Regardless of the game type, the AI must present players with an interesting chal-
lenge. Without good AI, a game may become similar to playing chess with your (much)
younger brother: somewhat pointless. The difference is, when you play chess with
your kid brother, you hope to teach him the nuances of the game so that one day he may
become a good player. You may also enjoy socializing with him, making an otherwise
pointless game of chess worth it. Sadly, the computer game AI you battle has no hope of
improving and is woefully inadequate when it comes to providing companionship. In
order for a game AI to justify its existence, it must provide players with a challenge. At
the same time, it is important to keep in mind that you do not want to punish the player
too severely with your game’s AI. Getting into a “It’s me versus the player!” mind-set
when you, as the game designer or AI programmer, hold all the cards is similar to sav-
agely trouncing your little brother at chess every time you challenge him to a match. It
is not a fair fight, and pretty soon your brother or game players in general will not want
to play with you anymore.
Not Do Dumb Things ..........................
AI for a computer game must not appear overly stupid. Players love laughing at AI
when it does something completely foolhardy. Nothing breaks a player’s suspension of
disbelief more than when an AI agent fails to navigate around a small obstacle such as a
fire hydrant or a tree, or when an agent charges right off a cliff to its doom like a lem-
ming. To the player, it is completely obvious what the AI should do in each situation.
But what may look obvious to players can actually be a fairly complex action for the
agent to perform or understand. Nonetheless, for the game to avoid becoming a laugh-
ingstock, the game’s AI must have a solid mastery of what seems obvious to human
players.
The number of dumb things the AI will be able to get away with has a direct
relationship to what sort of intelligence the AI is supposed to represent. For instance,
in my first-person shooterDamage Incorporated, players are supposed to be almost
156 Chapter 9: Artificial Intelligence
When fighting aliens
in a game such as
Marathon 2, the player
has lowered expectations
of how smart these
enemies will be.