An AI Coach for Bad Gamers?

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?"

Comments

What about opposite?

[Vo0k]

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.

Re:What about opposite?

[YellowCyclone]

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?

Re:What about opposite?

[Dial-Up]

The Eraser bot for Quake 2 did this.

Re:What about opposite?

[toiletsalmon]

"I'm not a grammar nazi or anything..."

No. Apparently, you're a grammar mormon ;)

Admit it. You need help

[CrazyJim1]

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"

Re:Admit it. You need help

[MustardMan]

I'm going to go back to playing Duke Nukem Forever

Come on, be realistic... this fake scenario is only 14 years away.

AI Coach

[killermookie]

Ok, go into this tunnel. Ok, left...left again. Kill that guy.

Good, ok...go here. Get that gun. Jump this lava thingy. Kill that guy.

Ok, now right. No, your other right, dummy. You stepped on a trap! Oh noes, they're coming. RUN!

LEFT! GO BACK GO BACK GO BACK! WAIT WAIT, NOT THAT WAY! Awwww....dammit. ...

It's not my fault!

/switch AI Coach off

Re:AI Coach

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

"It looks like you're trying to capture the enemy's flag. Would you like me to help you ...

* shoot the enemy

* move toward the enemy's base

* dodge the enemy's fire

* write a letter to your enemy ... whoops, wrong application."

No

[linvir]

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.

Great Idea

[rsilvergun]

Coach: I see you are trying to kill a Ninja, would you like help?

* Get Help Killing The Ninja.
* Just kill the Ninja without help.

[]Don't show this messege again.

I have that already

[Shadow Wrought]

Its called "kids."

"C'MON! We have to go this way! What're you trying to do? Its not XYYBYAXYYB, its XYYBYAXXYYB." ;-)

Yes I am exaggerating, but nothing motivates you to learn a game like Halo or SSBM like having your kids pound time and again.

Ah, yes.

[porkchop_d_clown]

Have you ever noticed how much of life consists of arms races in one form or another?

If everybody uses AI coaches, will that make everyone l33t or will it just raise the minimum requirement for playing online without embarrassing yourself?

AI expression

[flibbajobber]

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.

Forza has this now, sort of

[DaveJay]

The racing game Forza (on XBox) has something like this now, albeit nonverbally. You can turn on a trainer that places arrows on the track to indicate the line you should be driving, which is not a big deal; however, that line is dynamically updated as you drive to give you information that's pertinent to your current performance and situation.

Let's say you drive into a turn too quickly. What were once green arrows (to say "keep going, no need to slow down") suddenly turn yellow, then red, as you pass the point at which you should have hit the brakes. Once you've slowed down enough to recover, the arrows go back to green (or yellow). This simple mechanism is surprisingly useful.

It's not a big leap to take that data and present it in faux-human form (a voice saying "You're driving into the turns too fast!" and a worried face on your robo-instructor) instead of graphically. So yeah, it's already here.

Re:Hell no!

[KDR_11k]

I'm sick of my instruction manual being in the game; I'd rather figure things out for myself.

So in other words you don't want to RTFM and you don't want the machine to do it for you either?