Accessibility in AI Design

 

As game AI advances, AI designers must consider how to bring their new gameplay to larger and larger audiences. I'll break down common high level requirements for accessibility, such as streamlined player feedback and the use of drama, pacing & difficulty together, and apply them to different AI design problems in different genres.

 

Under the hood, though, even the choices we make modeling our AI can affect accessibility and how easily players can grasp and interact with our simulations. I'll take a look at ways we can model more complex simulations to be easily understood without sacrificing depth.

 

Making games accessible isn't the same as dumbing them down, but as we move forward with game AI we have to consider how the complexity we are creating is communicated and understood by players, in order successfully innovative with game AI.

 

Borut Pfeifer is an independent game designer and programmer. With over 11 years of experience making games, he's worked at companies like Radical Entertainment, Sony Online Entertainment, and Electronic Arts. At EA he was lead AI programmer on a game in development with Steven Spielberg. His published credits include Scarface: The World Is Yours (on Playstation 2, Xbox, and PC) and Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom (a launch title for the Playstation 3).
 
He has written a wide variety of game development articles on programming, design, and business, in books like the Game Programming Gems series, Secrets of the Game Business, and industry websites like Gamasutra. He has also taught technical game design at the Vancouver Film School.
 
He is currently working on two games. The first to release is in co-development with Haunted Temple Studios, called Skulls of the Shogun, a strategy game in a set in an eerie, animated world of dead samurai. The second is The Unconcerned, a strategy roleplaying game set in Iran during the 2009 post-election riots, which attempts to combine engaging gameplay with deeper social themes.