Attend GDC 2016's AI Summit and learn to make games smarter

As the 2016 Game Developers Conference draws nigh, organizers are eager to let you know about some of the great AI-focused talks that will be taking place during the March conference.

Each of these talks is part of the GDC AI Summit, one of eight that will take place Monday, March 14th and Tuesday, March 15th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA during the first two days of the conference.

Each Summit offers a comprehensive overview of a specific game industry discipline, and the AI Summit is no exception. This year, Insomniac senior programmer Jan Mueller will be participating by delivering a talk on "Mind Your Step: Avoiding 3 Common Pitfalls in AI Development."

Using examples from Insomniac's Sunset Overdrive and other games, this session will challenge 3 common misconceptions about AI programming and show you how to avoid these common pitfalls as you craft compelling AI for your own games.

Plus, Epic's John Abercrombie and The Molasses Flood co-founder Damian Isla will be there digging into a neat topic: "AI For Generated Worlds." In recent years, many new games (particularly in the indie space) have started relying on procedurally generated world or level generation.

While much has been said about how to create compelling algorithmic worlds, what often goes unsaid is how to craft AI that can be just as compelling in those one-off worlds without the advantage of human level markup. In this talk, Isla and Abercrombie will discuss their work in their respective titles, The Flame in the Flood and Fortnite, showing how they designed their AI to be "extra spatially funsmart" in any environment.

Also, don't miss "Blending Autonomy and Control: Creating NPCs for 'Tom Clancy's The Division'" at the GDC 2016 AI Summit. During this presentation Philip Dunstan and Drew Rechner from Massive Entertainment (a Ubisoft studio) will deconstruct the AI design and creation of the combat NPC's populating Tom Clancy's The Division (pictured.)

Check it out to learn how Massive designed and implemented a large number of distinct NPC types in The Division, and fine-tuned them to behave appropriate in both systemic open-world environments and custom-authored encounters.

For more details on these and all other announced talks head over to the online GDC 2016 Session Scheduler, where you can begin to build your conference week and later export it to the up-to-the-minute GDC Mobile App, coming soon.

And of course conference officials look forward to announcing many more GDC 2016 Summit sessions spanning a diverse array of game industry issues in the months ahead. For now, don't miss the opportunity to save money by registering for the conference early -- the deadline to register for passes at a discounted rate is Wednesday, February 3rd, 2016.

GDC 2016 itself will take place March 14-18th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. For more information on GDC 2016, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

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