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"Artificial Stupidity"

I am fed up of hearing of new and improved ‘lifelike’ artificial intelligence. ‘Oooh, look at those guards examining a cardboard box! Wow, that player just dived and I didn’t even touch him!’ Big deal. Think about it – that’s not intelligent. What you are watching is not artificial intelligence – it is in fact artificial stupidity.

With the next generation of consoles upon us, it has become common to talk of ‘realistic A.I’. What most people don’t seem to understand, though (and neither did I until I thought about it) is that it is in fact a contradiction in terms. Apart from the odd games that try to encourage and recreate the learning development (Black and White is the only one that springs to mind) most developers, and players, use the term A.I to mean something entirely different. Now, I’ll be honest with you. I myself am not entirely sure what true A.I is, I don’t think anyone does. What I am talking about are the games that don’t include ‘intelligence’ whether you like to think so or not.

I’ll start with the game of the moment – Metal Gear Solid 2. Now, contrary to popular belief, Snake and Raiden are not realistic. To judge by their limited punch/punch/spinkick/strangle repertoire of moves, they don’t even know basic karate. Hence what you believe to be ‘A.I’ is in fact lashings of dumbness. Understandably, a guard will become suspicious on seeing a wet cardboard box in a corridor, but on the other hand, if you get seen then evade long enough the guards will forget they ever saw you, rather than conduct a full scale search till they find you. Obviously, guards having military standard marksmanship and ruthless perseverance would mean game over every time. So in fact what you perceieve to be (A.I) is in fact a deliberate dumbing down of intelligence. What you witness is in fact artificial stupidity, as the developer chooses a certain level of dumbness to make the game a reasonable challenge.

This is the rue in beat 'em ups too; games like Tekken and Soul Calibur would be unplayable if your opponent blocked you moves perfectly and then unleashed a 10hit combo. The developer must put mistakes in their armour, and leave the player to discover how to exploit them. The same goes for action games - take the much heralded Counterstrike, the enemies are stupid, not intelliegnt, for the actions they carry out.

Quite possibly the worst case of artificial stupididty is when you realise that the game isn't playing by its own rules. Recently, I purchased Red Faction on the PS2 Platinum Range. This does actually have a quite high degree of A.I. (such as avoiding detection by not making eye contact) but again suffers from incoherent programming. Take the sixth sense of guards when it comes to weapons. At a distance where they shouldn't be able to see you, you only have to whip out a gun to be mobbed by eagle-eyed guards. This sits uncomfortably with the good A.I.

Another example is driving games, and in particular Metropolis Street Racer and Project Gotham Racing. When you are racing for kudos, you try to avoid cars - yet they ram you mercilessly from behind. They don't worry about kudos at all, they just see it as a race for the finish. Similarly, if you are playing something like Sega Rally and you mistime your powerslide, you spinout of control. Fine. But no matter how hard you knock the other cars off course, they'll never, ever spin. Its just inconsistent, and overall, unfair.

Thus I am personally disappointed every time I hear A.I being trumpeted in the latest releases, just to find the same inconsistencies and foibles. In my opinion, the only proper A.I I have encountered in my playing career is that in Black and White - but even then there are limitations.
The future? I don't know. But if developers stopped trying to make photo realistic graphics and concentrated more on things like A.I, gaming might go up a notch. And until the day arrives when you can have a convincing conversation witha no-playable character, then all I ask for is a coherent illusion of life in games.

Thanks for reading; I'd love to hear your commments

RM18

I mostly agree with all your comments, but I think that some of you are not getting one of the points I made. I am not disputing that super realistic A.I will ruin games, because it probably will, I was making the point that developers and magazines always talk about improved A.I and realistic actions when they are not realistic at all e.g the driving games I mentioned

The trouble is that designers have to strike a balance between enjoyability and realism. Artificial stupidity is just one way of making a game more playable: it is, after all, relatively easy these days to make chess AI that would kick anyone's butt; most people, however, prefer a challenging difficulty level rather than being annihalated (sp.?) every time.

