The Video Game Industry

This, yes.

Players aren't a very good judge of what they want because they don't understand how much handholding games actually do. Games cheat on the player's behalf more often than you might think. They fudge dice rolls and use things like edge gravity to make players feel like they're doing better than they really are. Sometimes they'll even tweak the game behind-the-scenes to make it easier without telling you, if you're having a rough time.

The goal of the game is ultimately to be satisfying and entertaining to the human player. And human players want to be challenged, but to not insurmountably so. Players start getting snippy even in instances of fairness, such as an attack with a 2/3 chance to hit managing to hit their characters twice in a row while they missed their attack inbetween that has 90% accuracy. Because the human brain has difficulty comprehending statistics, the computer is now "cheating".

Players don't want an enemy AI that can play on their level. They want to win but to feel like they earned it. But that's not what they think they want because no one wants to admit that they play games to have their ego pandered to.

And they absolutely do not want an NPC partner who plays the game better than they do. Absolutely not.

When they do actually want to compete? They play against other humans.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 19th 2024 at 11:49:20 AM

I've never played Resident Evil 4, but I've heard that the entire game being an escort mission is fine because your escort (Ashley) only has a couple simple actions that you direct her to do (e.g. "don't move") and she's completely obedient. And that also makes her useful since she can lure enemies for you to tactically eliminate.

The worst escort missions suck specifically because you feel like you have no control of the situation, and thus you feel cheated because any failure wasn't really your fault. I can't imagine Ashley working as well as she did if she had a mind of her own.

Edited by Karxrida on Mar 19th 2024 at 11:46:49 AM

Not only that, but in the most intense fighting sequences of RE 4, Ashley is either not present, or you can tell her to hide in a dumpster or something. If that's not possible, she will do her very best to stay behind you to make sure that she's not in the line of fire, and should she be unable to go behind you and you aim her way, she'll crouch and make herself a small target that you are unlikely to hit accidentally.

I haven't got around to play the remake but it was pretty much that in the original. And even then, escorting was manageable and had plenty of spots to hide in.

Although once you suit her up in the knight armor, it no longer becomes an escort because she's downright immortal in that thing.

Bioshock Infinite features an escort character who is never in physical danger during combat. Enemies ignore her and she can't be damaged. As the game evolves, she can give you extra resources and can help you with her special powers. This relieves you of the feeling that she's a burden; indeed she's more like a support character than an escort.

I consider Bioshock Infinite's approach to be...maybe "cheating" is the wrong word.

But Bioshock Infinite's approach is less making a "good" escort mission and more "not having an escort mission".

One easy example where gaming AI needs to improve is EU 4. It’s a grand strategy game where you have supply range/limits on your armies/navies, except the AI doesn’t have a supply range on its navies. Why? Because if they impose the supply range and make the AI never go beyond that range the AI is crippled (damage from being beyond supply builds up over time so humans players will regularly go beyond range for strategic advantage) but if they don’t limit it to the supply range it will destroy entire navies by putting them outside supply range and leaving them there.

What they want is an AI that can make a judgment call on if in that specific game instance it’s worthwhile to move the navy out of supply range and to reevaluate that decision constantly (probably resulting in short moves out of range before bringing the fleet back in range). Then they have to run that for 100+ AI nations on a reasonable spec gaming PC.

As for the escort mission discussion, I wonder if the better use of AI wouldn’t be the make the escorted NPC better at hiding but to make it better at taking directions from the player. An escorted AI that protects itself means you don’t really have an escort mission, to actually keep the mission you need an AI who can better act as directed by the player rather than one who does smart things by itself. That way the player feels smart for telling the NPC to hide while they scout ahead, instead of feeling like they aren’t doing anything because the NPC is hanging so far back it’s never at risk.

Edited by Silasw on Mar 19th 2024 at 7:27:56 PM

It's still problematic in not giving you a choice as what kind of emergency supplies the game insists on giving you, but that's usually better than the more common, incompetent alternative. So Infinite isn't exactly a perfect example either.

One escort mission I liked in a game was Grapple Force Rena. The escort could fight, was invincible, and you could pick him up and throw him. It fit in with the game's light-hearted mood and sense of humor, and generously low difficulty.

Edited by BonsaiForest on Mar 19th 2024 at 4:14:12 AM

better AI or not I don't fucking want a companion that can fight better than me, period, which is why I never took Boone with me on FONV

I play these games to be the one doing the asskicking and feel more badass than I really am irl, not watch some guy kill all the enemies while i sit in the corner scratching my balls and shit

yeah, how did you guess?

Edited by Cordite-455 on Mar 20th 2024 at 11:19:39 PM

Not a big fan of strategy games, I take it?

I agree that part of the AI intelligence problem in strategy games is the blatant cheating.

What we want is an AI dumb enough to lose to the player, but smart enough to:

• Require at least some effort on the player's part
• Do so without blatant cheats like infinite resources, The All-Seeing A.I. etc.

On that note, even in strategy games you can have infuriating intelligence if the AI does something the player can do but at a rate they can't.

