The Stories Behind the Videos | 10 Years of AI and Games

I was asked by my crowdfunding community to talk about my favourite episodes of AI and Games. But instead, let's tell some stories about how some of the videos came to be!
[00:00] Intro
[01:03] Some Personal Favourites
[02:52] Challenging Topics
[05:10] #29 - Spec Ops: The Line
[07:53] #44 - Goldeneye 007
[11:43] #40-43 Sea of Thieves
[17:28] #15 Alien: Isolation
[23:30] The F.E.A.R. Retrospective
[25:37] Coming Soon
[28:31] Closing
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[@AIandGames]

I hope you enjoyed the tales behind these episodes. There's plenty more stories to tell actually, but I figured this was a good start! Fingers crossed I'm back to my regular programming with AI and Games #75 next month!

[@shayneoneill1506]

I'd love to see a video on Dwarf Fortress's AI. Possibly a terrifyingly huge topic to cover (That thing is *deep*), but theres something about the AI on that thing that feels incredibly alive. Probably a good example of a "You should defiantely not do it this way" approach that ends up amazing anyway due to pure inane perserverence on behalf of the dev.

[@AIandGames]

Dwarf Fortress is definitely in the backlog. One day I'll get to it I'm sure.

[@Skeffles]

Congratulations on doing this for 10 years! It's amazing how you've kept the quality so high throughout.

[@toppefall]

AI and Games has been such an inspiration and a gold mine of information on ai tech. It was absolutely essential for me when I was learning about ai planning for games. As such, FEAR and your Transformer videos stand out as my favourites. Thank you for your amazing effort!

[@finn6492]

Congrats on 10 years. My favorite video is the one on Ultima Ratio Regum. I hope you do more video on games in the genre like Songs of Syx and Caves of Qud

[@AIandGames]

Oh that's a good one. I'm really proud of the URR episode given I've known Mark now for at least 10 years now, and his work has always impressed me. I will say that one of the sweetest things about working on that episode was Mark's been a fan and advocate for the channel since the early days, and so he was really excited when he found out the Patreon community voted for his game to be covered. EDIT: Also yes, Caves of Qud is on the to-do list for sure. I need to have a look at Songs of Syx though.

[@LyingTube]

Your videos may not be colossal behemoth money-makers, but your work has been genuinely invaluable in my continuing exploits into AI development.

[@PlebNC]

I really liked the Sea of Thieves ones because it explained a number of useful behaviours as a player like how sharks only attack on a lateral plane and the "fun factor" system that controls how likely a ship is to be attacked by a meg/Skellie Ship.

[@LoadingScreen9]

10 years! Congratulations. This was a neat insight, cheers!

[@igorpuschner786]

10 f'in years already?! Congratulations!

[@JanB1605]

Congrats on 10 years mate! I love watching each and every episode! Your videos actually helped me during my systems engineering studies. State machines, action planning, path planning, path following and all of the like, and more than ever machine learning mixing up the field is quite relevant for mobile automation and automation in general. There are many similar problems and concepts in game AI and mobile automation I'd say.

[@AIandGames]

I always find it interesting how there's so much overlap in these seemingly disparate fields. Its always useful to remind ourselves these ideas don't exist in isolation.

[@FunbobbyJ]

I discovered your channel relatively recently, but I wish I found it earlier. Your insights and breakdowns are both eye opening and inspirational in my own game development journey. I’m looking forward to more videos!

[@Badguy292]

This is actually really interesting, I love it! Something I am studying as well, is AI behavior trees and how I want to implement them in my Unreal Engine 5 projects. Your journey has helped me a lot via your videos, so thank you. Especially the F.E.A.R. stuff, always been a fan of that and how fluid it feels.

[@_spartan11796]

Congrats on 10 years!

[@SDGGames]

You asked for stories: I found your Sea of Thieves videos first. You were one of those channels that I found multiple times and eventually got familiar enough with to subscribe to, but I still remember the discussions about unit testing in that one. It feels like CICD and TDD are completely foreign to the games industry, especially in the startup/indie scene. I really enjoyed hearing about how large studios use these tools, and even got to take a few lessons away to use as I've been learning to make my own games. Thanks for 10 years, these videos have been a great resource for someone who wants to get into games.

[@AIandGames]

Yeah having worked in other areas of software engineering, I often find it wild how game development works by comparison. In fact I ended up writing some guest blogs for the Pragmatic Engineer Substack the last couple years explaining how game dev works to a regular software engineer. Was really fun seeing the reactions to that.

[@franknord4826]

Holy shit, with *that* teaser the next episode has finally gotta be STALKERs A-Life, right? I didn't think I'd see the day…

[@ayush21399]

Quality insights, thank you

[@PlebNC]

Mentions working at Norwich Games Festival. Me, a frequent attendee of it: SAY WHAT?

