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An AI Coach for Bad Gamers?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the your-kung-fu-is-best dept.

newchurch writes "In this week's "Gaming in 2020" issue of The Escapist, Chris Dahlen writes about a no-talent gamer who gets help from the 'Nintendo Coach' - an AI installed in the console that watches him play and gives him pointers and feedback. This is set 14 years in the future, but how hard would it really be for a next-gen console to pull this off? Would gamers want this kind of thing, to make them more competitive or just to help them master a title like Ninja Gaiden? And would your average gamers even admit they need help?"

7 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. What about opposite? by Vo0k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What about game enemies learning tricks from the player?
    Play a deathmatch against bots, that learn movement patterns of players, instead of using predefined paths, learn new ones by watching the players and follow them, becoming more of a challenge, less predictable, learning most efficient tricks? At first the game is just a game against bots. Later it becomes a game against yourself. And if you limit the bot to learn from you, and not from the "hive mind" that contains tricks from all players, fighting it you learn your own weaknesses.

    --
    Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
    1. Re:What about opposite? by YellowCyclone · · Score: 2, Interesting

      exactly what i was thinking.

      for all the advances in graphics, sound, and even mechanics it seems that AI is the slowest to come along. that's understanable to me, but it just gets boring when racing games have rubber-band cars, fps' with the "stupid bot," "medium bot," and "bot that whips around and headshots you with a rocket launcher while jumping over obstacles" and boss battles that just throw wave after wave of attacks at you in easy to remember patterns

      i'm sure AI programming is hard, but can anybody tell me if it's really hard for dev's or are they just being lazy?

    2. Re:What about opposite? by Dial-Up · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The Eraser bot for Quake 2 did this.

  2. Hell no! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    There's already too much of this in gaming today. You can't go 10 paces in any game without some pop-up dialogue box or voice telling you what to do and how to do it. I'm sick of my instruction manual being in the game; I'd rather figure things out for myself. Isn't that what it's all about?

  3. Admit it. You need help by CrazyJim1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    2020:
    Coach,"The first step to recovery is to admit you have a video game playing problem."
    Guy,"Ok, I admit it, I have a problem."
    Coach,"Alright, now lets review your build order for Xel'naga."
    Guy,"Wait, I thought my problem was that I'm addicted to video games."
    Coach,"There's no such thing."
    Guy,"Oh cool, thanks. I don't need you anymore. I'm going to go back to playing Duke Nukem Forever"

    --
    God spoke to me.
  4. No by linvir · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is the wrong way around. If a gamer is having difficulty in a single-player game, the right thing to do is usually to detect this and ramp the difficulty down for them. Believe it or not, most people who are bad at gaming are bad because they are casual gamers. The last thing people like that would care about is any kind of coaching.

  5. AI expression by flibbajobber · · Score: 2, Interesting

    how hard would it really be for a next-gen console to pull this off? The current level of AI found in modern games is not a limit of how smart the processor is. AI is limited by the inability to express AI-ness in modern programming languages.