Hey all, I’m back with the first of a series of posts about something that’s been around for ages for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. It’s all about the use of artificial intelligence, or AI, in video games.

AI in Video Games?:  AI has been used in gaming for years and years. This week I’m not talking about the crappy generative assets being created by AI though. Ever play a game where a computer-controlled character is your opponent in something like a version of chess? Well, that’s an AI as well. It’s not exactly what you might think of when you think AI, but it still counts.

So What?: Well, most titles actually tone down the intelligence of any computer-controlled entity that isn’t completely scripted in gaming. This is a fact that I learned early on in my time learning game design, and it’s a pretty simple one once you think about it. See, most computers do things flawlessly and perfectly every time. So as an example, any enemies, if they aren’t altered specifically to do so, can shoot with perfect accuracy at the player every time and there’d be nothing you could do about it and you’d lose constantly. It wouldn’t be very fun to play that way, would it? Even on the hardest difficulties, AI tends to be toned down in some way because they do have to make some form of mistake or leave an opening that the player can exploit to win. Whether that’s in combat, racing, or mini games, that fact doesn’t change.

Now that isn’t to say that the developers don’t mess up one way or another on that scaling range of intelligence. It happens sometimes, and it sadly makes games much less fun than the developers intended.

A good example of this would be 2022’s Modern Warfare II DMZ mode. When it first launched, the enemy NPC soldiers were way too accurate and hit way too hard. If an extraction mode heavily penalizes dying, that’s a recipe for disaster. The fact it wasn’t fixed within a week or so, even if it was fixed in a direction that made it easier than intended, wasn’t a good thing. It took at least a month to fix that, and it really ruined the mode. That was a shame because I loved DMZ and also Modern Warfare 3’s Zombies that played a lot like it.

What can be done to fix it?: Well, for the most part titles do actually get the right level of intelligence for their various systems and enemies when a new one launches. It’s not always the case, but nothing and nobody is perfect.

Is there more to AI in Games?: Yep, and I’ll be getting to it more in the future entries of this series of AI themed Video Game Tuesday posts.