Blog FeedJust Tell Me It’s Human
As you can see over in our “Bits and Pieces” section, Valve released a new version of the Counter-Strike bot for Counter-Strike: Source. While broadband users could probably care less, players still on a 56k modem can enjoy a lag free experience. I also look forward to using these bots in future maps I am making for the source engine. Using bots to test a map is much easier than trying to get a server up running a ½ finished map and getting your friends to actually play for period of time.
So anyway, briefly after hearing the news I was checking some web comics I have bookmarked and came upon this lovely one from Penny Arcade. It is pretty damn humorous but it got me thinking of what makes an online experience in action games. Ever since Unreal Tournament computer controlled opponents have been hard to tell apart from a human player in terms of in-game performance. If you took away the call signs of bots ( 0 ping on scoreboard, small assortment of phrases, constant use of radio comments) you could play in a whole server of bots and think they were quiet humans.
So why do people prefer playing these games with humans? Much as the comic muses it is highly possible to create a bit more socially robust bot to mimic the standard online player perfectly (and a wide variety of personalities as well). In action games social interaction is kept to a minimum and no real coherent conversations are carried on too long. But if you ask players (aside from connection reasons) who they would rather play against a good majority would say real people. One would think that if the game experience is identical players would be rather indifferent.
To me it seems like just “knowing” that the other players are human is what people are really after. Even when the social climate is kept to a minimum a “good job” from a robot just doesn’t seem to mean as much as a “good job” from a real human. So say, hypothetically, someone releases a game that “fakes” online play. Now, ignoring players trying to get on the same server with friends, this could fool a lot of people for an amount of time. Would these players be angry upon finding out that it was the computer the whole time? Would the victories not be as sweet?
When I play World of Warcraft the opposing sides in player vs player combat cannot talk to each other. In the game world a fight between you and a computer controlled monster and a fight between you and a player are very similar in both game mechanics as well as social interaction. But whenever I go to attack another player my heart rate increases a little. There is added excitement to it for some reason. Players want to know that their actions in the game world affect someone else besides themselves. I myself never really got too heavily into gaming until online play became possible. Gaming itself really exploded into the mainstream once online took off.
So this brings into question the eventual creation of robot that plays in our world. Whenever we do create a robotic human that is indistinguishable from a real human, will anyone accept it? Does a conversation with an android mean anything? Or is it just wasted time? Maybe I’ve been watching too much Ghost in the Shell…
20th January | Reply
I think you really have to differentiate between a bot in a game, a 1v1 in WoW and a robot IRL.
A bot in a game doesnt think. As per your example, a GG from a bot doesnt mean this bot thinks you did something right. A GG from a bot means some parameters matched up, and something like localMessage(”gg”); comes out. A GG from a player on the other hand does mean something, at least if this player means something to you.
A 1v1 in WoW is imo very different from fighting against a mob. Mob AI in WoW is pretty simple. this has to be for the game to be playable, but the same spell combo will always work on a certain mob. Human opponents are just much, much tougher opponents (both in skills and stats like health, etc).
A robot IRL would not be considered different (at least not by me) if this robot is truly sentient. Note, I’m not talking about something that looks sentient on the outside, but something that really is as sentient as a normal human. If its just a robot who responds to impulses from the outside, then yeah it would be considered ‘less’ than a normal human being.
Now why people like to play against humans is the competition. Its also part of why more guys play games than girls. Guys are much more competitive. We like to somehow beat someone else at a task, be superior over another. Being superior to a bot doesnt mean anything because, hey its just a computer program. Also, something I noticed in UT2004, humans provide, as advanced as the UT2004 AI is, a much more interesting opponent. In many cases not a better one (bots are generally much more accurate), but one less predictable. The biggest ‘buzz’ I think is just the feeling of superiority if you win a game, and knowing/thinking that other people know you’re superior to them. If you beat a pc, it will not experience any feelings because of this (and thats a good thing).
It may sound stupid (after all you dont know these people, and in the grand scheme of things it doesnt matter if you won a game of virtual rocket-tag), but that is I think how it works.
On a sidenote, I think its obvious that in team games its often more fun to play with a human team than with bots, provided you can work together well. I know I would chose Ventrilo’d RvS over singleplayer RvS with bots any day! (and not just for the gay jokes)
20th January | Reply
To be fair, I generally prefer playing against bots that I do playing people, mostly for the following reasons:
1. I suck. A few people here can testify to this fact and losing to a bot is much less embarrassing
2. No Internet connection. You can play on the move or when your Internet connection is on the fritz. Zero ping is also pretty nice…
3. No people. Many of the matches that I’ve played have involved people that I expect I’d dislike greatly in real-life, so I refuse to spend any virtual time with them as well.
What is nice about playing someone else is that they’ll sometimes do stuff that a bot would never do (usually acts of amazing stupidity).
When it comes to multiplayer, I tend to favour the console experience of playing around a tv on the sofa. UT and that sort of thing are fun but nothing yet has beaten playing Goldeneye on the N64 at university with Proximity Mines. The Street Fighter 2 tournaments we used to run were a lot of fun as well…
21st January | Reply
I think both humans and bots have their pros and cons. Humans I like to play with because they are indeed human - interaction with them can be more fun and make for a more fulfilling gaming experience. It is indeed nice to know that when I load up UT2004 (or at least the demo, when there used to be servers for it), I can be on the top half of the scoreboard, and have others undoubtably think “He’s a pretty decent player”.
On the other hand, playing with bots means I don’t need to turn voicecom off because of all the chipmunk voices swearing their heads off, and bots also don’t spam with text chat either. It also means that if my PC is running slow, the bots don’t have a big advantage - they’re powered by my CPU, so they’ll run as slow as it does. It’s quick and easy to set up and I can leave the game whenever I need to without feeling like I’m missing out on anything.
I really only game with other humans when the social interaction is better, like at a LAN event. There you get the benefits of PCs (the better platform) the benefits of consoles (having your friends there with you), no lag, and no smacktards.
22nd January | Reply
Well, now my new PC seems to be stable I loaded up CS:Source and played with the bots. It now runs well with the new processor, though I think my video card might be strained a bit, not sure. I can now see why the CS:S bots made you think to write this article - the interaction between them and you, and between themselves, is quite impressive. That is, at least, compared to original CS’s bot.
If I can make sure things will stay stable, I may get back into playing online as well.
27th January | Reply
JohnDoe wrote:
“I know I would chose Ventrilo’d RvS over singleplayer RvS with bots any day! (and not just for the gay jokes)”
Dude, you know the gay jokes are the best part of Ventrillo gaming.
4th February | Reply
I think the major advantage of playing with humans is teamwork.
I mean, look at Battlefield. The bots are fair enough opponents, they drive the vehicles and shoot straight. But trying to coordinate teamwork with a bot is impossible.
Then you have the flip side of the coin also. In UT2004, if you tell a bot to stay somewhere it will. Good luck getting a human to do the same.