"Video games today have devolved into a microcosm of the celebrity world. Oh, the beautiful blonde with the perfect body can captivate audiences with the right lines, but alone, without the props of a script, she's as brain-dead as the zombies who follow her love life.

Which is odd, really, since that's the way most video-game characters behave. For every noble attempt like Black and White to create a true sense of artificial intelligence, there are a hundred first-person shooters that simply drop in artificial "soldiers" that charge your virtual character, firing madly and possibly launching a grenade or two. What's even worse is the odd game whose enemies aren't even aware you exist. While this allows the player the opportunity to appreciate features like bump-mapped shoulder pads at close range, the overall experience is something akin to wandering a museum.

Games, however, are about creativity within constraints. In a chess match, the best human may defeat a computer, or vice versa. However, both move within a tightly regulated environment. Games that allow the player more independence of thought and action place more of a burden on the game designers to balance such freedom with enough challenges and constraints to provide an entertaining plot. Conversely, part of the reason chess simulators can outplay human opponents derives from their focus; constrained by a simple set of rules, the programmers are free to explore the millions of possible outcomes and determine the best one.

Modern first-person shooters combine elements of both. Games like Far Cry pit players in constrained and open settings against a variety of opponents, all of which use both scripted behaviors (a truck appears on the horizon, dropping off a platoon of soldiers) and independent action to try and defeat the player. When it works, as in Far Cry , the AI adds immeasurably to the experience. When it doesn't (Doom 3) the game suffers. But how, exactly, does AI work?" [more]