A.I. – Artificial Intelligence. The imitation of life, choice, and behavior. A.I. is programmed into almost every aspect of a video game, from the way non-playable characters (NPCs) act, interact, and react in the world around them to the paths birds fly across the sky. As video games become more and more complex and with the robust AI capabilities of current-gen consoles, A.I. systems follow suit.
I was on the ‘Entertainment Is Dead’ podcast recently and we spoke briefly on the ‘Alien: Isolation’ video game that came out in 2014. I like to call it ‘Luggage Jump’ or ‘Hiding Out In Lockers.’- kidding. I REALLY liked ‘Isolation’, IMO…it is easily the best ‘Alien’ game to date. Still, Progress gets to be insanely slow as you’re constantly hiding/dying from the Xenomorph (no spoilers.)
Good AI makes you feel like you’re playing, I dunno, tug of war with an equal opponent.
Strong AI is like playing tug of war with Superman.
Patronizing AI pretends that the two year old is stronger than Superman.
The line between “patronizing AI” and “strong AI” is also heavily dependent on skill level. To a newer player, the AI’s failure to beat you might seem believable, but as an experienced player becomes familiar with all the mechanics and the layouts of levels, they become hyper-aware of the options open to the AI, and if the AI consistently fails to take advantage of reasonable options to win, then immersion is broken.
An “adaptive” concept is a nice idea but in practice can easily be broken. You are essentially asking the AI to “read the player’s mind” to figure out whether they want a challenging or pandering experience, and what skill level they are at, which simply has too many variables. Many players will not “try” to play well if they challenge in front of them is clearly dead simple, leading the AI to read them as poor players and not ratchet their difficulty up.
Good AI is found in proper balance, which is then adjusted over difficulty levels—Halo, for instance, provides new tactics to AI based on the difficulty. So scrubs fight scrub AI on easy, and on it goes. It varies from difficulty to difficulty.
Difficulty and good AI are not the same thing.
In practice difficulty often comes down to damage and health scaling. You can take more hits and it can take less. Making a player invulnerable to death or removing save restrictions isn’t a good way to set difficulty yet its the way that they go for because its easier.
Good AI is relative to the player. That while for some players the strength of the AI is the deal-breaker there are an equal or larger number of players that would derive more enjoyment from other aspects. Difficulty settings do only so much. And they’ve highly subjective from game to game.
A good indication of a well designed game is a game that will respond to you as a player (much like another player would) – it sets the difference between following a pre-defined path or a responsive intelligence.
Do all games exhibit this level of what passes for “intelligence”? No, they don’t. Games like ‘Uncharted’ and ‘Uncharted 2’ are challenging on Crushing Difficulty, but the frustration level was 150% less for some. Perhaps it’s the nature of the games, sure, but ultimately I think it’s because of developer prowess. I don’t mind a good challenge if you’re pitting my wits against yours (the developers’), but if you’re pitting me against try-fail cheat scenarios with less health and insurmountable odds, that’s when I throw my controller.
-Dagobot
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