It's always interesting when game AI gets commented on by non-game AI folks... especially the academics. On a relatively new blog/site, ThinkArtificial, the author commented on how games are, in general, "horribly void of intelligence." I suppose that's often the case - particularly in the 2nd tier of the market. However, I wonder if he went over the top a bit. (Note that my friend and colleague, Paul Tozour, jumped right in the next day with the first comment.) Anyway, here's his opening paragraphs.

A subscriber of Think Artificial wrote to ask me about games and AI. In short, DF asked what my thougths are on AI in games and which ones I think are the most intelligent.

To answer this bluntly: Game AI is very different from it's non-game counterpart, and it's not my field of study. I've only compared modern games through a window. However, Alex of AIGameDev has superb coverage of AI in games and the top AI games of 2007, by community vote. The top of the line are Half-Life-2.ep.2 and BioShock.

But regarding Game AI in general: modern games are horribly void of intelligence. It depends on where you set the bar, certainly. There's tons of AI in modern games compared to 5 years ago. But the first thing to note is that Game AI is not the same as AI. It's a subset of it. Just like discrete mathematics are a subset of mathematics. And moreover, Game AI is a very specialized subset—it has well defined goals, models for construction and limitations.

Thankfully, he did acknowledge in the article that game AI is somewhat hampered by the budget and the needs to make for fun gameplay rather than excellence.

Anyway, at least it wasn't derisive like we sometimes get from academia.

Labels: academic, ThinkArtificial

There is an interesting post/rant/exploration by Adam Russell at AI-blog.net entitled Thoughts on Industry / Academic collaboration. He talks about his frustration on how academia seems to not "get it" with regards to game AI.

I made a comment/rant on the post myself, which I will repost here just for the sake of saking.

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