I think we’re getting into the ever-present, ever-frustrating topic of corporate influence on game development. Maybe it’s a copout, but I can see how “Good AI” development can be pricey and thereby unappealing to developers (specifically development firms) driven by profit. As much as I would argue that games are someone’s or a group of people’s works of art, I do recognize a significant difference between artists in the traditional sense and game developers: money. Even the most famous of traditional artists starved, often surviving only on their love for what they did. Please do correct me if I’m wrong, but I at least have the impression that there are few if any starving artists in the game development community who would have enough passion and resources to invest the time and money in developing better AI, not knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would make them rich.
However, the above is my belief related to the development of a perfect (or close to perfect) single artificial entity, a bot. Because of corporate interests and the easy alternatives that Twitchdoctor pointed out, I don’t think we will see development companies focusing on making the bots in their games ‘think’ rather than simply giving them more health, stronger weapons, better aim, and of course, more grenades. Twitchdoctor’s post (Good AI, Bad AI) presents a powerful alternative to adjusting the bots though—changing the conditions of the game. As in Twitchdoctor’s example of Thief, the conditions of the game can be changed to accommodate difficulty increase and substitute for (or at least distract from) imperfect AI.
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