Poll #34: 12/11/02 - 01/06/03


What Would You Fix?
What game genre most needs better game AI? [229 votes total]

The real-time strategy game genre--AIs there haven't achieved anything new in years. (40) 17%
The first-person shooter genre--perfect aim is not AI. (25) 11%
Sports games--they wouldn't qualify as rookies. (11) 5%
Fighting games--quadruple combos and hidden moves do not an AI make. (7) 3%
Turn-based strategy games--all that CPU and that's the best move you could make?!? (15) 7%
Hunting games--even Bambi could do better. (3) 1%
Role playing games--it would be nice to see some NPCs that actually act like real people. (57) 25%
Simulations--okay, you can fly a plane but "tally-ho's" are not innovative combat techniques. (6) 3%
They all need work...no one genre stands out as far as I'm concerned. (61) 27%
Beats me--I don't play games. (4) 2%

Steve's Comments: Wow. Pop up the poll from 2000 and compare those results.

I wouldn't have guessed that so many genres would rate nearly the same as they did two years ago, much less identically. Respondents have exactly the same opinions of fully five of the eigt genres provided, and it's clear that the difference in sprots games and fighting games has moved over to the RPG realm. Amazing.

To be honest, I'd expected the RTS genre to be down just because it seems as if fewer folks are playing those types of games these days. FPS and RPGs are where I expcted big gains but honestly it wasn't that much of a difference.

I'd guess the big lesson here is, again, that players want all of their games to provide better AI and that their overall opinion of game AI hasn't really changed that much from two years ago. Interesting.

And to those 2% who don't play games...okay.