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Patrick Carroll
United States
Carver
Minnesota
"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." (GK Chesterton)
"That's how the light gets in." (Leonard Cohen)
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One of the many things I'm conflicted about when it comes to video games is the way AI players are sometimes handled. To what extent should they simulate human players?
In an RPG, or any story-based game with characters and dialogue, you're sure to encounter other "people"--i.e., characters you can interact with. Of course, then you're likely playing the role of a character yourself, so the interaction is doubly indirect.
But what about a game like Chessmaster 9000? It's just chess, right? I think of it as a sort of interactive logic puzzle with a decision tree that defies mastery. Even when I'm playing a face-to-face game, I periodically forget all about the person across the table from me; I'm too absorbed in the board situation to be aware of anything else. Yet CM9000 has me playing against a number of AI opponents with faces, names, ratings, and even biographical info. Why? In other chess software--and other traditional games for the computer, such as Hong Kong Mahjong--there are voices as well as faces, and the faces are animated.
I have mixed feelings about that. On the plus side, it does simulate a "real" game--the way the game is normally played when it's not being played on a computer. So it's familiar and seems "friendlier," I guess. But OTOH, this game is being played on a computer, and I know darned well those AI players aren't real. So, interacting with them as if they're people is--well, kinda like making love to a rubber doll or something. Not my thing.
Weirdly, though, when playing against simulated people like that, I find myself experiencing some of the same emotions I'd feel if they were real people. If Jenna wails over a streak of bad luck, I feel sorry for her. If Justin shouts, "Woo-hoo!" I feel his excitement. And then, in the next moment, I feel embarrassed, because here I am interacting emotionally with robots.
Because of that, I usually seek out games where the AI opponents are silent and faceless. Or where they're so patently cartoonish that there's no mistaking them for real people. Civilization is like that (except for Civ2, where they used live actors as advisers; in that one, I fell in love with the foreign-affairs adviser and wanted to go out drinking with the military adviser); the bizarre-looking faces of AI players in Civ3 are nothing I can relate to.
It's amazing how even a slight touch of humanness changes the whole complexion of a game. I have an app for the card game Spades on my Android phone, and the three other players are represented only by small line drawings of faces; but that's enough to get me feeling like I know Bill, Don, and Rosie after playing many hands of Spades with them. Weird.
When I also have to "be" a character myself, it's different. It's not something I welcome, but since I'm engaged in role playing, it's less weird. I somehow made it all the way through The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, even though I never wanted to be Link.
But if it's too up-close-and-personal, role playing is a problem for me too. I couldn't handle Thief, for example. I just didn't want to do some of the things I had to do, and sometimes I felt like my heart would stop as I was playing. Heck, even Wolfenstein 3D was hard on me at first; it was too graphic and personal, even though it had a cartoonish look to it.
In other blog posts, I've said I want a game, not a movie. I guess what I'm saying here is that if I wanted to interact with people, I wouldn't be playing a computer game. I turn to computer games the same way my wife turns to novels and my friend Paula turns to Netflix movies. It's an escape--a respite from social interaction and day-to-day life. So why on earth would I want the video game to bring those things back into my life?
If anyone is reading this, I suppose there's a good chance he's thinking, Why don't you just play Windows solitaire, then? It's about as plain and boring a game as there is. Well, I do sometimes. I just played a game of it this morning, as a matter of fact. And I enjoyed it (even though I was really just trying out a new computer).
I'm a longtime wargamer, and I've played other kinds of games as well (though never a live RPG). I appreciate complex games, and I like it when a game simulates something--a battle or race or whatever. But when it comes to people, I greatly prefer the real thing. I don't want people simulated in the game I'm playing. I don't want to pretend to be interacting with people when I'm not.
Anytime a game puts me face-to-face with a simulated opponent, I feel it's slyly taunting me, saying, "Hey, loser--what are you doing playing this game with me, when you ought to be out doing stuff with someone real?"
Either it's OK to play a game solitaire, or it's not. If it's OK, the player should be content to just be alone and play the game. If it's not OK, the player should go find people to play a game or do something else with. Pretending to be interacting with people is just too strange for my liking. The furthest I'm willing to go in that direction is via blog posts like this, where I'm interacting asynchronously with people I don't know. That may be a little odd, but at least anyone reading this is an actual human being.
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