10 Video Game Design Rules You Can Never Unsee

2. NPCs Waiting FOREVER For You

Programming believable A.I. has always been a major challenge for developers, especially given how effortlessly players can demonstrate its limitations.

Non-player characters (NPCs) are governed by an extremely strict series of parameters, of course, intended to shepherd the player along the game's story or core gameplay loop.

Virtually every RPG and open-world game in existence has NPCs who will tell the player, "come on over when you're ready to start a mission", only for them to stand around gormlessly in a fixed position for potentially hours on end while waiting for you to engage them.

And even for more active A.I. companions, if you don't keep up, they'll simply hang around patiently at the target objective waiting for you to catch up.

They don't grab a bite to eat, visit the bathroom or even sit down to rest their back and legs, reminding everyone they're just lines of code funneled into a digital maquette supposed to resemble a human being.

Video games aren't really at the point where they can deliver consistently believable NPCs, though it's ultimately more a resource issue, that devs know their time is better spent elsewhere than developing complex A.I. routines for characters you're probably not paying that much attention to.