Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony have recently released their latest games consoles. Next-generation games may look great, but they play like something that could have been made a decade ago. While visual fidelity has advanced exponentially over time, the technology that governs how games play, react and adapt -- the artificial intelligence (AI) -- remains relatively rudimentary.
A handful of developers are striving to change this. The British designer Peter Molyneux, recently awarded the rank of Officer of the British Empire, has spent his career trying to inject sentience and reactivity into games -- and with his upcoming title, Fable 2, he says he's made significant progress.
"AI is certainly the undiscovered country of games design," he said.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Presently, every action a player makes must be anticipated by the developers; the software will break down or simply remain stagnant if asked to do something that hasn't been pre-scheduled. More sophisticated AI would allow games to come up with solutions to player decisions on the fly.
"If I as a player can do stuff in the world that is outside what the designer expects, and the game or game characters react appropriately, that's incredibly powerful. Suddenly, you think, `Well, this isn't something that's just waiting for me to press the B-button; it's evolving around what I'm doing.' That is very emotionally compelling and, if you get it right, it can often be quite spooky," Molyneux said.
But he adds: "You have to define what games developers call AI, as opposed to academic AI. There's actually very little true, academic AI in games. If I go along to universities and talk to professors of AI, they sort of laugh at us and our crude attempts at real-world AI."
Steve Grand, creator of the Creatures AI experiment, AI researcher, android hobbyist and also an Officer of the British Empire -- is probably the only person in the world with the distinction of creating a successful game driven by true AI. Which is why he's not particularly enthused by the progress in the games industry.
"Most of what counts as AI in the games industry is actually a bunch of `IF/THEN' statements," he said.
"The importance of AI in computer games is now widely recognized, and hence any attempt to implement it -- including Creatures -- gets hyped up pretty quickly. As graphics have improved, the behavior of characters has got more and more embarrassing. When characters looked cartoon-like, any vaguely lifelike behavior was impressive, but now that characters have fluid movements, realistic textures and complex facial expressions, they tend to engage different circuits in the players' brains. The better the graphics become, the worse the behavior looks. So the need for good AI is well-appreciated. The snag is that none of us knows how to make it work yet," he said.
Which isn't to say that Grand hasn't tried. In fact, Creatures is arguably the only AI-driven simulation that could still be classified as a compelling game in its own right. Basically a facade of evolution, the game allows players to teach creatures to eat, talk, and defend themselves. They learn and develop dynamically.
Grand tries to explain its technology: "It consists of a very simplified set of the building blocks of life -- nerve cells, enzymes, genes and receptors."
"I think the basic approach -- biological and bottom-up -- is the only way we'll ever achieve truly intelligent artificial systems. But for the time being, it's not the best way to approach the problem for most games. If you want to reach for the moon you have to go to the trouble to build yourself a space rocket, but if you only want to lift yourself three feet off the ground you might as well jump. There are easier ways to make the kind of intelligence most present-day games require, even though these techniques will never lead anywhere," he said.
Molyneux agrees.
"I have tried prototyping using neural networks," he said, "but you usually never quite get the results you want. And I think the system we use is a hybrid, really -- I wouldn't want to put a title on the AI we've developed, but the theory of neural networks does influence it. I think the whole Creatures approach was incredibly interesting and impressive, but the real problem was that it was a bit of a strange beast. I didn't quite understand its motivations."
Molyneux's latest project, Fable 2, at the now Microsoft-owned Lionhead Studios appears to be heavily influenced by Grand's games. This is most obvious in the player's constant companion, his dog. According to Molyneux, each player's dog will be unique thanks to their actions.
But whether Molyneux will be answering that question with true AI is hard to say. Fable 2 won't be released until next year.
But projects like this let us advance our understanding of how AI can revolutionize gameplay.
Grand, who's now focused on robotics, remains confident that games can benefit AI research
"I think it's probably the best environment for AI that exists," he said. "When you write a game, your only responsibility is to be entertaining."
With luck, more developers like Molyneux will begin taking his words to heart.
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