I think part of the problem that continues to be the fence between the game AI world and academia is the game worlds continued insistence that we have to strip down our AI to "fake AI" in order to wedge it into games.

I'm getting tired of the rubber stamp statements that "our players don't want realistic behaviors... they want FUN behaviors!" And yet, in review after review of the latest games, people bitch about the AI not being realistic enough. We hear it. We acknowledge it. But when it comes to developing the next cycle, the edict from on high is "we don't have enough clock cycles to do that nifty XYZ technique."

As Moore's Law trips merrily along from year to year, we have more and more processing available to us. In theory, that should give us, as game developers, the overhead we need to close the gap between the need for 60 FPS in our games and the academics who don't really care if they are rendering their half-ass, low poly bots at 4 FPS.

Another point on this subject... I'm sick of hearing designers - and even AI programmers - make the statement "but it's not predictable!" about agent-based, emergent AI. Uh... isn't that the point? Again, look at the reviews and the comments from our customers. "The AI sucks because it is too predictable." Even the implication via statements such as "you can beat this level by doing XYZ to the AI because..." means that there is a shallowness to our creations. Why? Is it because we are lazy and don't want to write more complicated code? Is it because we are scared of the unpredictability of non-deterministic models? Is it because our designers would better be served writing static movie screen-plays than game levels? What holds us back?

I'm not saying that academia is the answer. Sometimes it seems that they can get so wrapped up in an esoteric sojourn that they cease to realize that what they are doing is not even remotely relevant. However, some of the concepts and techniques that they take the time to explore (because they don't have producers and ship-dates) are things that can map over into the game world. And, if we are truly interested in putting realism into our games (which can be fun for the player!), then what academia comes up with should be noted by us. Adapted maybe, but noted nonetheless.

Labels: academic, Adam Russell, emergence