Challenge Accepted: Perfect play
You could, in theory, program a Dan AI so perfect that no human player could touch him.
Here’s the problem with AI opponents: when programmed to win, they will win against humans 100% of the time in contests of skill.
I’ve mentioned before that there are four main avenues of challenge in games, but the computer easily bests humans in three of them by definition. A properly programmed opponent who wants to win has better reflexes than you could hope to have, since there are no manual dexterity challenges involved. There’s no problem of managing teammates or of remembering what’s in the game. There isn’t even much space for thought as an avenue of winning; it’s just possible to be smarter than the programmer and find avenues they didn’t consider.
AI opponents in basically every game are not tuned for perfect play, though. Even the hardest opponents need to give players a chance to win, after all. Perfect play is the flipside of having games be a series of decisions with some serving as better decisions than others, the idea of making all of the right decisions and having the dexterity needed to execute those choices properly and reliably. And it’s helpful to consider perfect play in the larger framework of games and challenges, and how much of it is, in fact, contextual.
Two points for conventions
Every time I think that I’m out, I get pulled back in. And that’s not counting the sheer number of times I want to be out.
As you read this – but not as I write this, since I work ahead – I’m getting my last preparations in order for another ride up to Boston for PAX East. I’ve been going every single year for work since it first started running, and every year I have kind of hoped that this would be the year I didn’t have to go, because I don’t particularly like Boston or conventions in general. Yet it keeps happening no matter how many stars seem to align against it. Here I go again on my own, et cetera.
Despite my stated dislike for conventions, though, there’s a lot of good that does come out of them, sometimes in spite of everything. So as much as people complain about the lines, the smell of sweat, the crowds, the expense, and the creepers that infest every event like a Minecraft region gone horribly wrong, there are two good reasons to still head up to one if you can take the time. Even when I don’t want to ship out – which is usually the time – I’m happy that these are still there.
Demo Driver 8: Sunrider Academy
Stand back, we’re going to use science on it.
The weird thing about a lot of Japanese video game genres is how the fans who want to make more of them want to make the same exact sorts of games you got in Japan. Don’t get me wrong, the visual novel/dating sim sort of game never really took root in America, it’s a uniquely Japanese genre. But instead of taking that framework and making something new out of it, it seems like the fans making new games in the genre are just… making games that are trying their hardest to be Japanese games, complete with cultural references and behaviors and the like.
I bring all of this up because I am relatively certain that the developers behind Sunrider Academy are not located in Japan. Not entirely certain, but there are little bits and pieces hither and yon that suggest the game was made by enthusiastic fans emulating Japanese games rather than people just making a game about what they saw/experienced/etc. That isn’t a negative verdict right off the bat, though, just a piece of the puzzle. As it turns out, the rest of the puzzle fits together decently.
Why are fighting games still gross as hell?
A picture is worth a thousand words, and in this case a large variety of additional questions and conclusions.
I want you to take a look at the picture up there. Really look at it. I want you to stare at the outfit, at the character wearing it, and I want you to realize that in the world of fighting games, this is progress. Big, forward-moving progress. Even though she’s still dressed up in an outfit that’s entirely impractical for fighting, complete with heels, no support for her chest, and thigh-high stockings.
Video games, despite the best efforts of trollwads that want to scream about the mere idea that a woman might be involved with a game at some point during production, are slowly growing up. The stuff that was de rigeur a few years ago just isn’t acceptable any longer. But you wouldn’t know any of that by looking at fighting games, which seem to be stuck back in their popular heyday of the mid-90s. The question is why? Why are we at a point when the game industry as a whole seems to be growing up, but fighting games haven’t actually gotten any better?
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 