Every time there is a “new advance” in AI for video games, the first question a lot of people ask is “how human is it?” How does it compare to playing against a real, actual, human person? A gaming-related Turing Test, if you will. And the answer is always “it’s not very human”. There’s one reason for this – computers can’t be assholes.
I was playing Blur multiplayer tonight and the one thing that struck me is how much of an asshole players online can be. That’s not a criticism, by the way. In fact, the sheer assholeness of a lot of online Blur players makes multiplayer races a pretty thrilling experience. And the AI players in the single-player, while frustrating, aren’t assholes. They never drop a mine directly behind a powerup so you grab the powerup and then explode. They never use a Barge to knock you off a cliff. They never swerve into you at the start line and bash you into a wall. They never wait until the home straight to launch a mine right up your arse and sail past in the last half-a-second of the race. They never park sideways across a narrow bit of track just to get in the way.
This sort of creative sadism which online Blur players have developed is what makes the multiplayer so much more appealing than the single-player mode. It’s really interesting to see the tactics that people have obviously developed independently without any prompting from the game. The “trapping a powerup” thing, for example. The AI players never do that. It’s never suggested you do it in the loading-screen tips. But it’s, when you think about it, a smart idea. Everyone is clamouring for powerups throughout every race. So why not make the more desirable ones rather more difficult to get?
This is a different sort of assholeness to the kind of 13-year-olds who scream racist, homophobic abuse down their headsets during games of Modern Warfare 2 (which they shouldn’t be playing anyway, but of course, that’s another conversation) – this is a stubborn, passionate desire to win at any cost bar cheating, rather than a stubborn, passionate desire to be a dick. And it’s fun. You can’t help getting involved. Watch other people playing Blur and all you want to do is out-asshole them. Get someone with a carefully-placed mine, or accurately slam a backward-fired Shunt into their face while they’re slipstreaming you and it’s immensely satisfying.
In fact, Blur as a whole is set up for being an asshole. Take the social gaming features I discussed the other day. What possible reason could there be for posting information about how well you’re doing other than to make other people think “I need to take that asshole down a peg or two”?
The reason, of course, that AI in single-player games being a perfectly accurate representation of a human is not necessarily a desirable thing is this: sometimes we like to win. And if you’re playing against 19 other assholes, most of whom are more of an asshole than you, very often you don’t win. That’s all very well, and competitive and so on… but if you’re playing by yourself, you want to win, don’t you? So that’s why I can say with some confidence that I really, really hope AI doesn’t ever improve to a level where it’s indistinguishable from a human. Because I like to beat it sometimes. And I’ve played over 60 online races in Blur now… and won two of them!