Microsoft disses single-player gaming as "a recipe for mediocrity"?

[Galaga will never die]

You play against something with no imagination - no humanity, where do you learn to be imaginative? Where do you learn to be more than human? You play just against the box it's like a recipe for mediocrity - an invitation to stay where you are and never pass go, never collect your money.

That's why I don't want to play the game anymore. And I don't want it to just play me like I'm person A-slot B, the same as the next guy, the next finger on that button, cause I'm not. I want to play the best of the best and I don't care where they are - If I can get to them I will. This is war and I don't want to go to war against a machine. It's like in school. I want you to be more cooperative now, I want you to work with the rest of the class, do your assignments with the group. Choose the slow guy for your team-for your group.

But what if that's not my group? What if my group is across the city, in another country, all the way on the other side of the world? I want to choose my group, I'm not ready to have you do it for me. I want to make my team, I'm not ready to let you throw me in with just anyone, and if that's not your rules, too bad because I need to make my own on this.

I'm not about to let the box make the call for me. And I need you to stand back and watch this, because if you let me make the rules, let me choose my team from anywhere and let me play up like I know I can, You're gonna see how it's done.

[In Xbox 360 games] even in single-player modes other Xbox Live users will have the option to interact within the games of others...

allegedly leaked info from http://spong.com/detail/news.asp?prid=8613

[sci]

They are refering to the challenge against a human player against the challenge against a cpu player

[Galaga will never die]

CPU A.I. is often finely tuned to be fun to play, and are only concerned with your enjoyment and not their own. That's why CPU A.I. are not lifers / cheaters / diggit dogs / microtransactioners CPU A.I. also don't quit in the middle of matches, or hurl abusive insults over the microphone if they are losing. Finally CPU A.I. also often acts in a more immersive and unique way within the game world, than if a human teenage kid was moving the character.

[sci]

CPU A.I in fps games always use the same patterns and are incredibly easy to exploit, in any games. I'm a lifer in counter-strike, and I can easily take over squads of 10+ cpu bots in CS:S, yet even as a lifer, I think it happened to me once or twice in my 'career' against humans

AI cant really react and adapt to the ever changing situation of a team based fps like CS:S. They actually 'can', but only to a certain degree within the parameters and scripts. They dont get angry, stressful, or change tactics on the fly.

There's is just no way you can prefer them to human players, even to the most retarded of them.

[Shane R. Monroe]

There's is just no way you can prefer them to human players, even to the most retarded of them.

Well, I prefer the machine to people. I hate people.

[Galaga will never die]

CPU A.I in fps games always use the same patterns and are incredibly easy to exploit, in any games.

Liandri Conflict has raised the bar on CPU A.I. once again. Meanwhile the bar of actual human intelligence continues to be lowered each day.

IMO online co-op play with your fellow humans, against groups of CPU A.I., should be the vision for the future of gaming. In fact that's already the paradigm preferred in a lot of Japanese online game design. In general the west seems to prefer making games where for every winner in a game there are 5 times as many losers. These kinds of games tend to generate the lifer / cheater / diggit dog / microtransactioner mentality. The popular Japanese vision of online gaming is where every human player gets an enjoyable game.

I'm looking forward to trying some of the Japanese online stuff designed along these lines soon like Monster Hunter.

[sci]

You are talking about the same Japan than the one that developped fighting games and got it down to an artform?

[Galaga will never die]

With fighting games, which is as competitive as Japan gets in gaming, the design still returns a ratio of losers not greater than the number of winners. They have since evolved those design ideas into even smarter designed satisfaction-focused online games like Monster Hunter where, as I said before, everyone can potentially have a fun game all the time (on paper). Even if Monster Hunter's particular execution doesn't rise to the potential of the design, it is the way forward.

[esteban]

In an ideal world, it would be nice to be paired with human opponents who matched (or slightly exceeded) your skill level and were sincere. This scenario would offer consistently pleasurable experiences. Unfortunately, this rarely happens in the real world. Instead, you get an unbalanced / frustrating / annoying contest.

A.I. opponents can provide consistently pleasurable challenges... assuming that they have been carefully and thoughtfully designed. I agree that developers often take shortcuts and give us simplistic, predicatable enemy behavior... but this isn't a shortcoming of A.I. -- it's a shortcoming of the developer's imagination and creativity.

Of course, I acknowledge that for some games, and some situations, it is a TOUGH challenge to anticipate all the things a human opponent might do. In these situations, A.I. might not be feasbile. But A.I. can only get better if it is pursued more seriously.

For example, A.I. can be made to be more "irrational" and unpredictable akin to human opponents. Designers would just have to tap into game theory some more and develop better models of STRESS, BLUFFING, COCKINESS, NAIVETE, etc. in A.I. opponents.

In the end, I think human opponents are MUCH MORE predictable than we would otherwise think. How many of us have a specific repetoire of tactics that we constantly employ, over and over when we play games? I know that I do... in both video games and card games (i.e. poker).

Finally, the FPS genre is not known for sophisticated enemy A.I. ... it would be neat if this evolved.

[B_Rik_Schitthaus]

I'd always prefer Human opponants to AI even if they Nob around and take the p*ss. I find you get a far wider range of styles and skill that way.

The thing I used to find with Enemy AI in the FPS' I played (unreal tournament 1) is that you can't hide. Ok its camping but I only used it occasionaly to come out of the shadows get a cheap frag then play properly. But the AI always found you even when I used botpack.chair (oops I've said too much)