The problem I have with most downloadable content is that they (the developer/publisher) probably did not polish the game in the first place. If they did that content would have been in the game. Personally I don't think there is such as thing as a "minimum expectation" of what $60 should buy you. Anything but 110% effort into the game is too little. Taking things out of a game to sell later is just bullshit too, whether or not you remove it from the disc.
In this case I'm a little more forgiving since we are talking about multiplayer maps. Any online game which is going to remain popular for a significant length of time can never have enough maps. It also isn't too hard to concieve that they started making these maps well after the game shipped.
The whole idea of "It's Microsoft's store, so it's their choice blah blah" is ridiculous even though it is true. Microsoft doesn't want to run a marketplace for gamers. They want to be able to fix prices, control who gets to sell what, and to take as much of the pie while doing so (selling both the content and the shelfspace). It doesn't bother them if those goals aren't in the best interest of gamers.
First of all, there are genres and audiences that basically only exist on consoles and not on PCs, so it's not like they are otherwise identical platforms.
In any case, why should my console be deprived of having more and better games? What bothers me is that all 3 consoles are very well prepared to give downloadable games. You can do that on the PC too, but there isn't any service which gives you access tons of games that interest you. Well there is one, and it is the (slowly dwindling) PC section of your local gamestop or best buy. This isn't good enough though, because only the big name publishers get retail shelf space. The indie PC games are spread all over the net, and probably as a consequence the only real indie PC market is for casual games.
I guess I'm complaining because the whole cliched game 3.0 speech struck a nerve. If one of the big 3 DID make their downloadable network relatively open and used their service as an aggegrator it WOULD be a huge change worthy of being called 'game 3.0'. LittleBigPlanet is just 'gamemaker 3.0' in comparison.
I'm not even asking for console to be an open platform like PCs, half-open would do. It'd be nice if these console companies would at least SELL you (as in anybody) the minimum development tools and the legal license to make a game for their consoles. They don't. Even their online stores are gated like this. This doesn't make sense. Why not sell the license and tools at a standard rate and let the developer choose if he wants to work with a publisher to sell in retail or set up his own servers and sell online?
I guess I'm coming off sounding like a miffed developer or something, I'm not. I just want to enjoy the benefits of a more open console much like one might want to enjoy the benefits of freedom of press not by ever exercising that freedom, but simply by reading the press.
Wake me when _anyone_ with the time, money and inclination is allowed to make and sell real games for a console. Don't get me wrong, I love modding. But I really love my games not being stale in the first place. That'll happen when any individual is allowed to compete on the same field as any of the big publishers. This could have easily happened with internet distribution, but the big 3 all insisted on putting gates to their downloadable games.
I like how when I was reading the text and trying to distinguish if that was three III's or two II's or four IIII's and I realized that the title for Final Fantasy is now becoming like the games in the franchise.
Frogs back then ate flies, just like today. If this frog had poor eyesight he might have eaten a mosquito. Sometimes, after eating a mosquito the frog would rest on the branch of a tree, and get stuck in the sap. After a long time, the tree sap would get hard and become fossilized, just like a dinosaur bone, preserving the frog inside!
This fossilized tree sap -- which we call amber -- waited millions of years, with the mosquito inside until Jurassic Park's scientists came along. Using sophisticated techniques, they extract the preserved blood from the mosquito, and...
In copyright law if the defendant can show that it was reasonable for him to assume that he was not infriging then he only has to pay 'actual damages', which would be the cost of however many copies of the work were made.
I'm a mathematician and amateur game programmer. The problem I have with tuning is that you aren't paying attention to the actual game design when you make stupid changes like adjusting health/damage parameters. Games can be equally hard but not equally fun. If a boss (or level, or anything) is too hard then maybe the problem is with everything else in the game up to that point which did not prepare the player for that challenge. i.e., the player should have had opportunities to learn the techniques needed (which themselves can either logical techniques or twitch techniques). The same goes for something being too easy: you've in effect over prepared the player to beat X and need to add more depth to your game (different things to master) or make the game shorter.
