We’re willing to bet that word of the year for 2023 won’t be a word, it will be an acronym: AI. It’s absolutely everywhere right now, generating art, producing music videos, and even putting together shockingly convincing pizza commercials. But in the world of game development, AI has always been a key part of the process.
Usually, this comes in the form of the intelligence used to run automated characters or elements in the game world, but now AI is becoming part of the development process itself. Even amateur creators are getting in on the action by using AI programs to help them create mods and apps for existing games, benefiting both the gamer and the creator.
Here we’ve dug into some apps available on the Overwolf platform and chatted with their creators to find out how AI can be used to improve gameplay.
TipGenius
If you’ve ever been struggling to raise your ELO in Valorant then this app is for you. TipGenius is an AI coach that provides relevant advice live as you play. The free app is fully approved by Riot Games, so you don’t have to worry about it having adverse effects on your PC.
“Our AI system is able to comprehend what’s happening in your game and give a tip that makes sense for you, live as you play,” explains the app’s creator, Ben Mesnik. “This makes it feel like you have a private coach sitting next to you, but it’s 100% free.”
When developing the app with his team, Mesnik used a tool that you’ve most likely played with yourself – ChatGPT.
“With ChatGPT, we’re able to write simple yet effective scripts that expedite our processes, saving us valuable time and resources,” he says. “It also allows us to conduct mass market research to enhance our content. ChatGPT was trained on a vast amount of data from the internet, including people’s opinions on what works and what doesn’t. This enables us to gather insights on our users’ preferences and pain points, and develop content that resonates with them.”
Although it may be scary to some, Mesnik believes that AI will ultimately make work, life, and gaming better for everyone, if we can learn how to effectively incorporate it into our processes.
“As AI technology continues to evolve, I believe it will change our processes for the better. By performing mundane tasks, AI will free up our time and resources to focus on creating more innovative and helpful tools that benefit our users. Also, the more AI advances, the more personalised and tailored the learning experience will be for our users.”
iTero
iTero is similar in function to TipGenius, providing on-the-go coaching to League of Legends players. By analysing the player’s game data, the app suggests ways to improve, assisting gamers who wish to rise up the competitive ranks.
“Our AI studies millions of games to first learn how best to win, and more importantly what sort of mistakes most often lead to a loss,” says the app’s creator, Jack Williams. “Once it has a good understanding of the game, we give it individual accounts and ask it ‘what could this specific player do better?’ We then return this evaluation to the player, alongside the statistics that best represent that problem.”
Without the automation allowed by AI, players would need to cash out for a one-on-one coach if they really wanted to see tangible improvements to their play. Williams argues that their use of AI makes individualised coaching accessible for all.
“AI has the ability to study these games and detect patterns that would be far too complex for even an experienced player to see,” he says. “This means that our model can return an accurate, reliable and understandable summary of a player and their improvement areas.”
Allstar
In today’s gaming culture, producing content is often just as important as enjoying the game itself. Streaming, sharing clips, and making videos has become an enjoyable pastime and even a lucrative career for many gamers, and the appetite for user-generated gaming content is only growing. Naturally many gamers want to become creators and Allstar helps them do just that, thanks to the magic of AI.
“I’m a former professional gamer, and creating video content helped me experience my own ‘zero to hero’ story that launched an esports career,” says Nick Cuomo, the mind behind Allstar. “I did it the hard way with hundreds of hours of editing. We started Allstar to automate this entire process, and make my experience available to more people.”
The Allstar team uses a variety of AI to streamline processes and allow the human staff to focus on strategy and ideation.
“Our Discord chatbot uses natural language processing to help communicate and share content with users,” Cuomo says. “Our team uses AI-assisted tools to generate code, and art, and many of our creator tools have been built, in part, through the use of generative AI. In short, AI helps us make a better product faster, and allows us to build innovative chat interfaces and powerful creative features that are easy and accessible to use by anyone.”
Anybrain
Taking a different tack, Anybrain aims to protect the safety of gamers, shielding them from “fraudulent behaviours”. This manifests as a new kind of anti-cheat technology based on analysis of player behaviours.
“The use of AI for this purpose provides a real-time, efficient detection of cheaters with almost zero false positives,” says Anh-Vu Nguyen, one of the app’s main developers. “The benefit for the users is immediate – when Anybrain is protecting a game, its users can enjoy a fair and secure experience, in both casual and professional gaming.”
Being AI developers, the makers of Anybrain are intimately familiar with the benefits of the technology.
“The detection of cheaters is a very difficult task, it’s a game of cat and mouse,” he elaborates. “So AI comes to help in this fight by identifying scenarios that are often invisible to the human eye or that, on a large scale, become impossible to be analysed by humans.”
If you think any one of these apps could help you achieve better results in your favourite games, then head to the Overwolf app store today to explore the full library of apps and download them for free.
