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Artificial Intelligence in Games

Artificial Intelligence in Games is a research topic within Artificial Intelligence. Science Explorer counts 14k research works in it since 1950. 10.0% of them reached the world's top 10% most cited for their field and year.

This cluster of papers focuses on the research and development of artificial intelligence techniques for games, including Monte Carlo Tree Search, procedural content generation, interactive storytelling, player modeling, real-time strategy games, computational creativity, behavior trees, general game playing, and level generation.

  • Monte Carlo Tree Search
  • Procedural Content Generation
  • Interactive Storytelling
  • Player Modeling
  • Real-Time Strategy Games
  • Computational Creativity
  • Behavior Trees
  • General Game Playing
  • Level Generation
  • Computer Go
Research works
14k
fractional, since 1950
In the world top 10%
1.4k
per year above
Top-10% rate
10.0%
share of its works in the world top 10%
Growth, 2018-21 → 2022-25
+28%
the tick is no change
Largest producer
United States
33% of the 10 largest, 2022-now
Artificial Intelligence in Games

Which countries lead Artificial Intelligence in Games research?

By volume, the United States and China publish the most (803 and 555 works in 2022-now).

By volume, 2022-now

  1. 1 United States 803 works
  2. 2 China 555 works
  3. 3 India 222 works
  4. 4 United Kingdom 186 works
  5. 5 Japan 150 works
  6. 6 Germany 144 works
  7. 7 Canada 121 works
  8. 8 Indonesia 107 works
  9. 9 France 95 works
  10. 10 Italy 73 works

How concentrated that is

The same countries as shares of everything the list above accounts for. A node where two countries do two thirds of the work and one spread evenly across twelve read alike as a ranking and not at all alike here.

United States: 32.7%China: 22.6%India: 9.0%United Kingdom: 7.6%6 others listed: 28.1%33%largest
United States803 · 32.7%China555 · 22.6%India222 · 9.0%United Kingdom186 · 7.6%6 others listed691 · 28.1%

Shares of the rows listed above, not of the whole node.

Which institutions lead Artificial Intelligence in Games research?

By volume in 2022-now, American Society of Genealogists publishes the most Artificial Intelligence in Games research, followed by Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Chinese Academy of Sciences.

By volume, 2022-now

  1. 1 American Society of GenealogistsUnited States 164 works
  2. 2 Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueFrance 29 works
  3. 3 Chinese Academy of SciencesChina 20 works
  4. 4 New York UniversityUnited States 18 works
  5. 5 University of AlbertaCanada 17 works
  6. 6 Tsinghua UniversityChina 16 works
  7. 7 Binus UniversityIndonesia 15 works
  8. 8 Carnegie Mellon UniversityUnited States 15 works
  9. 9 University of California, Santa CruzUnited States 14 works
  10. 10 Maastricht UniversityNetherlands 13 works

Who are the leading researchers in Artificial Intelligence in Games?

The most-cited researchers publishing on Artificial Intelligence in Games include Yoshua Bengio, Leo Breiman and Ilya Sutskever.

  1. 1 Yoshua Bengio Canada 476k citations
  2. 2 Leo Breiman United States 243k citations
  3. 3 Ilya Sutskever Canada 219k citations
  4. 4 Trevor J. Darrell United States 206k citations
  5. 5 Demis Hassabis United Kingdom 199k citations
  6. 6 Jürgen Schmidhuber Switzerland 188k citations
  7. 7 Herbert A. Simon United States 179k citations
  8. 8 Oriol Vinyals United States 177k citations

Ranked by citations received across their whole record, among researchers with at least three works on this topic.

What are the most cited papers in Artificial Intelligence in Games?

The most cited paper in Artificial Intelligence in Games is "Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search" (David Lawrence Silver, Aja Huang, Chris J. Maddison et al., 2016), with 16,121 citations. Next come "Mastering the game of Go without human knowledge" (9,370) and "From game design elements to gamefulness" (8,256).

Most cited papers
#PaperReleasedCitations
1 Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search David Lawrence Silver, Aja Huang, Chris J. Maddison et al. · Nature 26 Jan 2016 16,121
2 Mastering the game of Go without human knowledge David Lawrence Silver, Julian Schrittwieser, Karen Simonyan et al. · Nature Oct 2017 9,370
3 From game design elements to gamefulness Sebastian Deterding, Dan Dixon, Rilla Khaled et al. Conference paper 28 Sep 2011 8,256
4 A general reinforcement learning algorithm that masters chess, shogi, and Go through self-play David Lawrence Silver, Thomas Hubert, Julian Schrittwieser et al. · Science Open access 6 Dec 2018 3,636
5 Grandmaster level in StarCraft II using multi-agent reinforcement learning Oriol Vinyals et al. · Nature 30 Oct 2019 3,528
All 100 most cited papers, with filters and sorting

Where is Artificial Intelligence in Games research done?

