Our buddy Corvus asks for this month's Blogs of the Round Table: "AI: Beauty or Beast? This month’s topic is artificial intelligence. What does it mean to current games? What should it mean? How far have we come? How far do we have to go? Does what we call AI in games bear any resemblance to AI as understood by other industries? Should it? Are we currently using AI to its fullest advantage? Are we using it for the right things? No matter your approach, whether technical, historical, tragical, comical, artisical, musical, tragi-comical, or techno-tragi-comi-arti-musical, use this month’s topic (artificial intelligence if you’ve forgotten already) to grab AI by the lapels and shake until you just can’t shake anymore."

And I thought about it.

I thought about it in terms of my experience with Machine Learning, pattern recognition, neural networks and liquid state machines, cognitive sciences, behavioral conditions and test, perfect checkers games and games of chess I'll never win against a computer.

I thought about NPC's that ducked behind crates in first person shooters (does it have to be a crate?), and the first time I gave the goons in my Shadowrun games families and friends, and how they started ducking behind dumpsters in firefights too when I did that.

I thought about it so much I even forced myself to watch Stephen Spielberg's movie of the same name (I had forgotten how truly awful it was). I downloaded Facade, and did everything in my power to keep Grace and Trip together (although I failed each time). I kept thinking about it and thinking about it, and wanting to write something intelligent to say about the proper application and the unexplored frontiers of Artificial Intelligence in games.

Last night I was thinking about it again in an empty blog post window at around 1 in the morning when I fell asleep and had a dream.

In the dream I was in a room with mechas from Stephen Spielberg's movie: Mechanized humans which when you look at them are completely indistinguishable from the real thing. I remember being excited at the chance to test their limits, and see what these things are really capable of. So I went up to the first male mecha, a smartly dressed English looking chap in a suit with an emblem on it classifying him as the smartest mecha alive, not entirely unlike A.I.'s Dr. Who, so I asked him what would be required to travel backwards in time (I figure we got forward figured out pretty well), and we embark on a rollicking journey though the annuls of relatively and special relatively and tachyons and extra dimensions and string theory and M-theory and so on and so fourth.

After a bit I tired of the depth of the topic, and with a wave of my hand I dismissed it, flowing effortlessly to, "What is the reason for life?" upon which he instantly started down the whole carbon cycle only to have me interrupt him, and say, "Let me rephrase that, why is the reason for life?" to which is had a rather surprising answer, one I could only really describe as a mixture of religion, science, and philosophy as distilled from all the great theologians, scientists, and philosophers in existence.

I was bored.

So I left.

I walked away from the mecha, and over to a door that had a sign on it that said, "You can't ever go back." (another line from A.I. I believe, Jude Law said it to the girl before he boinked her), and after pausing to read it I pushed through the door, which slammed shut behind me with a muffled slam.

I found myself in a new room where my fiancé stood. I looked into her beautiful eyes, and she smiled that genuine smile at me...

I woke up. And that's when it dawned on me what I had to write about with regards to this topic.

What place does Artificial Intelligence hold in games as far as Verse Studios is concerned?

None at all.

At least not in the way it's meant here. As far as we are concerned, there is no substitution for Genuine Intelligence, and trying to remove the human aspect, the human condition from the equation is a fallacy into and of itself. AI is another way of modeling the very thing that we ourselves bring to a game when we play it: The human condition. That fact that we are imperfect, that we play a game knowing full well that it will end in an unsatisfactory "Game Over", or that there's a wrong way to do something that will lead to failure or lack of success dictates that the human condition is actually a vital aspect of the experience. Humans create games for humans to experience them, and to date, that has not changed, and it's not looking likely to any time soon either. Trying to model a machine as "thinking" is still inappropriate, even in situations where deductive and inductive logic is applied, because in the absence of new stimulation, there's always a finite set of deductions to be made.

This is easily expressed in the linear-story game which you play once and put away, when compared to the ever evolving experience of a frequently updated and well modeled community/online based game. It's our strong belief that the social aspect... that human condition... is what makes online games in particular so much fun and keeps us coming back to them time after time after time.

