ResearchArtificial Intelligence in Game Sprites
Part of the reason that so many games are more popular in their multi-player form than in single-player mode is that a human is ever so much more challenging than a computer to outwit. The field of game sprite AI is still developing - and will be until we have a HAL 9000 that can appreciate our drawings and psyche us out. Yet we have seen that game sprite AI can be programmed to make the opponents more challenging, it's just a matter of care paid to the logic programming. Unfortunately, strong AI doesn't sell video games off the shelf - movie-quality graphics and innovative controls do. Good game AI, however, sells the game after it's been released and good word-of-mouth has spread about it. Over the long run, action games with good AI tend to outsell games which rely on sexy graphics and gizmo features.
For an example of what I'm talking about, let's look at first-person shooters. The original PC game Doom was innovative for it's time, but a monster was generally a paper target that would pop out at you, lob fireballs at you, and stand there and watch you shoot it. Compare this to the AI engine in the later first-person shooter Unreal. In Unreal, you have far fewer monsters to contend with, but when you did meet one it was frequently a fifteen minute hunt. If the creature was loosing a fight, it might run away. If it had a bead on you and you hadn't seen it yet, it might quietly snipe you. Some creatures would even take cover, then try to ambush you when you went looking for them. There was a wide variety of fighting styles from one opponent to the next.
Make no mistake, challenging sprite AI can make or break a game. You can only charge down the same hallway gibbing critters who just stand there and shoot at you so many times. Got good armor? Know how to dodge? Loaded up on ammo? Then the challenge quickly vanishes.
The action game industry was slow to respond to this idea, but newer games are starting to show improvement. The new bar was set with Half-Life. The marine enemies in the game took cover, were aware of when they were hurt, and behaved even smarter in packs, teaming up with various behaviors to hunt you down. If you ran away from a loosing fight to go recover health, you'd actually get chased and find grenades fired after you. The monsters in the game can take a more active role in making life difficult for you, instead of guarding one room.
Part of the reason AI has lagged behind other aspects of action games is that the code for programming sophisticated AI takes massive processing power. But so do realistic graphics. In scenarios where the chip real estate is limited, it's not hard to see where they decided to sacrifice. Poor AI can make long-term sales lag, but one screen shot of bad graphics can cost you your entire sales base. However, today's consoles have managed to pack enough gigabytes into their hardware that they can excel on both fronts, so the industry at last has a chance for improvement. The turn has been towards more formidable enemies in action games, but the field of gaming AI still has more territory to cover.