You don't want to end up with a game that plays like a steady hike up the side of a foothill. These games are only 'hard' because you aren't stimulating the player to learn. A fun game has hills and valleys which in the end has the player standing on top of a mountain.
I remember reading the article and not being phased at all, this kind of thing is everywhere. It is beyond the point where I am only surprised when I can find articles of *good* quality about video games. A small portion of my faith in humanity was restored by reading these comments.
1) You don't need a warrant to look at another human being on the street.
2) We shouldn't be breaking the traffic laws anyways. The police don't make the law. It's their job to spot traffic violations and they are going to continue doing so regardless.
3) It isn't illegal to view into private places like a yard from a public place (unless there is an expectation of privacy)
4) It should be simple to program the cameras to block out windows dynamically with a PTZ system.
In theory any police officer could blackmail at anytime. The benefit of having police officers is large enough to outweigh the cost of curbing and detecting the abuses.
Someone explain to me why Slashdot has so many people who are afraid to death of cameras? A security camera system maintained by the police department is a *service* for our benefit. We *want* the police looking out for us on the streets. Before you argue 'big brother', '1984', etc. you should take note that public photography is a valuable right in the US (http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm). Why then should make the police's job harder by taking away that right from them?
We don't take away that right from ordinary citizens even though they can abuse it too (if you want to be blunt about it, criminals can use surveillance cameras to lookout for police).
Yes/no tags would be more useful if the editors would be consistent in how they word their questions. The question in the article title, "Is DRM Intrinsically Distasteful?", is the opposite of the question in the article text "Would you support the usage of such a DRM scheme?". Also, it would be nice to see the numbers on yes/no so people don't have to read all 300 comments on a controversial article to gauge the response.
Yes, I'm new here. Why do people keep asking me this?
Master of Defense looks like it follows in the footsteps of 'Tower Defense' maps for starcraft and warcraft, if not rehashing the fomrula completely. There is nothing wrong with that as far as the game is concerned, but I am disappointed that the author in TFA apparently did not know this. Given that there are thousands of Tower Defense maps it is especially important to know how Master of Defense compares to its look alikes.
The best case for 2D over 3D is the Fire Emblem games. The GC version graphically is worse than the GBA's.
Point 1 is that a 3D view of a 2D battlefield is far less useful than a 2D view of a 2D battlefield. What is the use of the 3D when the player is just going to use the highest possible camera angle? False perspective is flat out superior to staring at the helmets of every enemy unit and trying to distinguish them based on that.
Point 2 are the battle animations. The 2D sprites are fluid and snappy. The 3D animations are clunky and very slow. Take for example the pegasus knight and wyvern attacks in both games. With the GBA versions you are treated to your character swooping across the screen hitting the enemy as they go by. The GC animation on the other hand looks like you put the wyvern on a swing or pendulum and the "attack" consists of your unit bumping into the enemy with no arm swing what so ever.
It's nice that XNA is free as long as you only care about the PC... but Microsoft was already giving us free PC programming tools. I'd be curious if someone who actually knows this stuff can tell me if using XNA to develop for the PC is any better than the free SDK's and what not that was out there before?
You are basically echoing his theory. Developers will want to use his site precisely because they can't bring their game to retail and something like Manifesto is the next best thing. Sure, you could sell it on your own website, but he can generate more traffic and he pays for all the bandwidth for the distribution. Obviously he has to take a cut somewhere, and it is my understanding that it is a lot less than the retail cut.
What makes Manifesto Games unique as I take it is that his site is going to attract real gamers with games they like. Portals like RealArcade attract casual gamers. He wants to sell games that big publishers won't take chances on and small developers can't bring to retail.
The draw for gamers is to be able to easily find *real* games that aren't the same old repetitive games that fill up retail.
Right now the site is an 'open beta'/stress test. That may be why the help page is busted.
