Last week’s developer discussion covered a controversial topic: the applicability of computational intelligence techniques in games, specifically neural networks. This week, the topic is genetic algorithms (GA) and evolutionary strategies.

Remember, you can win an AiGameDev.com T-Shirt for posting interesting comments this month! Click here to join in the discussion.

Evolutionary algorithms (EA) fall into the category of general optimization strategies, which can be used to find approximate solutions to problems given a measure of fitness. Approaches based on artificial evolution rarely perform as well as specific optimization techniques on known problems, but they tend to provide satisfactory solutions generally for reasonably-sized problems.

Modern game developers certainly uses specific optimization techniques heavily, in particular for character animation, evolutionary algorithms still haven’t found a regular place in the development process — including for game AI.

• Are there simply too few problems in games for GA/EA to become widely applied?

• Do you think applying GA/EA in game design and development requires a specific skillset?

• Is the evolutionary approach less useful than specific optimization techniques that are already used?

Certainly, the independent game development scene seems less reluctant to apply EA/GA into gameplay and AI…

Be sure to contribute to the discussion by posting a comment below!