I've just been reading Trigger Happy by Steven Poole and there is an interesting section on the realism of space combat. Basically with lasers you wouldn't need to aim slightly in front of an enemy ship: the laser travels at the speed of light so there is really no need to adjust your aim. Similarly your opponents wouldn't be able to make evasive manoeuvres because they won't see the laser until it hits them. So in a way space combat games have truly 'artificial' intelligence - in that they are capable of the impossible. But the crucial thing is it makes for a better game.

The fact that MGS2 grunts don't initiate a ship-wide search is also just pragmatism: it saves you from having to reload constantly, thereby retaining the flow of the game. I'm all for good AI, but there comes a point where enjoyability is more important than mimicing real behaviour.

Yep, I agree. Realistic AI would just make games impossible!! And I struggle enough with games like Perfect Dark on Agent Mode!

But the current AI in easy modes of FPS's is funny.
You can just stand infront of a magnum-armed soldier and he'll completely miss you, wasting bullets into the wall!

And we wouldn't enjoy these games if they were too tough.
And we do enjoy them due to the 'A.S.'.

That was one point I made, and I agree, A.I is never going to be that realistic

The other was developers telling us that a game has high A.i when it actually has less A.S (artificial stupidity), which is actually a different thing

Any less confusing?

I've really got you thinking now haven't I...

RM18 wrote:
> I agree

Pro Evo does have good A.I, but then again the computer players
> aren't being instructed to do anything that difficult - and think about it, when
> you increase difficulty, that doesn't mean that they play slicker football, they
> just run faster, tackle harder etc.
=============================================
what your asking of the developors is to have AI like we have intelligence? would be pretty damn hard, don't you think? You asking for the AI to be soo smart .. e.g. pro evo the players on your team act in there own way and get into there own fav positions or go off and have an arguement with the ref or get bored and walk off caus your not passing to him?

I think there is an extent to how smart AI can get caus if you don't then all the games would go wrong and would hardly be a experience caus there are all to damn smart and walk off elsewhere

if thing learnt after there mistakes in one whole continuous process and even if you restart the level they still know about stuff the learnt before then wouldn't it make the game unbelievably hard?

Wait a sec...

I think I know what you're getting at...

You're saying that they are dumb because they do the same thing all the time, and don't show any sign of intelligence because it looks as if they don't learn! I get ya...;-)
What you're saying is that MGS2 only shows good A.I when the guards are programmed to do what they do in certain situations like seeing footprints and hearing noises...that's smart, but it's dumb because when you do it again and again, they don't learn and it's unimpressive...
Tell me I'm right.

:D

RM18 wrote:
> Thats the point I was making - the guards are being dumbed down in reality, but
> marketing and promotion for the game heralds improved A.1! Like I said its a
> contradiction in terms

In games like MGS2 - A.I IS improved. Even though the guards are still quite thick, the A.I is considerable improved compared to past attempts.
In MGS2, the guards follow your footprints...that's smart for a computer controlled guard isn't it?
When you knock on the wall, the guards come and investigate into what made the noise - that's smart, ain't it?
But then again, they don't call for back up when they think something's odd, so that's dumb...but smart because if they did, the gamwe would be too hard; you can only improve A.I to some extent without the difficulty becoming near impossible.
When you get spotted by an enemy, it's smart what they do. It looks as if they know what they are doing.
So A.I is improved, but they're still dumb.

But what I thought was that if the guards were NOT programmed at all to run away, follow footprints or come and investigate into the source of a noise, but if they did all this as if they learnt, then that's artificial intelligence...

Gah, I don't know anymore!
Damn you, RM18 for making this cursed topic!
*Shakes fist at RM18, the scratches head*

:D

How caharcters act or respond is all made by using motion caption. The developers use some people to act out moves that'll appear in the game, so really the artificial "stupidity" is all down to how the developers want the game to be.

Obviously, they don't have the same expectancy from a game like you do, RM18. Games today have shown impressive AI. Sure, they might not be nothing special, but then again they're good enough for a game.

MGS 2 is hard enough already, I can't imagine how hard it would be with greater AI, and that goes for most games around.

Still, I understand where you're coming from, some games do have rubbish AI.

Good post Russ, they keep getting better and better. A.I. can't be too unrealistic, but at the same time it can't be too realistic. There has to be a balace, and I think MGS 2 is a good example of this.