Another grab bag of topics this week as Gareth & James discuss early access games. The failures, the successes, and how they’re changing the industry. From Minecraft to Project Zomboid, Scale, Tangiers and the Forest, we examine how early access has changed the economics of indie game production, for good and ill.

We also take a bite out of the poisoned apple of open world games. What makes them compelling? How have they developed? What does procedural generation hold in store for ‘fans of the genre’? Have open world games become stale? And most importantly, how can they be fixed?

https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/threat-detection-episode-25.mp3

Download: Episode 25

What is Threat Detection?

Threat Detection is a videogame chat show on Radiomade.ie. Each week, hosts Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal take an hour or two to tear apart a videogame topic, like character, horror, or sex.

Gareth & James get together in the first Threat Detection for a while for a general chat about games. They talk about classic videogame publications like PC Gamer, C&VG and EGM, as well as the revival of classic games on sites like Good Old Games.

https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/threat-detection-episode-24.mp3

Download: Episode 24

What is Threat Detection?

Threat Detection is a videogame chat show on Radiomade.ie. Each week, hosts Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal take an hour or two to tear apart a videogame topic, like character, horror, or sex.

What’s Threat Detection?

Threat Detection is a lively, smart, frequently funny and always irreverent videogame chat show on Radiomade.ie. Each week, hosts Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal take an hour or two to tear apart a videogame topic, like character, horror, or sex.

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 23

In the second part of our A.I. in games double bill, we focus on the companion character of ‘Ellie’ in ‘The Last Of Us’, perhaps the greatest accomplishment in videogame A.I.

What’s Threat Detection?

Threat Detection is a lively, smart, frequently funny and always irreverent videogame chat show on Radiomade.ie. Each week, hosts Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal take an hour or two to tear apart a videogame topic, like character, horror, or sex.

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 22

Why is artificial intelligence hard?

Primarily because we don’t really understand human intelligence. Especially as applied to areas like language and creativity. There’s a mysterious middle-ground between our understanding of what’s happening at a high level (cognitive processes) and low level (individual neuronal signalling). For example, neuroscientists still don’t know for certain whether ideas are distributed (hebbian cell assemblies) or located in individual neuronal cortices.

Traditional research in AI seeks to recreate general intelligence. Projects such as MIT’s Kismet* attempt to create an AI that can learn and interact socially as well as exhibit emotions. At time of writing, MIT is working on developing an embodied AI with the faculties of a young child, a long term project yet to bear fruit.

Natural Intelligence

Natural intelligence is situated, physiologically, socially and environmentally. Evolved adaptive intelligence makes sense only in the context of what biologists call ‘the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness’. In other words, the environment it evolved to suit. Biologist Herbert Simon famously compared intelligence to the blade of a scissor, fitting into the environment it had evolved to process.

Natural intelligence is based on multi-level, dynamic, evolved biological systems. Natural selection applying at the level of the gene, the cell, the biological system, the organ, the individual, the group, the species. Not to mention sexual selection at the individual level.

For smart AI, you need a smart AIE (artificially intelligent environment). What does a smart environment look like? It has properties like mass, friction, location in space. It matches the capacities of it’s AI. It has a cohesive design that fits the affordances of the game universe.

But that’s not all there is to simulating intelligence. What about collective (socially situated intelligence)? AI that communicates – not merely its perception but what it has learned, remembered and predicted. This is how culture develops (even ants have culture by this definition) – even protozoa have (genetically acquired) learning.

Evolving Artificial Intelligence

Genetic algorithms will one day give us smarter game AI. But current progress is incredibly primitive. Today, evolutionary algorithms are sometimes used for procedural level generation or modelling the physical behaviour of characters. Developing genetic algorithms is hard. It requires perfectly specifying a problem space and its attendant fitness function (how to figure out if the problem has been solved). These must be manually implemented for each parameter of every aspect of behaviour required (not to mention play tested, balanced etc).