[@AIandGames]

For the first few years that it ran (like 2017-2019 I think), there was an educational day that ran before the main festival started. That was when myself, Mel and Shaun would be doing our thing. But then during the festival I would have been there either showing off builds of my game(s) or speaking. IIRC I gave two (maybe three?) talks there over the years. One of which I got asked to do the night before while in Gonzos about 6 beers in, all because another speaker had dropped out. That was a little bit rushed that one 😅

[@SomeOtherPooma]

Irn Bru to start - nice! Made from girders

[@gdonaldson26]

It was one of those Alien Isolation videos that pointed me to your channel, and have been subscribed since! The subtitles at the end called your Irn Bru a "cup of tea"... That's just wrong! Tea isn't made from Girders! 😄

[@AIandGames]

Clearly when I wrote the script I was aiming to be more civilised! 😂

[@FusionC6]

my man

[@johnlime1469]

Hello Tommy Thompson. I would really want your opinion on this regarding the use of AI in Games. I have been studying deep reinforcement learning (DRL) for nearly the entirety of my academic studies up until my current graduate studies and had a strong interest in utiliIng our current best understanding of feedback control systems for simulating animal behavior, for example in games. However with the current trend of AI actively putting artists out of jobs, I am starting to realize that my interest is potentially morally corrupt and that I my field may also be problematic, much to my discomfort in basically throwing away a goal that I've had for years. As someone who actively contributes to the game AI development industry, how do you navigate through this kind of conversation? Do you try to avoid DRL and focuw on manually developing white box models like behavior trees? I think this would be insightful to many of the followers, and we would appreciate any response, long or short.

[@AIandGames]

I won't sugar-coat it, this is a tough issue to reconcile, and it's something that anyone who has invested their time and energy into AI - and is socially conscious - has to tackle. Being able to recognise both the good and bad that something like AI can achieve is vital, and critically being able to distinguish how even ideas that are conducted with good intentions can have disastrous consequences. This is of course not unique to AI, but anything in the sciences quite frankly (see my History of AI episode on mathematicians inventing both the FSMs used in Half-Life and calculations for the atomic bomb). For yourself, I think it's important to think about what you're doing, what your goals are, and what impact (both positive and negative) it can have on the world. The first time that really hammered home for me was in... 2007, when I attended a conference where a team of naval researchers were using F.E.A.R.s GOAP technique in a simulation for artillery fire. Thankfully it wasn't very good. But it blew my mind, and made me seriously question how you can conduct this kind of work knowing the potential it has to harm others. It's why many years ago (circa 2010), upon graduating my PhD, I turned down job offers or interviews at Amazon, Facebook, and Google. I had a bad experience interviewing at Google, and Facebook's recruiters hounded me for two years, and I had to politely point out that I am well aware of why they wanted to hire me (I had experience in machine learning) and what value that was to them. I hate to have been proven correct in that regard. I have always taken this approach, even when it has been to the detriment of my supposed 'career'. I struggled to get my first job out of my PhD and partially because I rejected working for bigger firms that would compromise my principles. It was difficult for a period when I was on unemployment benefits and couldn't afford rent. I am eternally grateful that my family supported me at a time when they could easily have made me feel bad about turning down money because it went against my beliefs. I know my father respected that decision, and that helped me sleep at night. To this day, when meeting with potential clients, I always do a deep-dive into that company to understand them better and whether I feel getting into business with them would challenge my principles in ways I am not comfortable with. But it is also why my work as a KZbinr, public speaker, and now consultant have persisted, because to me it's important to use my knowledge and expertise to inform others. Knowledge, as they say, is power. To me the most powerful thing I can do is inform my audience, because by doing so I empower them. But referring to a specific part of your question: I work in all forms of AI, be it game AI, ML, generative AI. But I am always mindful of how to use these tools in positive and ethically balanced ways. Naturally generative AI is far trickier than the others, though it is still attainable! Naturally it's important you find the thing you want to do. Do you want to build a new library or tool? Do you adopt this knowledge in games or another sector? I think always being mindful of the potential of what this field enables is incredibly important, and then finding ways to express yourself in a way that aligns with your views. Critically, you may well decide that you never want to touch it again, and do something else entirely (I have known PhD graduates who reached the end of their journey, and swore off ever doing anything related to their specialism ever again). In any case, I hope this proves useful as you address these issues yourself. Perhaps my closing point would be that you're on a good path right now, given you're already thinking about these issues. By raising these concerns and addressing this discomfort, it shows your head and heart are in the right place.

[@johnlime1469]

@@AIandGames Thank you so much for the in-depth insight without the sugarcoating and even providing irl examples.

[@vuksmiljic6772]

A English guy how start a video with a beer mybe it would be better with tea

[@AIandGames]

English guy? Beer? Not this video.

[@dischodave]

Great video Tommy! Been following your videos for a while now. They are always a great resource for learning and insider knowledge. Hope you keep them coming! :)