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Getting stuck in a video game is a problem as old as video games themselves. Back in the day, this usually meant running up against a puzzle you couldn’t solve, and depending on how old you are, the remedy was either shelling out for a mail-order hint book, paying by the minute to dial the publisher’s hint line, or badgering that one friend with a dial-up AOL connection to get the answer from the know-it-alls on a bulletin board.
With the advent of the internet, however, solutions to such problems are just a click away. This means that if anything is going to halt your progress in a game today, it’s less likely to be an inscrutable puzzle and more likely to be a skill issue—perhaps you just don’t have the time or motivation to git gud enough to smack down the boss standing between you and the rest of your game, and Let Me Solo Her just isn’t answering your calls any more.
Being able to offer a challenge to experienced players, while also avoiding situations where dispirited n00bs just give up, is one of the fundamental challenges of game design. Today, most games address the problem with a variety of increasingly granular difficulty sliders. But is there a better way?
Well, it seems that Sony thinks so, and their idea is based on … oh, go on, you’ll never guess. Last year, the company filed a patent for an AI-based system to assist players on the verge of hurling their controller across the room and ragequitting. The patent describes the idea of a “ghost” character upon whom players could call in times of need; when summoned, the ghost could step into the player’s metaphorical shoes to either demonstrate what they’re doing wrong or just complete the challenging section for them.
The key idea is that the “ghosts” are operated by an AI that actually takes control of your character’s inputs. In theory, this would allow the system to adapt to any in-game situation. This is an obvious improvement to what games today provide in the way of help, which is usually a series of tutorials on how the game’s systems work.
Of course, an AI requires training data—and given that this patent was filed a year ago, there’s a non-zero chance that somewhere in the bowels of Sony HQ, a bunch of interns are getting steamrolled repeatedly by Promised Consort Radahn so that Sony’s AI can learn what not to do. Also, it certainly seems possible that your own pitiful efforts could be put to similar use one day soon: section 6.2 of the PlayStation Terms of Service addresses the subject of user-generated content (UGC), a category that includes gameplay data, and grants Sony “a royalty-free, perpetual, global license to use, distribute, copy, modify, display, and publish your UGC for any reason, without further notice or payment to you or any third parties.”
Many people will no doubt be uncomfortable with the idea of an AI playing their game for them, and it’s easy to think of the gazillion ways that systems like this could be abused in multiplayer contexts. Still, when it comes to applications for AI, this one seems relatively harmless and may even have accessibility benefits.
If nothing else, Elon Musk will save a little money if the AI ghosts are ever launched in the wild.
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