10 Simple Video Game Features (That Are A NIGHTMARE To Develop)

9. Making A.I. Characters INTENTIONALLY Dumb

God of War Stranger
Naughty Dog

As a civilisation, we’re always looking for smarter artificial intelligence to make our lives simpler. My Google Assistant might be great at suggesting me recipes for dinners I’m... likely never going to make, but it’s really, really rubbish at writing award-winning erotic novels.

But, having “smarter” AI isn’t always good for games, in fact it’s actually pretty counter-intuitive.

You could easily create an enemy AI which bests a human in terms of reaction speed or path of least resistance, but... that doesn’t really make for a fun game. Hell, if you’ve ever played a fighting game where the end boss reads your inputs and does a counter-move every single time, you’ll likely have said a few bad words.

Making the AI seem smart, yet simultaneously acting dumb enough to be beaten by a smelly fleshbag like me, is a balancing act that’s painfully difficult.

If you’ve ever cackled at how stupid an enemy AI acts, remember that it’s highly likely that it initially started off exceptionally lethal, but had to be pared back and given specific behaviours to be made thick enough to make you feel superior.

To make things dumb takes a muchly big of smarts.

In this post: 
God of War
 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Hiya, you lot! I'm Tommy, a 39-year-old game developer from Scotland - I live on the East coast in an adorable beachside village. I've worked on Need for Speed, Cake Bash, Tom Clancy's The Division, Driver San Francisco, Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, Kameo 2 and much more. I enjoy a pun and, of course, suffer fools gladly! Join me on Twitter at @TotoMimoTweets for more opinion diarrhoea.