South Korea’s second largest game maker, NCSOFT’s development of games equipped with artificial intelligence has been speeding up recently.
The firm has focused on the technologies since its chief Kim Taek-Jin said “AI technology is an innovation NCSOFT is concentrating on,” last year.
“Controlling games on mobile environment is becoming more complicated and difficult. If artificial intelligence is applied to games, it will bring bigger fun to users,” Yoon Jae-soo, chief financial officer of the firm, said on the conference call on Wednesday.
“The technologies will be applied into games in 2016 and they will be mentioned in the introduction of games from next year,” he added.
Early this year, key figures of the company including its chief strategy officer and Kim’s wife Yoon Song-hee were sent to the AI division, in a bid to strengthen the division.
The firm said the key aim of the research is to make unpredictable game environment in order to offer users with more exciting experiences.
The AI technology has been used mostly for non-player character in console games. Down the road, higher level of the AI technology will also be used for massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG).
Further, NCSOFT said it plans to diversify its income sources, which mostly come from its megahit game Lineage, by launching diverse games – including ones with AI technologies - in the first half of this year.
By Lee Kyung-ho
