Name: The future of video games depends on A.I.
Uploaded: 2022-04-08
Duration: 5 min 1 s
Description: A look at how EA SPORTS is making its NFL, NHL and FIFA games more intelligent.

A look at how EA SPORTS is making its NFL, NHL and FIFA games more intelligent.

The future of video games depends on A.I.

Tech

you know when you talk about sports, the expectation is authenticity. Our goal is to create the most authentic representation of stimulation football every year, year over year. That's what we're trying to bring to FIFA that's sort of unrivaled realism. That's what you want in a sports case. Yeah. Yeah. And when you talk about AI are football game is built out of so many different systems from how players block to QB decision making to player avoidance. QB. Clock management, all complex systems that we're always striving to improve every year to make those systems more intelligent. We have a partnership with a company called next gen stats. What they do is they track movement and provide deeper statistics and analytics for all the players and teams in the NFL. So they put R. F. 2016. So that's like what plays each team runs how often and when, how successful each team is at passing the ball or running the ball. What percentage do they run inside or outside. And there's so much cool data that we can use to inform our AI to make the most realistic representation not only of football in general but from a team perspective and then on the player's side we're starting to use it, you know, really heavy on the QB right now to determine. Okay. How long does the player hang onto the ball? How likely are they to force it into coverage? How much risk do they take? And so we're just really scratching the surface there. How are you from the feedback that we hear every year from our players. Ai is something that they always ask to be improved. I think there's way more room in Ai even than in animation like animation. Now it looks pretty lifelike but that decision making it so difficult to get right and that's the opportunity we have. Can we make each player, I feel like the real life counterpart, The new way that we've been gathering data is through our hyper motion technology which we introduced in peace of 22, which is actually Motion capturing professional players in a real 90 minute match. And that's something we never have been able to do before because it was always in the studio, it was always very prescriptive in the sense that do this action, okay, I'll do this action and now it's like play football, you play football and will capture your your motion. Getting data and movements. That's what we really, really need to make the game as authentic as possible. You know, for me, when I think about Ai it's just really replicating the player behavior and the team behavior that people expect to see from their favorite players and their favorite teams within our sports games for us on NHL right now it's looking at players and they're trying to replicate that behavior through the database through hard coding Ai in some cases playing the game with that character and recording the movements that that player would normally do in specific situations and using that as a layer for our Ai. So you know, maybe our typical Ai wouldn't make a, you know, a stretch pass to a player for a chance at a breakaway because There's a 70% chance that that puck gets intercepted. Um so I just wouldn't do that. It's it's not a player that player or that team would make but with a layer of something like a superstar X. Factor, we have players that have the skill level to maybe successfully complete that pass and a higher percentage than the average person average player. Then we start to build that layer of trade or tendency into our Ai so that that player now will attempt that pass Because that's what that player would do in real life, understanding though that it's not going to be 100 oh I one on one but I think Ai is very well set up to be uh the the thing that defines this generation of console between just the extra computing power of the new consoles um that unlock a new bunch of abilities for us from a development perspective and you partner that with what's happening with the real world and the capturing of real world data and the way that you know data being leveraged now to to drive different technologies drive games as well. I think it's set up well to be the defining thing for this uh this generation of consoles for sure. Now we're at a place where graphics are really, really good. But I would say over the next few years ai is that's what's going to improve and that's what's really, really going to like take a step higher. It does mean that we have to invest in new technologies like machine learning and everything we've done with hyper motion and just gathering tons and tons of real life data longer term, really looking at machine learning and machine learning as an opportunity to help us solve some of the problems that aren't easy to solve. So it's such a critical piece of developing sports games.