Using Artificial Intelligence to Create Tension Inducing Experiences in Horror Games

Abstract: The video game industry is evolving day by day with new technologies being introduced to enhance the player experience. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in games can be seen as one of the major areas that many game companies focus on due to therapid technological development that it has seen in recent years. Even though the application and use of modern AI techniques such as deep learning can be rarely seenin the commercial video game industry in comparison to the area of academic research,we can see that many game developers use AI methodologies to overcome Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) and enemy path-finding problems that persist in their games. This paper focuses on looking into how AI can be used in horror games to elevate tension inducing player experiences by researching on the work that has been done with regard to how tension and fear are created in the genre of horror, how to track and identify player emotions in game and finally, coming up with a hypothetic alsolution that can be used to track player emotions in order to create tension experiences in horror games with the help of AI, together with the physiological responses of the player. The findings of this paper give an idea on the feasibility of the solution system as well as the potential use of physiological responses in commercial video games as well as future work that is to be done to implement and test the solution system proposed in this paper.