Nintendo most likely feels the need to embrace the motion sensing functionality whole heatedly in order to save face. Think about it, Zelda:TP is their number one launch title; it wouldn't instil much confidence if Nintendo didn't have faith in their own controller. As a direct result of Nintendo's decision a large number of informed gamers may end up buying the GC version over the Wii version. It is quite possible that this will be picked up and used as evidence that gamers don't have faith in the Wiimote, exactly what Nintendo was trying to avoid.
There is still a small chance though that they will program a setting which will allow us the use the nunchaku analog stick to aim the bow and do spin attacks.
I agree. I've argued many times that there are things that 2D can do that 3D can't. It's much harder to make a fun 3d platformer because you can't expect the player to have things we take for granted in 2d games. What 2d games have that 3d don't is precision (i.e. moving, jumping and landing with near pixel perfect accuracy) and clear perspective (the enemy, and hence his attacks, are frequently not in view to the player in a 3d games). When you can't expect the player to have precision and situational awareness things end up being more boring.
I can't help but zero in on this part of the article:
"The real problem was the language barrier and a lack of understanding each other's creative goals. When I would pitch say, a 'platform shooter with racing bits inbetween levels, set in space', they told me it was unmarketable. There was no hook for them. For me, I was imagining the potential fun aspect, but for them, it was about trying to find something sexy or 'MTV" within the concept they could sell to a shop. Fair enough."
Any gamer or half decent developer thinks of video games in terms of their gameplay, and thus thinks in terms of controls. Marketers and publishers don't know anything about videogames. They think we play video games to literally play as the characters, not for the underlying gamey elements.
portals are being used a gimmick
on
Prey Review
·
· Score: 0, Troll
15 hours of gameplay is assuming you play the game twice. This game is far too short and far too easy. Every review of 'Prey' reminds me of a small child being entertained by jingling keys. We understand portals are new and shiny but that isn't an excuse to give the game a passing grade.
In other words the linked article is incorrect ("direct aim to television"). Your mouse analogy is a clear and apt example. You'll still be pointing to aim, you just won't be pointing at the physical pixel on the screen.
Although the average slashdoter can understand the difference, I'd imagine it's impossible to explain to other people (e.g. someone who doesn't play video games or an IGN editor) without confusing them.
Well I'm a Minnesotan gamer and I don't think it is that silly to prevent kids from playing rated M games. It shouldn't be a law though, I'd rather see it be a simple store policy. The movie industry doesn't have this kind of ridiculous legislation.
First of all the title of the box was poorly chosen since not all Independent games are casual.
Casual games aren't exactly new to retail. What you don't see at Best Buy are the non-casual games produced by independent developers. It is a shame too, as independent developers are forced to make boat loads of casual games precisely because they can't get retail space without a big name publisher. Not that there aren't incredibly good indy casual games (Oasis comes to mind... http://www.oasisgame.com/), but I think gamers are starting to clamor for more innovation in regular games and they aren't getting it from the big name publishers.
Publishers and retailers are idiots as far as we the gamers are concerned. Some may be good at what they do, but they know nothing about games. They shouldn't be calling all the shots but they are. They basically have homogenized interests: big name sequels, flashy graphics, me-too gameplay. At best publishers might sometimes insist on "checkbox innovation", but that's all.
I think the industry senses gamers venting on message boards and blogs, and they are seeing it in declining sales on all games that aren't huge mega-productions. The industry itself is starting to employ "checkbox indy" as a stall tactic. You can already see it creeping up like in this article and like in XBox Marketplace speeches (if there are mostly non-casual games on marketplace correct me, but all I hear about is Geometry Wars and other casual games). When Sony and Nintendo launch their own online marketplaces they'll probably spin a similar line about offering 'exciting innovative games' while in reality the only (non-classic) games available will be casual.
I find it interesting that some people think that games don't need better AI (in the computer science sense), it just needs to be more realistic, more human, more unpredictable. I agree 100% for some genres, like mmorpgs or FPS where making the AI difficult is already solvable.
I think the AI for TBS games, and possibly RTS games, are suitable for academic discussion. These games haven't been 'solved' from an AI standpoint. Take civilization and heroes of might and magic games. Both are very old series, so you'd think the AI would be better by now. Yet even with huge production bonuses it is still a trivial matter to beat the AI once you know what you are doing. (For HOMM I'm only talking about the world AI. The combat AI, while far from perfect, is still typically good enough to be a fun opponent. This is because due to the fact that HOMM combat has a low possibility space.)
