The workshop included some discussion of business models. While there was some concern that we would end up talking about how to market or sell AI systems to the game industry, the discussion on the topic of business models mostly revolved around the need to connect the hard AI problems we are working with to revenue streams that industry may care about. Joe Marks highlighted the importance of this in his presentation. We as AI researchers are often not cognizant of the needs of industry, from Disney to computer games, but better understanding the economic realities of industry can help us identify new AI problems that we can solve that will have a significant impact on the real world. These problems often revolve around scalability.

There was additional discussion on whether AI would be first adopted through the mainstream computer game industry or through indie game development. The opinion was expressed that the indie game developers would be first, or at least AI researchers interested in game AI could gain traction for their work by developing complete indie games.