Of course, for years games have been giving the AI agents unfair advantages over
the player. They have made the AI have more hit-points than the player character. They
have outnumbered the player a hundred to one. They have made the AI agents have a
practically psychic knowledge of every location in the game-world, which allows them
to know exactly where the player character is at any given second, certainly an unfair
advantage. Some game AIs have even been known to cheat. Surely this is unfair to the
player, the AI programmers will say. They proclaim the AI should be on equal footing
with the players and should triumph through its wits alone.
But is it really better to put the AI and players on a level playing field? First and
foremost, this is quite likely to lead to AI that fails to provide much of a challenge for
players. The fact remains that shrewd players are going to be able to outsmart even the
most sophisticated game AI without that much difficulty. Trying to put players and AI on
equal terms will create a much larger challenge for your AI programmers. They will
need to invest countless more hours in developing an AI that has even a slight chance of
beating the players, time that cannot be spent improving other parts of the game. In the
end they may well end up with an AI that does not provide a captivating gameplay expe-
rience. In the worst case, the AI is too busy being “real” to avoid performing blatantly
stupid actions.
A big part of what drives AI programmers to attempt a level playing field for players
and AI agents is the programmers’ own egos. These programmers pride themselves on
their work and will assert that they can come up with an AI that will be able to challenge
players without having to resort to superior numbers, greater strength, or any sort of
cheating. The programmers want the bragging rights of being able to say that their AI is
as smart as a human. Often hours and hours are spent trying to come up with the
sophisticated algorithms required for such equal versus equal competition, and in the
end something has to be hacked together to make the game actually function. The goal
of game AI is to support the game and enhance players’ experiences, not to serve as a
test-bed for artificial intelligence techniques.
Besides, there is something romantic for players when they manage to defeat an AI
opponent despite the fact that the AI’s forces greatly outnumber their own, were better
armed and equipped, and even had the benefit of prescient knowledge of the map. Just
as the Hollywood action hero triumphs over countless foes, players want to overcome
seemingly insurmountable odds for their own victories. Tipping the scales in the AI’s
advantage only makes players’ eventual victory all the more sweet. Unless, of course,
the design ends up making the game too hard.
How Real Is Too Real?..........................
Another potential AI programming pitfall is creating an AI that, though it actually per-
forms like a “real” person, ends up detracting from the gameplay as a result. In terms of
the stories they tell and the settings they employ, games are often contrivances, strictly
unreal situations that are specifically set up because they are interesting, not because
they are authentic, and the AI must support this.
Consider the James Bond movies. These films are like many popular games in that
they feature a lot of action and exciting situations with less of a focus on character
development or meaningful stories. In nearly every film, Bond is captured at some
point and tied down to a particularly hideous execution device. This device does not kill
Chapter 9: Artificial Intelligence 163