It's not to say that AI isn't important (it is), or hasn't come a very long way (it has), it's just as far as I know it doesn't get any better than the real thing.

Making a game is a lot like giving birth while cooking dinner for 20,000.

You gotta keep a ton of processes working in both synchronicity and harmony with the intent of reaching an audience of 20,000 people in a very intimate and personal manner.

All the while you're sweating and straining, pushing and breathing, literally suffering through the pain of trying to get this creation, which long before it's birth has taken on a life and agenda all it's own, out the damn door... kicking, screaming, covered in sharp edges, and dragging a loose tail of bubble wrap from one foot.

Even with the simplest of concepts and the most minimal execution your team can possibly get away with, it's still a life changing experience: One that leaves you in awe and wonder, having both learned a series of valuable lessons, and having caught a glimpse of just how much longer you have to go.

This month's 'Blogs of the Round Table' asks us to examine the silly line in the sand between Casual and Hardcore gamers and games. Bare with me while I head down what may turn into more than a bit of a rant.

Once upon a time there was pong. You hooked up this plastic and fake wood veneer device to your television, and you and a friend twiddled a big round dial to make a bar of white light move up and down, bouncing a block of white light about your TV. Thus was born the gamer, in the soft glow of the cathode ray tube.

Then came Atari, the arcade, the Apple IIe, Zork, Oregon Trail...Mario. I think Mario is when everything really started to go wrong. This was the point where people started drawing a line in the sand, to define themselves as a 'gamer'. Up until Mario, people did not really seem to care if they were hard core or soft core or no core. They just thought these video games were silly, and they were. After Mario things changed. Nintendo Power magazines giving tips and tricks, and we all of a sudden have elites. People who knew the tricks, and people who found them.

We had hardcore gamers, and then everyone else. I blame you Mario, and your high scores and times and horrible maze-like last levels that still confound me to this day!

Over the last few years clever business people and marketers have realized that the audience they so loved to take money from are now in jobs where they do not have time to sit around for hours a day, let alone a week, playing video games. I can honestly say that I, someone in a company that makes games, spend less time these days playing them then I ever have before. Thus is born the casual game, and the casual gamer. More lines, more sand.

Now that the industry has drawn all these lines in the sand, their are those who want to smudge them out again. Their are those who want to turn those lines into World War I style trenches where technoliterate 13 year olds ( and the 30 year olds who haven't grown up yet ) hurl vulgarity at each other. The whole thing smacks of a pointless semiotic and semantic debate to me.

Of all the problems and concerns in the video game industry ( and there are a hell of a lot of problems ) the debate between Casual and Hardcore products, customers, play styles, and development practices reeks of dancing shadows on a cave wall to me.

Should we even care? Does it matter if people are using a product for 15 minutes every day? Does it matter that 'Casual' gamers are statistically shown to put in way more time playing games than expected? Or that they play for longer periods than expected?

Should we care that hardcore gamers are getting fewer and further between? That the hardcore gamer, once the bread and butter, is shrinking into a niche as the video game industry expands it's scope?

I think the whole debate is a bit of a red herring. I think blurring the lines between hardcore and casual is a pointless task because the lines themselves are not important.

The real problem is not that people are playing for a certain amount of time, or play in a certain manner, but rather they are looking for something FUN to do. We are in the ENTERTAINMENT industry, yet when I look at the top tier products flying off the shelves, I really do not see a lot that is entertaining.

Big budgets, yes. Beautiful graphics, yes. The occasional novel theme, yes. Fun? Not very often. If developers are spending their time looking for the ultimate casual game, the ultimate hardcore game, or the ultimate game that grabs everyone and gets better numbers than Halo, Habbo Hotel, Secondlife, and WoW combined they are wasting their time.

They should be looking to entertain and to make things that are fun. If it is entertaining, and fun, it doesn't really matter whether it is hardcore or casual. People will play it, and that is really all that matters at the end of the day. Leave the market demographics and MBAisms to the venture capital firms and business plans and get down to brass tacks, making something people want and like to play.