Poll #15: 8/03/00 - 9/01/00


The winner of the 2000 AI Survivor Poll is...Enemy Nations! Yes, the RTS game EN was selected as having the best overall AI by beating out 9 of its peers in what turned out to be one of the most ruthless polls ever conducted on this site. There were 167 votes in total. The final results:

Unreal Voted off in Week One by 16% of respondents
Age of Empires/Age of Empires II Voted off in Week One by 13% of respondents
Quake Team Fortress Voted off in Week Two by 26% of respondents
Half-Life Voted off in Week Two by 19% of respondents
The Sims Voted off in Week Two by 19% of respondents
Creatures Voted off in Week Three by 32% of respondents
Thief/Thief II Voted off in Week Three by 27% of respondents
Alpha Centauri Voted off in Week Four by 38% of respondents
Dark Reign/Dark Reign II Voted off in Week Four by 34% of respondents
Enemy Nations The AI Survivor Winner, with 27% of respondents voting to pitch it at the end of Week Four

Steve's Comments: Wow...what a contest. What started as a lark turned into one of the most interesting polls we've ever put up.

In some ways I'm surprised by the winner. Not that Enemy Nations isn't a great game--it is--but that an RTS game won out over so many other games whose AI had been lauded by many. I very much expected the "pure AI" style games such as Creatures and The Sims to have done better than they did. One participant opined that EN won not so much because its AI was better than other games than the fact that fewer people had played it and so didn't have an opinion. Interesting point; not sure how to handle such things if we do a similar poll in the future, but it's a valid point nonetheless.

At any rate, congratulations are in order to Eric Dybsand, the developer of the EN AI. And yes, while Eric is a personal friend of mine that had nothing to do with the results...he won this one fair and square.

I'd love suggestions for what games should go on a future version of this polls, as well as ideas on how to balance well-known games against not-so- well-known games. If you have any ideas on that, please feel free to email me.