Instead of the binary of traditional games vs AI, it's worth thinking more about hybrids.
You could have a stripped down traditional game engine, but without any rendering, that gives a richer set of actions to the neural net. Along with some asset hints, story, a database (player/environment state) the AI can interact with, etc. The engine also provides bounds and constraints.
Basically, we need to work out the new boundary between engine and AI. Right now it's "upsample and interpolate frames", but as AI gets better, what does that boundary become?
You could have a stripped down traditional game engine, but without any rendering, that gives a richer set of actions to the neural net. Along with some asset hints, story, a database (player/environment state) the AI can interact with, etc. The engine also provides bounds and constraints.
Basically, we need to work out the new boundary between engine and AI. Right now it's "upsample and interpolate frames", but as AI gets better, what does that boundary become?