Table Of Content

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND PLAYABLE MEDIA This book introduces readers to artificial intelligence (AI) through the lens of playable media and explores the impact of such software on everyday life. From video games to robotic companions to digital twins, artificial intelligence drives large sectors of the culture industry where play, media and machine learning coexist. This book illustrates how playable media contribute to our sense of self, while also harnessing our data, tightening our bonds with computation and realigning play with the demands of network logic. Author Eric Freedman examines a number of popular media forms—from the Sony AIBO robotic dog, video game developer Naughty Dog’s Uncharted and The Last of Us franchises, to Peloton’s connected fitness equipment—to lay bare the computational processes that undergird playable media, and addresses the social, cultural, technological and economic forces that continue to shape user-centered experience and design. The case studies are drawn from a number of related research fields, including science and technology studies, media studies and software studies. This book is ideal for media studies students, scholars and practitioners interested in understanding how applied artificial intelligence works in popular, public and visual culture. Eric Freedman is Professor and Dean of the School of Media Arts at Columbia College Chicago. He is the author of The Persistence of Code in Game Engine Culture (2020) and Transient Images: Personal Media in Public Frameworks (2011). He serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Creative Media Research and the Journal of Communication and Media Studies and on the Advisory Board of the Communication and Media Studies Research Network. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND PLAYABLE MEDIA Eric Freedman Cover image: Yuliash/Getty Images First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Eric Freedman The right of Eric Freedman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-032-12545-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-12481-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-22507-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003225072 Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC CONTENTS List of Figures vi Acknowledgments viii 1 Computation Meets Play: The History of Playful AI 1 2 Expressive Intelligence: Modernizing the Video Game Industry 31 3 Cheating Death: Artificial Intelligence, Non-Player Characters and the Logic of Pandemic Culture 56 4 New Platform Industries: Artificial Intelligence, Biometrics and Connected Fitness 89 5 Worldbuilding and Digital Twins 112 Bibliography 136 Index 157 FIGURES 1.1 Chief Priest Bungen Oi offers a communal funeral prayer for expired Sony AIBOs at the Kofukuji temple in Isumi, Chiba, Japan, in 2018 13 1.2 Documentation for Boston Dynamics Spot 15 3.1 From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention poster, “Help Protect Yourself and Others in Public Settings” 72 3.2 A map of downtown Seattle provides direction for Ellie and her non-player companion character Jesse, as well as a series of waymarks for the player in The Last of Us Part II 76 3.3 Blockmesh is used to establish level flow as part of game design and development in The Last of Us Part II 78 3.4 As Ellie, the player can utilize stealth while reading the movements of enemy non-player characters in The Last of Us Part II 78 3.5 Blockmesh is also used to delineate and evaluate pathways through the physical environment as part of game design and development in The Last of Us Part II 80 3.6 The buddy follow system of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End lays out potential positions for non-player companion characters in relationship to the player character 83 4.1 The Peloton Bike touchscreen displays an array of functional metrics, including cadence, resistance, output and power zones 94 4.2 The user’s manual for the ProForm 10.5 QM includes instructions for connecting the treadmill to a VCR using an audio cable for automatic device control 99 Figures vii 5.1 Wellington Digital Twin developed by Buildmedia on the Unreal Engine, highlighting the projected role of mass transit 123 5.2 Wellington Digital Twin developed by Buildmedia on the Unreal Engine, highlighting cyclist sensor data 123 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book emerged from a very uneasy space, during a period that forced many of us into hypermediated states, divorced from others and experiencing the world through the lens of computer-mediated communications. To safely occupy that space is a point of privilege; for me, this meant having the security and the means to take the time to be immersed in new systems, new games and new work- related modes of connectivity, while studying their pattern languages. While I have been shielded from some of the harshest pandemic realities, I am mindful that the socioeconomic fallout of COVID-19 will ripple through society for decades and have a disproportionate impact on already vulnerable communities; and that mindfulness has forced me to consider the value of writing about artificial intelligence and playable media at a time when many scholars have turned to the more overtly pernicious forms of intelligence associated with data mining, deception, displacement and control. Figures as divergent as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have urged us to take artificial intelligence seriously as a threat to humanity, and have prophesized that an unexpected explosion of machine learning will pose an existential risk. In his radio lecture “Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory,” a broadcast that aired around 1951, British mathematician Alan Turing postulated that self-learning machines might take control of the world. And yet, the most common thought exercises for the brain without a body have been learning languages, performing complex mathematical equations and playing games (Turing, 1948). So, I remain hopeful about our augmented future, and about using artificial intelligence to solve the complex multi-system problems that threaten our very existence. I thank my external reviewers for lending their critical eyes to my research and pushing me to clarify my arguments; their feedback strengthened the manuscript by making me a more thoughtful writer. I thank the anonymous gamers who Acknowledgments ix have served as a surrogate community. Their collective humor and camaraderie continue to outweigh their worst behaviors. Many of us danced together in game space to celebrate our shared victories. My colleague and friend Heather Hend- ershot invited me to speak to graduate students in the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program, and that lively conversation pushed me to clarify several of my arguments. Of course, the strongest editorial voice came from my editor Sheni Kruger at Routledge, who expressed enthusiasm for this project at its outset and shepherded the book forward with an always patient and diligent Emma Sher- riff at the press. Finally, I thank my husband, Ryan Ratliff, who has once again encouraged me to follow new ideas and has always given me the time and space to do so.