For instance, micro-managment. In Starcraft and Starcraft II it's one of the cores of gameplay and while some of the tricks in it are in theory simple (like controlling the fire rate by fudging the animation), in practice that takes time to learn how to properly pull off while an AI can pull that off without issue.

This is one of the reasons why, as Tobias says, people don't really want a "fair" fight with the AI or an AI companion that can do better or as good as them, because unlike a human companion there's no surmounting the fact that a computer can do better than you at one or more aspects of a game no matter how much you practice it.

Continuing with the EU 4 example, while players would like to have the AI behave better in certain areas like money managment (there's been a debt problem last I remember), there are others in which a better AI would be a hassle because imagine playing as a country that is constantly getting into wars because the AI knows that ganging up on you all the time is the better way to deal with you before you get too strong. That's smart behaviour yes but not the type of behaviour one wants to deal with because while that's an option for a player, that still requires having a near constant awareness of your neighbours all the time to avoid getting jumped with your pants down, which kills the pacing of the game from a human perspective.

Edited by raziel365 on Mar 20th 2024 at 11:41:39 AM

As I've said before, strategy games specifically an area where more intelligent AI is legitimately needed.

Most Strategy Games are too complex for the AI to play even competently, and make up for this by having the AI cheat. The problem with this solution is that it actually is a very different, and often less deep, mechanical experience.

For example, in many strategy games denying your opponent resources is a major component of gameplay when facing off against humans. However, against AI opponents that just cheat in resources, that whole element of gameplay disappears.

And I'll note that there's also a big gap between "is completely unbeatable by humans" and "knows how to play the game semi-competently".

With something like a co-op AI in an action game, I'd also argue better AI is probably needed, yes. This is because playing a video game from the player's side is legitimately difficult at times for AI.

How smart you want an AI like this to be is pretty tricky. But it's also something you can hold back from-you can tell a superhuman AI to ease up after all. I'd also argue you at least want the AI to be competent enough that the player won't complain that the stupid AI is causing them to lose.

You can also program the AI to actively avoid getting in the player's way or to not steal kills from them. A.I.s steal kills and get in the player's way precisely because they aren't very smart.

In fact, I'd probably program such an AI's primarily goal to be to help the player win, not to win itself.

Cross-posting this from the Unofficial Official Mega Man thread:

Long story short, Wagner Knows Why comments that Rockman/Mega Man will be targeted by people who insist that video games have to be more racially and gender-ly (for lack of a better term) like those who work at Sweet Baby Inc after it was mentioned at this year's Game Developers Conference that there's a lack of female playable and non-white characters in Rockman/Mega Man.

Will Capcom really listen to these "concerns"? Before any warns me not to bring up SBI, it was only mentioned once in the video and I did so because I find one thing valid about what Wagner said: that those who complained about Rockman/Mega Man's lack of diversity may not be fans, much less having played a single Rockman/Mega Man game in their entire lives.

So, to sum up why I made this post: is it even a good idea to listen to people whose exposure to any video game franchise is questionable? I mean, I mostly watch walkthroughs of certain games and I don't complain about diversity.

Edited by HallowHawk on Mar 20th 2024 at 12:25:55 PM

> So, to sum up why I made this post: is it even a good idea to listen to people whose exposure to any video game franchise is questionable?

yes, you should listen people who don't play video games so they're "questionable"

A quick glance at that channel shows it looks like another one of those channels that does little but whine about "woke." I can't take channels like that seriously in the slightest. Even if they have a valid point here or there, their agenda makes me unable to take them seriously.

Also, when was the last time we got a new Mega Man game, or the last time before that? It's a basically dead retro franchise.

Edited by BonsaiForest on Mar 20th 2024 at 3:42:37 PM

One thing I noticed though, is that in some cases (this may not be relevant to the specific case of mega man), is that the alt-right would try to claim that everyone else doesn't even play the games in question. For example, in the case of Limbus Company, the incels who stormed the video game developers claimed that they are the real players, and people who think the company shouldn't fire its artist were trolls who didn't play the game.

Edited by minseok42 on Mar 20th 2024 at 12:47:25 PM

Yeah, this sounds like baseless ragebait to me.

Again, youtube recs of streamers and “essayists” who go off on antiwoke breed the next gen of rightwing where itll just be alt.

Fair. I apologize for even bringing it up. As an aspiring author planning to write for video games someday, I do find it worrysome to fear if people will complain that "you didn't do enough representation" and that the SBI issue is what made it worrying for me.

I don't think it's all that problematic to look at a franchise and go "Y'know, in all the games we've made, we haven't shown a single dark-skinned character and almost no women, maybe we could change that?"

I actually am wondering now where these vids started. I know the 2016 election kinda gave head to a more politically divided US but where did video game antiwoke videos had their start? Who started it? If anyone has the answer, would like to know

I'm gonna assume it started with the forbidden hashtag and leave at that. (As that is still a banned topic iirc)

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Mar 20th 2024 at 1:15:33 AM

It started with sexually viable worker ants yes.