Emergent gameplay is fun – but only some kinds of emergent gameplay. If an AI fails too stupidly, it’s merely irritating. By contrast if an AI has adapted too well (to a problem space, or the players behaviour behaviour) it’s not fun either! Easily thrashing the player. Another wrinkle is the difficulty of defining ‘fun’ as a fitness function.

Instead, today’s game AI is provided by manually encoding known algorithms. We create problem solving heuristic systems interact in at best a quasi-non-deterministic manner. For example the famous A* Search algorithm for bot pathing. A variety of types of ‘weak AI’ have been developed which enable relatively autonomous decision making in bots and other in-game agents. Simple reflex agents, that act based on perception (no learning or previous knowledge required) – IF I see you, THEN I shoot! Goal based agents – that perceive their environment and act based on goals, with the capacity of learning from whats effective. Utility based agents, similar to goal based agents, but with the added capacity of evaluating states of the world for desirability. Expert systems: simple decision trees, based on pre-existing knowledge, sometimes capable of inferring based on formalised abstractions of existing knowledge. One example of this is Wolfram alpha – an expert system with natural language processing and many curated databases (which helps to power Siri and Google Now).

AI in Games

Early developments involved defined ruleset games in simple universe. The worlds of boardgames like checkers and chess. Since the 1950s chess programmes have been able to regularly beat a majority of non-expert players. Todays home programmes regularly defeat grandmasters. However in some games, like the ancient Chinese game ‘Go’, humans still have the upper hand.

Classic experiments in videogame intelligence include Steve Grand’s ‘Creatures’ series, which simulated intelligence at multiple levels – genetic, classical (pavlovian) and operant conditioning.

What’s Threat Detection?

Threat Detection is a lively, smart, frequently funny and always irreverent videogame chat show on Radiomade.ie. Each week, hosts Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal take an hour or two to tear apart a videogame topic, like character, horror, or sex.

This week – E3, the worlds largest videogame conference

Started in 1995. The first E3 was conceived by IDG’s Infotainment World and co-founded by the Interactive Digital Software Association (now the Entertainment Software Association). It coincided with the start of a new generation of consoles, with the release of the Sega Saturn, and the announcements of upcoming releases of the PlayStation, Virtual Boy and Neo-Geo CD.

Nothing short of fabulous opera being performed by seriously amateur public representatives and corporate heads of the great movers and shakers of the video game industry. Over the last ten years the press conference has grown and moved with the growing profits of the video game business, jumping from Los Angeles convention center, Tokyo in 1996.

What does E3 say about the state of the industry industry?

With the prevalence of bullshots, ‘target renders’ and broken releases – e.g.: WatchDogs, Battlefied 4 – can we trust anything we see?

What are our hopes for the near future of gaming?

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 21

The Best of E3

New Ass Creed – co-op looks incredible, but who will play like this. Will the game’s already low bar difficulty be even more simplified.

HD Zelda on Wii U

Tried to play down any of the new footage – what little there was. Instead focusing on a new focus to freedom of gameplay and an open world to support it.

Alien isolation
Human and android enemies too.

Far cry 4
Yawn, more UBI open world. UBI are the hollywood studio of videogames.

Create a ‘mythic’ template, OTT villain, with story ‘beats’, test in the market, wax rinse repeat. Although, to be fair, co-op looks fun – footage shows a lot of gameplay potential. Multiple ways to approach mission objective, aspects of the environment to play against your enemy. Nice and steady frame rate to keep up to your fast paced shooting and interactive movements.

Mirrors Edge 2 – looks identical to ME2 – seems very early in development.

Star Wars Battlefront

The Last Guardian – MIA but apparently not cancelled

A lot of pre-alpha footage and barely explored concepts but besides some HDified classics there are few big ips coming out this year. Destiny is excused, all hail Destiny.

Tomb Raider Reboot Sequel

The Division – promises incredible co-op, what chance it will deliver.

Rainbow Six – Siege

– co-op, destructible scenery, blockades etc – learning from rust,Battlefield
– could have done more with planning stage (second device etc), but core gameplay looks fantastic (first PC multiplayer I ever played)
– can they fix janky shooting too?

