obstacles is an amazing feeling—the majority of us eventually reach a breaking point when we push the power button and the game is abandoned to gather dust on a shelf.
An AI that learns from human players and can carry on while they’re not playing is described in a patent that SegmentNext discovered:
According to the patent, “the method includes monitoring a plurality of game plays of the user playing a plurality of gaming applications.”
“The method comprises creating a user gameplay profile for the user by modifying the default gameplay style in response to several gameplays; the user gameplay profile then contains a personalized user gameplay style. One aspect of the system is managing a first game instance according to the user’s gameplay profile and style.
It’s simple to understand how such an AI may be utilized in grind-heavy games to get to a necessary level; in fact, it could be used to solve a difficulty rather than forcing a player to give up altogether by leveraging the AI of another player who has successfully finished it.
Alternatively, the AI might provide gaming advice to the human player while they are playing, for those who believe that level of intervention to be cheating. Instead of being the person on your couch who makes fun of you and then acts worse when they take the controller, the AI essentially wants to be a helpful player two.
Despite significant progress in making games accessible to individuals with disabilities, certain aspects of games continue to pose difficulties, despite the best efforts of game developers. These people will also profit from an AI that can step in and take over for a short while, letting them enjoy the remainder of the game and the increasingly engaging narrative that many games offer.