all we need is AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the long pole in the tent of games. Those that play all the time (*cough* my son) lament the “stupidity” of NPCs, but accept it as part of the package. One reason for the popularity of multi-player games is the fact that people aren’t as stupid as AI, so you get a richer experience. We do a fair amount of AI work, and even with the best of the best, you still can really only get a system smart within a pretty narrow slice. Complicating things are some tech companies (*cough* alphabet) are swallowing up AI and comp sic grads/teams in toto from academia. The real problem with that is that company-driven research will invariably end up skewed towards a bottom line – for that company. And advances won’t get published and go towards broader innovation. Survival of the fittest, or perhaps more accurately, the biggest.