Resources

Essential reading, tools, and references for AI in gaming

Essential Books

The Art of Game Design

by Jesse Schell

100+ lenses to structure critique and adapt for AI discussions

Game AI Pro Series

by Steve Rabin

Production-ready AI techniques from industry veterans

Artificial Intelligence and Games

by Yannakakis & Togelius

Academic survey including transformers and ethics

AI and Games

by Michael Cook

Accessible introduction to AI techniques in game development

Academic Papers

Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning

2013

DeepMind's breakthrough paper that started the ML gaming revolution

Mastering the Game of Go with Deep Neural Networks

2016

AlphaGo's architecture and implications for game AI

The Nemesis System: A Brief Introduction

2015

GDC talk transcript on Shadow of Mordor's revolutionary AI

Procedural Content Generation via Machine Learning

2018

Survey of ML approaches to PCG in games

Tools & Frameworks

Behavior Designer

Unity Asset

Visual behavior tree editor for game AI

ML-Agents

Unity Package

Train intelligent agents using reinforcement learning

OpenAI Gym

Python Library

Toolkit for developing and comparing RL algorithms

Godot AI

Godot Plugin

AI and machine learning tools for Godot Engine

NEAT-Python

Python Library

Neuroevolution for evolving neural networks in games

Stable Baselines3

Python Library

Reliable implementations of RL algorithms

Podcasts & Shows

AI and Games

Hosted by Tommy Thompson

Deep dives into AI techniques used in modern games

The AIAS Game Maker's Notebook

Hosted by Ted Price

Industry leaders discuss AI's role in game development

Game AI Podcast

Hosted by Various

Technical discussions on game AI implementation

Communities

r/gameai

Discussion of AI techniques in game development

Game AI Discord

Discord

Real-time chat with game AI developers

AI Game Dev Forum

Forum

Long-form discussions and tutorials

Conferences & Events

Game Developers Conference (GDC)

AI Summit track

Annual gathering with dedicated AI programming summit

AIIDE

AI and Interactive Digital Entertainment

Academic conference on AI in games and entertainment

IEEE CoG

Computational Intelligence and Games

Research conference on AI techniques for games