It isn't like the AI programmers are in the dilemma "Well if we make the AI any harder it won't be any fun to play against". The problem is that they haven't figured out how to make good AI at these games. I think the obstacle is that:
(I) You can't approach a modern TBS with tree searches. You are forced into using heurstics. This takes time because it requires humans becoming good at the game and figuring out what they've learned codifies into the AI.
(II) A good AI for these games has to be able to think on many different orders of magnitude. Humans are good at this, AI's are not.
What I mean by (II) is that in order to be good at the game you not only have micromanage the small scale units very well, but you also have be smart in how you play the broad based, global aspect of the game (as well as all the levels in between two).
Now, it appears to be doable to make a good, heurstics based AI for each *individual* order of magnitude. However if you try to make an AI to handle it all at once it doesn't seem to work at all - a purely hierarchical AI is exploitable. To avoid exploits the small scale AI sometimes has to talk to and occasionally influence the higher up AI, and that's when the complexity of the code seems to be intractable.
For example in civ, I might exploit a bad AI by declaring war, stay defensive until the AI throws himself on my fortified positions, then go on the offense and conquer his country against little resistance. On one hand the "higher up" AI wants to attack because I haven't offered any offensive threat (this is often the right reaction, e.g. if I'm not attacking him because I'm incapable of doing so then the AI should attack aggresively). The "lower level" AI doesn't want to attack because it can compare the strength of unit stacks and see that it will lose.
You can't let the lower level AI make all the decisions though, because then I can exploit the AI by baiting him intentionally putting weak units out in the open and crush him with overwhelming force when he runs after the bait.
I'm just an amateur programmer but this is the only time my thoughts on "game AI" ever became intersting from an academic standpoint.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem I have with most downloadable content is that they (the developer/publisher) probably did not polish the game in the first place. If they did that content would have been in the game. Personally I don't think there is such as thing as a "minimum expectation" of what $60 should buy you. Anything but 110% effort into the game is too little. Taking things out of a game to sell later is just bullshit too, whether or not you remove it from the disc.
In this case I'm a little more forgiving since we are talking about multiplayer maps. Any online game which is going to remain popular for a significant length of time can never have enough maps. It also isn't too hard to concieve that they started making these maps well after the game shipped.
The whole idea of "It's Microsoft's store, so it's their choice blah blah" is ridiculous even though it is true. Microsoft doesn't want to run a marketplace for gamers. They want to be able to fix prices, control who gets to sell what, and to take as much of the pie while doing so (selling both the content and the shelfspace). It doesn't bother them if those goals aren't in the best interest of gamers.
First of all, there are genres and audiences that basically only exist on consoles and not on PCs, so it's not like they are otherwise identical platforms.
In any case, why should my console be deprived of having more and better games? What bothers me is that all 3 consoles are very well prepared to give downloadable games. You can do that on the PC too, but there isn't any service which gives you access tons of games that interest you. Well there is one, and it is the (slowly dwindling) PC section of your local gamestop or best buy. This isn't good enough though, because only the big name publishers get retail shelf space. The indie PC games are spread all over the net, and probably as a consequence the only real indie PC market is for casual games.
I guess I'm complaining because the whole cliched game 3.0 speech struck a nerve. If one of the big 3 DID make their downloadable network relatively open and used their service as an aggegrator it WOULD be a huge change worthy of being called 'game 3.0'. LittleBigPlanet is just 'gamemaker 3.0' in comparison.
I'm not even asking for console to be an open platform like PCs, half-open would do. It'd be nice if these console companies would at least SELL you (as in anybody) the minimum development tools and the legal license to make a game for their consoles. They don't. Even their online stores are gated like this. This doesn't make sense. Why not sell the license and tools at a standard rate and let the developer choose if he wants to work with a publisher to sell in retail or set up his own servers and sell online?
