Brief History of Video Game AI

With progressively more powerful CPUs comes an entire wave of games that feature even better AI. Mind you, if we consider games like Halo 3 and Crysis, enemy intelligence appears to be a rehash of earlier iterations, in terms of AI especially. In truth, AI changes are subtle as opposed to being revolutionary or innovative if you will.

They should duck at this point...

Quit staring, it freaks me out!

More Emotion, Please

Sometimes, contemporary gamers are not satisfied with shooting down mindless drones. These days, state-of-the-art technologies are being used to incorporate emotional depth and both realistic AI behavior for NPCs and enemies. Detailed facial expressions and first-rate voice-overs have become a necessity in any gaming experience. As a result, what we see today are games with heavy character interaction, dynamic AI and generally more convincing combat situations than ever before. Whether you're playing Supreme Commander with a massive army under your control or just exploring the uncharted regions of the universe in Mass Effect, highly advanced 3D engines and modern-day video game AI provides a more fulfilling experience than ever before.

The future of video games and AI technology looks bright. With the growth of MMOGs, developers now finally have a chance to examine and test various AI patterns in real-time against a multitude of "live" players (so, you may have been a ginny pig at some point without even knowing it). Methods of online research towards better AI have been done before and were carried out through online matches in games like Neverwinter Nights. The Institute of Knowledge and Agent Technology (IKAT) of the Universiteit Maastricht conducted this research and found that, via dynamic scripting, the AI is capable of adjusting to diverse tactics. The AI learns and adapts to players and their actions, which in turn requires players to get accustomed to the game AI and so on.

There's always a question of balancing, naturally. Dynamic artificial intelligence can easily surpass skills of human players and, as we all know, difficult games aren't all that entertaining to casual gamers. Ultimately, however, the goal is for the AI to be adaptive and powerful enough to actually make you believe you are beating an opponent worth beating, while putting enough restrain on its power to allow you to feel superior (sort of why most people play single-player games in the first place).