Games for Artificial Intelligence Research: A Review and Perspectives

Games have been the perfect test beds for artificial intelligence (AI) research for the characteristics that widely exist in real-world scenarios. Learning and optimization, decision-making in dynamic and uncertain environments, game theory, planning and scheduling, design, and education are common research areas shared between games and real-world problems. Numerous open-source games or game-based environments have been implemented to study AI. In addition to single- or multiplayer, collaborative, and adversarial games, there has also been growing interest in implementing platforms for creative design in recent years. Those platforms provide ideal benchmarks for exploring and comparing AI ideas and techniques. This article reviews the games and game-based platforms for AI research, provides guidance on matching particular types of AI with suitable games for testing and matching particular needs in games with suitable AI techniques, discusses the research trend induced by the evolution of those games and platforms, and gives an outlook.