The largest centres of Artificial Intelligence in Games research in 2022-now are Sharon (United States), Beijing (China), London (United Kingdom) and Tokyo (Japan). Among places with at least 20 works in it, it is an unusually large share of all research in Sharon.

Largest cities, 2022-now

  1. 1 SharonUnited States 164 works
  2. 2 BeijingChina 137 works
  3. 3 LondonUnited Kingdom 54 works
  4. 4 TokyoJapan 53 works
  5. 5 ShanghaiChina 38 works
  6. 6 New YorkUnited States 37 works
  7. 7 ParisFrance 33 works
  8. 8 SeoulSouth Korea 29 works
  9. 9 ShenzhenChina 27 works
  10. 10 Hong KongChina 26 works

Where it is the local speciality

  1. SharonUS · 164.0 works454×
← less than its size predicts1×more →

Location quotient: how much more of its research is in Artificial Intelligence in Games than the world average.

See Artificial Intelligence in Games on the map

Where is the best place to study Artificial Intelligence in Games?

Among universities, judged by research, New York University, University of California, Santa Cruz and Tsinghua University score highest, combining excellence, specialisation, size, growth and international reach. Research strength is one signal when choosing where to study; it does not measure teaching.

0%20%40%mean 19.97%fractional works in this field (log) →share of work in the world top 10% →Hong Kong University…University of Califo…Tsinghua UniversityNew York University
above the meannear itbelow it

One dot per university in the first ten of the table below, at the default weights. The upper left is the interesting corner: small places doing unusually strong work.

Excellenceshare of its work in the world top 10%, 2022-now and all time averaged
40%
Specialisationhow much of its work is in this field, counted up to 10× the world share
10%
Sizeits output in this field, on a log scale
30%
Growthoutput growth, counted from -20% to +20%
10%
Internationalshare of its work with a co-author abroad
10%
Each slider sets a weight; the share it gets of the score is beside it.
#UniversityScoreTop 10%SpecialisationWorksGrowth
1New York UniversityUnited States 75.619.1%5.4×18 -3.0%
2University of California, Santa CruzUnited States 75.628.7%25.6×14 -11.6%
3Tsinghua UniversityChina 71.623.0%2.2×16 +105.4%
4Hong Kong University of Science and TechnologyChina 70.431.1%7.1×9 +429.2%
5Carnegie Mellon UniversityUnited States 63.914.9%11.7×15 -50.5%
6University of MaltaMalta 63.324.1%23.5×10 -2.0%
7National University of SingaporeSingapore 61.325.3%3.0×11 +52.0%
8University of AlbertaCanada 58.56.3%6.5×17 -23.3%
9Northeastern UniversityUnited States 55.412.8%12.2×11 +59.6%
10Maastricht UniversityNetherlands 54.414.4%10.5×13 -16.3%

Universities only. The score blends excellence (40%), size (30%), specialisation (10%), growth (10%), international reach (10%), 2022-now; growth compares 2018-21 with 2022-25 and counts up to +20%, since a jump from a small base is mostly noise.

Every institution in Artificial Intelligence in Games, country by country

Is Artificial Intelligence in Games research growing?

Output in 2022-2025 was 28% higher than in 2018-2021, peaking in 2025. The fastest-growing topics are Artificial Intelligence in Games.

still counting19801990200020102020
grewheldshrank

The same series as a ribbon: one cell per year, darker for more. The line above answers how much; this answers when.

Its share of all research

Growing output can still be a shrinking share: all of science grows. This is Artificial Intelligence in Games as a percentage of every work published that year, 0.013% in 2024.

still counting0.010%0.020%Artificial Intelligence in Games0.016% in 202519801990200020102020

Fractional works of Artificial Intelligence in Games over all fractional works that year. How the balance of science has shifted.

How much of it reaches the world top 10%

Year by year.

still counting5%10%15%Artificial Intelligence in Games10.0% in 2025200020102020

Of each year's works in it, the share that reached the world's 10% most cited for their field and year. A field is the world for its own topics, so there is no other line to hold it against.

Which topics inside it are moving

Growth and decline on one axis around a shared zero. Two lists side by side hide the thing that matters: whether the growth dwarfs the decline, or the other way round.

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