H1Z1 – looks rubbish thus far.

Grim Fandango remake for PS4 / Vita
– from Doublefine!!!!

No Man’s Sky Gameplay (please dont’ make it PS4 exclusive)
– space Dinosaurs, planet to planet traversal

– this is what happens when the demo scene make a game
– dodgy interview, glosses over details such as instancing, interaction, gameplay
– another interview

Uncharted 4 ‘Thief’s End’ – 2015 / PS4

(Pretty Teaser tells us nothing, grimdark tone)

GTA 5 – nextgen and PC – improved lighting
If they did this for Skyrim with the lighting mods, now that would shift consoles

Splatoon
First interesting new Nintendo first party IP in a decade Splatoon –
=> back in the 16 bit era, each platform holder would constantly float ‘lesser’ potential series (e.g.: Nights) these days Nintendo seems content to pump out sequels and casual games, what was the last real new IP pikmin?
=> interesting press coverage – Time Magazine, Forbes. Nintendo has name brand recognition far outweighing their sales or contemporary influence

Interesting “indies”

Inside – very limbo like 2d sidescrolling stealth puzzler

Valiant Hearts – WW1 Dog based? heartbreaking trailer //maudlin trailer// – not really an indie, coming from Ubisoft Montpellier (Rayman / Zombie U / Beyond Good and evil team)

Cuphead – perfect recreation of 30s animation in a platformer

Hotline Miami 2 level editor

Indie3 – independent indie games at E3.

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 20

Does character matter?
A vessel for the player to travel through the story.
An enigma in his/her self.
Often times an empty receptacle for containing player projections.

How can it be conveyed in interactive media?

Characters can often be more than their general perspective of first and third person perspective.

Often times the perspective of the character is taken advantage of to better inform a kind of meta narrative or even just to take a more focused and fixed look on the game’s themes (a la Half Life)

Characters can also be unsculpted mounds of marble for the player to not only mold to their tastes but also to have the availability to shift the game engine’s choice of perspective between first and third person.

Will you be the stabby stabby guy, the hammering Yorkshire madman or a resigned and fashionable wizard who flames his enemies.
Distance between player and manipulable character is drastically shortened. This enhances the likelihood of the player embodying his character. They are verbs of the player’s whim and the supplementary background.

On this second part of our discussion of sex in videogames, we delve into gender, sexuality, and the auld ride in mainstream and indie videogames. How have videogames historically dealt with sex? Is it possible for such a mainstream medium to deal with sex in an adult way? Do we even want sex in our games? And finally, has a videogame ever been ‘sexy’?

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 19

On this episode of our weekly videogame show Gareth & James discuss the steamy topic of sex in videogames. We delve into gender, sexuality, and the auld ride in mainstream and indie videogames. How have videogames historically dealt with sex? Is it possible for such a mainstream medium to deal with sex in an adult way? Do we even want sex in our games? And finally, has a videogame ever been ‘sexy’?

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 18

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 17

Continuing from last weeks show, we chat about horror in video games. How does video game horror differ from movie horror, and how we can be horrified, now that we are so jaded.

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 16

In this weeks ‘very special episode’ of Threat Detection, we discuss horror in videogames. We touch on the history of horror games from ‘Alone in the Dark’ to ‘Amnesia A Machine for Pigs’. We talk about how the mechanics of horror are evolving, and how they’ll change now that VR is around the horror. Finally we explore the potential for horror games that transcend our jaded cynicism, and make us truly afraid.

BUT WAIT JUST ONE SECOND!

We’re also running a competition! We have two tickets each to give away to Gamecraft game jams in Dublin (17th / 18th May) & Galway (10th May). If the idea of working on a brand new game in a few short hours surrounded by fellow geeks sounds appealing, respond in the comments for your chance to win free tickets!

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 15

1) Super Bunny Hop reports VAC bans affecting Dark Souls 2
– vac bans for using graphics enhancing hook file

2) Onion AV club running a series of articles on empty spaces in games
World of Warcraft
Myst and Riven

3) More privilege theory applied to gaming