I guess I'm coming off sounding like a miffed developer or something, I'm not. I just want to enjoy the benefits of a more open console much like one might want to enjoy the benefits of freedom of press not by ever exercising that freedom, but simply by reading the press.
Wake me when _anyone_ with the time, money and inclination is allowed to make and sell real games for a console. Don't get me wrong, I love modding. But I really love my games not being stale in the first place. That'll happen when any individual is allowed to compete on the same field as any of the big publishers. This could have easily happened with internet distribution, but the big 3 all insisted on putting gates to their downloadable games.
All together now: TV Frank = Frank Conniff != Hosea Jan Frank = Ze Frank
I like how when I was reading the text and trying to distinguish if that was three III's or two II's or four IIII's and I realized that the title for Final Fantasy is now becoming like the games in the franchise.
Frogs back then ate flies, just like today. If this frog had poor eyesight he might have eaten a mosquito. Sometimes, after eating a mosquito the frog would rest on the branch of a tree, and get stuck in the sap. After a long time, the tree sap would get hard and become fossilized, just like a dinosaur bone, preserving the frog inside!
This fossilized tree sap -- which we call amber -- waited millions of years, with the mosquito inside until Jurassic Park's scientists came along. Using sophisticated techniques, they extract the preserved blood from the mosquito, and...
BINGO! Dino DNA!
In copyright law if the defendant can show that it was reasonable for him to assume that he was not infriging then he only has to pay 'actual damages', which would be the cost of however many copies of the work were made.
I'm a mathematician and amateur game programmer. The problem I have with tuning is that you aren't paying attention to the actual game design when you make stupid changes like adjusting health/damage parameters. Games can be equally hard but not equally fun. If a boss (or level, or anything) is too hard then maybe the problem is with everything else in the game up to that point which did not prepare the player for that challenge. i.e., the player should have had opportunities to learn the techniques needed (which themselves can either logical techniques or twitch techniques). The same goes for something being too easy: you've in effect over prepared the player to beat X and need to add more depth to your game (different things to master) or make the game shorter.
You don't want to end up with a game that plays like a steady hike up the side of a foothill. These games are only 'hard' because you aren't stimulating the player to learn. A fun game has hills and valleys which in the end has the player standing on top of a mountain.
I remember reading the article and not being phased at all, this kind of thing is everywhere. It is beyond the point where I am only surprised when I can find articles of *good* quality about video games. A small portion of my faith in humanity was restored by reading these comments.
1) You don't need a warrant to look at another human being on the street. 2) We shouldn't be breaking the traffic laws anyways. The police don't make the law. It's their job to spot traffic violations and they are going to continue doing so regardless. 3) It isn't illegal to view into private places like a yard from a public place (unless there is an expectation of privacy) 4) It should be simple to program the cameras to block out windows dynamically with a PTZ system. In theory any police officer could blackmail at anytime. The benefit of having police officers is large enough to outweigh the cost of curbing and detecting the abuses.
Someone explain to me why Slashdot has so many people who are afraid to death of cameras? A security camera system maintained by the police department is a *service* for our benefit. We *want* the police looking out for us on the streets. Before you argue 'big brother', '1984', etc. you should take note that public photography is a valuable right in the US (http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm). Why then should make the police's job harder by taking away that right from them?
We don't take away that right from ordinary citizens even though they can abuse it too (if you want to be blunt about it, criminals can use surveillance cameras to lookout for police).
Are you sure? The DMCA outlaws circumventing encryptions and not just distrubting/providing/trafficing in said circumventions.
Yes/no tags would be more useful if the editors would be consistent in how they word their questions. The question in the article title, "Is DRM Intrinsically Distasteful?", is the opposite of the question in the article text "Would you support the usage of such a DRM scheme?". Also, it would be nice to see the numbers on yes/no so people don't have to read all 300 comments on a controversial article to gauge the response.
Yes, I'm new here. Why do people keep asking me this?
