Artificial Idiocy

[GameBanshee News]

An indepth article on Next Generation looks at the state of AI and argues that usability for games should take precedence of developing "real AI".

A large part of this is consistency – in fact when we complain about stupid AI, and toss the controller across the floor in disgust, we are more often than not referring to anomalies in its behavior rather than an actual lack of intelligence. When an eagle-eyed enemy improbably spots you while you believe yourself to be adequately hidden, or when opponents manage to track you down with the insistence of a psychic beagle – these are the things that jar with the player’s understanding of the world and drag him or her out of it.

“I think pathfinding is an area that used to cause designers a lot of problems,” says Sturtevant. “If your henchman got stuck in Neverwinter Nights or even just fell too far behind, he would just teleport to catch up. I worked on the pathfinding system for Dragon Age, and I hope and expect that there won’t be such a problem there. Last year I got to hear Quinn Dunki [senior AI programmer at Pandemic Studios] talk about the pathfinding design in Saboteur, and they have a variety of animations they will play when an AI gets stuck, culminating with one of angry frustration. If your AI does get stuck, the human player will probably be much more forgiving if they can see that the AI knows it’s stuck.”

With inconsistent or inscrutable behavior currently anathema, it seems like current design paradigms naturally limit the kind of dynamism you can squeeze from an AI. As Polge says, “AI NPCs are still not as innovative as human players. Improving in this area, with the goal of really surprising players without frustrating them, is challenging, and less straightforward than the improvements we’ve made so far.”

[fable]

"NPCs aren't as innovative as humans" because nobody's trying to do that, guy. You're confusing rules-set AI, which is almost entirely what one finds in games, with true learning AI, which you'll find in the best chess programs, or in Black-and-White's pets, or in the lamented Creatures series.

I don't know where the "inconsistent or inscrutable behavior currently anathema" comes from. This kind of behavior among NPCs has always been common, and still is, as Oblivion's ridiculous pseudo-activities and dialog prove.