Non-playable characters have come a long way with their AI intelligence. As the gaming industry has expanded on everything, developers have been able to make characters seem more real over the years, however, a lot of times characters in games are missing something. NPCs are often copied and pasted from one another in most open world games. Not only that, but they tend to make in-game decisions that are totally idiotic. It’s time for the AI in NPCs to be brought to the next level, not just intelligent, but humanized and having more character.
Interview with Stephen Russell, Actor for (Nick Valentine, Codsworth, My Handy) in Fallout 4 which is a vast open world role playing game set in the apocalyptic wastes of Boston, the Commonwealth. The career goes further with other Bethesda games from Starfield to Prey to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
L.A. Noire is coming to the library of free games available to GTA+ Members on Thursday, May 2.
Video games -- particularly AAA video games -- have become too expensive to make. The intel from every fly on the wall in every investor's room is there is an increasing level of caution about spending hundreds of millions just to release a single video game. And you can't blame them. Many AAA game budgets mean that you can print hundreds of millions in revenue, and not even turn a profit. If you are an investor, quite frankly, there are many easier ways to make a buck. AAA games have always been expensive to make though, but when did we go from expensive, to too expensive? A decade ago, AAA games were still expensive to make, but fears of "sustainability" didn't keep every CEO up at night. Consumer expectations and demands no doubt play a role in this, but more and more games are also revealing obvious signs of resource mismanagement, evident by development teams and budgets spiraling out of control with sometimes nothing substantial to show for it.
It’s a question that I’ve pondered myself too. How are these developers spending this much money? Also, like the article stated, I cannot tell where it’s even going. Perfect example was used with Starfield and Spiderman 2.
They claim they have to increase prices due to development costs exploding. Okay? Well, I’m finding myself spending less and less money on games than before due to the quality actually going down. With a few recent exceptions games are getting worse.
I thought these newer consoles and game engines are easier-therefore-cheaper to make games than previous ones. What has happened? Was it over hiring after the pandemic, like other tech companies?
I believe that it is due to this unsustainable rise in production costs that more and more companies are looking to AI tools to help ‘lower’ costs.
I genuinely believe it's mismanagement. Why are we seeing an influx of one person or games with a team no bigger than 10 create whole games with little to no budget? Unreal Engine 5 and I'm sure many other engines have plugins that have streamlined to many things you would have had to create and code back in the day.
For instance, before the cull, there were 3000 Devs working on COD alone. I'm a COD player but let's be real, there's been no innovation since 2019s MW. What exactly are those Devs doing? Even more so when so much of the new games are using recycled content
I've stated this in many other articles, but corporate greed, mismanagement and bloat and failing to understand the target audience and misaligned sales expectations as a result are the big reasons for these failures.
You'll see it in the way devs and publishers speak, every sequel needs to be "three times the size" of its predecessor, with hundreds of employees and over-indulgence. Wasted resources on the illusion of scale and scope. Misguided notions that if your budget balloons to three times that of the previous game you'll make three times the sales.
Compare the natural progression of games like Assassin's Creed 1 to 2 or Batman Arkham Asylum to City or Witcher 2 to Witcher 3 or God of War remake to Ragnarok and countless others. How is it that From Software continues to release successful games? Why don't we hear these excuses from Larian? These were games made by developers with a vision, passion and desire to improve their game in meaningful ways.
Then look at Suicide Squad Kill the Franchise and how it bloats well beyond its expected completion date and alienates its audience and middle fingers its purchasing power by wrapping a single player game in GAAS. Look at Starfield compared to Skyrim. Why couldn't Starfield have 5-10 carefully developed worlds with well written stories and focus? Why did it need all this bloat and excess that adds nothing to the quality of the game? How can No Man's Sky succeed where Starfield fails? Look at Mass Effect Andromeda compared to Mass Effect 3. Years of development and millions in cost to produce that mediocre fodder.
The narrative they want you to believe is that game budgets of triple A games are unsustainable, but it's typical corporate rubbish where they create the problem and then charge you more and dilute the quality of their games in favour of monetisation to solve it.
Greed from everyone involved including game reviewers, which are the greedy little goblins that help the lords screw over the gaming landscape.
It's a really nice thought and I like the ideas but games take far too long as is and keep getting delayed, trying to make more individual npcs in a game and fleshing them out would add way more time to development imo.
It would probably be a lot more sensible to develop robot A.I that can sit at the computer for hours on end with little/no breaks, and develop A.I itself instead of getting humans to work on it.
Not only that but they could use them to cure diseases and make discoveries for us at a super fast rate compared to humans. I really think that is a possibility, too bad tech like that is advancing so slow and governments are (mostly) interested in wasting money on war instead.
i know ill get disagrees, but no AI is smart. Im a coder ive coded my own AI. If you see what actually makes the creater appear intelligent its nothing more then smoke and mirrors most AI, and it has for the past 30 years hasnt gone much farther then
for(player in view)
walk_towards_player
if(distance==player)
Attack
basically thats pretty much almost every AI made in a nutshell. Sure they may animate more smartly and some AI may follow instead of attacking. But AI really hasnt advanced at all, and you especially know this if youve made your own as you compare it to games. Where you notice the AI isnt all that complicated. For example a big hit game the last of us, ellie, who is a follow character does nothing more intelligent then follow the player. It just appears smarter because its talking from a set script. Thats not smarter, its just emitting a sound now just like how when you shoot a gun it emits a sound.
edit: also fighting games the AI generally appears to be smarter as the AI needs to be able to beat you, but its just using an algorithum mathematical forumaly to choose the best choices of attacks at ranges and certain set situations
if(range==mid)
do these certain attacks
kinda like that. Obvously there a tiny bit more complicated. but in a nutshell AI hasnt advanced at all in the last 2 decades at least. and thats been done sense the first mortal combat...
I don't think AI in games has improved that much AT ALL. I yet to see a single game where AI acts better than it did in Crysis 1, where they could navigate in complex terrain, take cover behind objects, and run away if they had to
That's for FPS game where AI is a huge factor in direct gameplay, RPGs can probably get away with more things when it comes to AI, and hence it pretty much haven't progressed from basic path-finding, to direct attack with X ability based on distance from the player, and that's about it.
As far as how NPCs talk and what they say and stuff, that just comes down to a lot of scripting. Which probably would not be too difficult to do with studio would hire separate developer just for that job, but I believe most of them simply decide to save money and go with minimum "good enough" approach. Hence all the brain dead NPCs we see in every RPG, and have been seen for years and years.
Sometime I feel like the only thing that really keeps improving in games lately is graphics, everything else is so similar to how it use to be 10 years ago, or in some cases even worse. Pretty sad.
You're talking about what's stupid but you start off with 'AI intelligence?'