Master of Defense looks like it follows in the footsteps of 'Tower Defense' maps for starcraft and warcraft, if not rehashing the fomrula completely. There is nothing wrong with that as far as the game is concerned, but I am disappointed that the author in TFA apparently did not know this. Given that there are thousands of Tower Defense maps it is especially important to know how Master of Defense compares to its look alikes.
The best case for 2D over 3D is the Fire Emblem games. The GC version graphically is worse than the GBA's.
Point 1 is that a 3D view of a 2D battlefield is far less useful than a 2D view of a 2D battlefield. What is the use of the 3D when the player is just going to use the highest possible camera angle? False perspective is flat out superior to staring at the helmets of every enemy unit and trying to distinguish them based on that.
Point 2 are the battle animations. The 2D sprites are fluid and snappy. The 3D animations are clunky and very slow. Take for example the pegasus knight and wyvern attacks in both games. With the GBA versions you are treated to your character swooping across the screen hitting the enemy as they go by. The GC animation on the other hand looks like you put the wyvern on a swing or pendulum and the "attack" consists of your unit bumping into the enemy with no arm swing what so ever.
It's nice that XNA is free as long as you only care about the PC... but Microsoft was already giving us free PC programming tools. I'd be curious if someone who actually knows this stuff can tell me if using XNA to develop for the PC is any better than the free SDK's and what not that was out there before?
How many Wii's have been sold anyways?
You are basically echoing his theory. Developers will want to use his site precisely because they can't bring their game to retail and something like Manifesto is the next best thing. Sure, you could sell it on your own website, but he can generate more traffic and he pays for all the bandwidth for the distribution. Obviously he has to take a cut somewhere, and it is my understanding that it is a lot less than the retail cut.
What makes Manifesto Games unique as I take it is that his site is going to attract real gamers with games they like. Portals like RealArcade attract casual gamers. He wants to sell games that big publishers won't take chances on and small developers can't bring to retail.
The draw for gamers is to be able to easily find *real* games that aren't the same old repetitive games that fill up retail.
Right now the site is an 'open beta'/stress test. That may be why the help page is busted.
Nintendo most likely feels the need to embrace the motion sensing functionality whole heatedly in order to save face. Think about it, Zelda:TP is their number one launch title; it wouldn't instil much confidence if Nintendo didn't have faith in their own controller. As a direct result of Nintendo's decision a large number of informed gamers may end up buying the GC version over the Wii version. It is quite possible that this will be picked up and used as evidence that gamers don't have faith in the Wiimote, exactly what Nintendo was trying to avoid. There is still a small chance though that they will program a setting which will allow us the use the nunchaku analog stick to aim the bow and do spin attacks.
I agree. I've argued many times that there are things that 2D can do that 3D can't. It's much harder to make a fun 3d platformer because you can't expect the player to have things we take for granted in 2d games. What 2d games have that 3d don't is precision (i.e. moving, jumping and landing with near pixel perfect accuracy) and clear perspective (the enemy, and hence his attacks, are frequently not in view to the player in a 3d games). When you can't expect the player to have precision and situational awareness things end up being more boring.
I can't help but zero in on this part of the article:
"The real problem was the language barrier and a lack of understanding each other's creative goals. When I would pitch say, a 'platform shooter with racing bits inbetween levels, set in space', they told me it was unmarketable. There was no hook for them. For me, I was imagining the potential fun aspect, but for them, it was about trying to find something sexy or 'MTV" within the concept they could sell to a shop. Fair enough."
Any gamer or half decent developer thinks of video games in terms of their gameplay, and thus thinks in terms of controls. Marketers and publishers don't know anything about videogames. They think we play video games to literally play as the characters, not for the underlying gamey elements.
15 hours of gameplay is assuming you play the game twice. This game is far too short and far too easy. Every review of 'Prey' reminds me of a small child being entertained by jingling keys. We understand portals are new and shiny but that isn't an excuse to give the game a passing grade.
In other words the linked article is incorrect ("direct aim to television"). Your mouse analogy is a clear and apt example. You'll still be pointing to aim, you just won't be pointing at the physical pixel on the screen. Although the average slashdoter can understand the difference, I'd imagine it's impossible to explain to other people (e.g. someone who doesn't play video games or an IGN editor) without confusing them.
