Blog Post #6: Engaging with Research
Cite:
Brown, Mark. “What Makes Good AI? | Game Maker’s Toolkit.” YouTube, uploaded by Game Maker’s Toolkit, 31 May 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bbhJi0NBkk.
Define:
This video gives a plethora of video games with examples of “good” AI, while also defining what about the AI makes them so enjoyable. These examples range from classic retro games like Pacman to more recent games like The Last Guardian (2016).
Understand:
Good AI communicates its intentions to the player, interacts with the game’s other systems, and has its own goals apart from interacting with the player. As a part of a game, the AI is primarily meant to be interacted with by the player, so players must be able to understand what it is doing. On top of that, in order to give the AI its own personality the AI must have a personal goal like self-preservation. It can achieve this goal by interacting with the game’s systems much like the player can.
Evaluate:
This video’s main purpose is to distill the information from a number of articles that analyze game AI into a set of concrete rules for making “good” AI. It may take its ideas from works that analyze specific games, but it brings them together in a way that creates a distinct general argument rather than one tied to a specific game type.
Distinguish:
I’m planning to recontextualize this argument by applying it to a different medium. Video games and literature differ in many ways, but they both include the concept of characters who are not controlled by the consumer of the medium (players/readers). I thought it would be interesting to see how important these distinct rules are in classic literature, and whether or not they can be compared to a more recent medium like video games.
Create:
The programming aspect of game design and the systems involved are a big interest of mine. Video essays like this that describe these concepts in concrete ways are very inspiring to me. Storytelling in general is also a big interest of mine and I wanted to look for a connection between interactive and noninteractive stories.