Well I'm a Minnesotan gamer and I don't think it is that silly to prevent kids from playing rated M games. It shouldn't be a law though, I'd rather see it be a simple store policy. The movie industry doesn't have this kind of ridiculous legislation.
First of all the title of the box was poorly chosen since not all Independent games are casual.
Casual games aren't exactly new to retail. What you don't see at Best Buy are the non-casual games produced by independent developers. It is a shame too, as independent developers are forced to make boat loads of casual games precisely because they can't get retail space without a big name publisher. Not that there aren't incredibly good indy casual games (Oasis comes to mind... http://www.oasisgame.com/), but I think gamers are starting to clamor for more innovation in regular games and they aren't getting it from the big name publishers.
Publishers and retailers are idiots as far as we the gamers are concerned. Some may be good at what they do, but they know nothing about games. They shouldn't be calling all the shots but they are. They basically have homogenized interests: big name sequels, flashy graphics, me-too gameplay. At best publishers might sometimes insist on "checkbox innovation", but that's all.
I think the industry senses gamers venting on message boards and blogs, and they are seeing it in declining sales on all games that aren't huge mega-productions. The industry itself is starting to employ "checkbox indy" as a stall tactic. You can already see it creeping up like in this article and like in XBox Marketplace speeches (if there are mostly non-casual games on marketplace correct me, but all I hear about is Geometry Wars and other casual games). When Sony and Nintendo launch their own online marketplaces they'll probably spin a similar line about offering 'exciting innovative games' while in reality the only (non-classic) games available will be casual.
I find it interesting that some people think that games don't need better AI (in the computer science sense), it just needs to be more realistic, more human, more unpredictable. I agree 100% for some genres, like mmorpgs or FPS where making the AI difficult is already solvable. I think the AI for TBS games, and possibly RTS games, are suitable for academic discussion. These games haven't been 'solved' from an AI standpoint. Take civilization and heroes of might and magic games. Both are very old series, so you'd think the AI would be better by now. Yet even with huge production bonuses it is still a trivial matter to beat the AI once you know what you are doing. (For HOMM I'm only talking about the world AI. The combat AI, while far from perfect, is still typically good enough to be a fun opponent. This is because due to the fact that HOMM combat has a low possibility space.) It isn't like the AI programmers are in the dilemma "Well if we make the AI any harder it won't be any fun to play against". The problem is that they haven't figured out how to make good AI at these games. I think the obstacle is that: (I) You can't approach a modern TBS with tree searches. You are forced into using heurstics. This takes time because it requires humans becoming good at the game and figuring out what they've learned codifies into the AI. (II) A good AI for these games has to be able to think on many different orders of magnitude. Humans are good at this, AI's are not. What I mean by (II) is that in order to be good at the game you not only have micromanage the small scale units very well, but you also have be smart in how you play the broad based, global aspect of the game (as well as all the levels in between two). Now, it appears to be doable to make a good, heurstics based AI for each *individual* order of magnitude. However if you try to make an AI to handle it all at once it doesn't seem to work at all - a purely hierarchical AI is exploitable. To avoid exploits the small scale AI sometimes has to talk to and occasionally influence the higher up AI, and that's when the complexity of the code seems to be intractable. For example in civ, I might exploit a bad AI by declaring war, stay defensive until the AI throws himself on my fortified positions, then go on the offense and conquer his country against little resistance. On one hand the "higher up" AI wants to attack because I haven't offered any offensive threat (this is often the right reaction, e.g. if I'm not attacking him because I'm incapable of doing so then the AI should attack aggresively). The "lower level" AI doesn't want to attack because it can compare the strength of unit stacks and see that it will lose. You can't let the lower level AI make all the decisions though, because then I can exploit the AI by baiting him intentionally putting weak units out in the open and crush him with overwhelming force when he runs after the bait. I'm just an amateur programmer but this is the only time my thoughts on "game AI" ever became intersting from an academic standpoint.