In the future of games, which would you prefer?

I want those games that make me feel like a Super Saiyen..

Well surely A.I that is indistinguishable from reality could create their own graphics?

Story, I guess.

Neither, what I want is better hardware for those games, so that developers can pull off larger scale and greater detail in their games.

A.I. F

I don't want either of these things.

grafix

If I had to decide between those two things only, definitely A.I. Oh my god, that'd just be the coolest thing.

We'll have the latter in about ten years, and the AI won't be much farther away than that.

What I really want in the future are games that we in the present would look at and be like, "Thoae are games?! Ridiculous!"

Graphics, because that will probably be what influences cutscenes/story more. That's far more what I'm interested in when it comes to games, as opposed to just basic gameplay. Even if the AI gets better, it still won't be the thing that keeps me around.

I would rather have super advanced A.I..

AI, no question about that. I've played old games and 3DS games more this year than AAA games, and I just don't care. I mean, good graphics are nice and can enhance the experience, but they are far from the most important part of a game.

But better AI could have made Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite more dynamic and realistic, more so than any bump of graphics could. Not that she isn't impressive as it is, but there's obvious room for improvement. Better AI could have made Skyrim's characters vastly more dynamic and entertaining to play alongside.

See, pretty isn't going to do much for you in any department, other than wow the people that play it that year. If something like Planescape Torment can still be held up as one of, if not the, best stories in video games, then graphics just aren't going to cut it.

If this were actually some sort of contest, though (graphics vs AI), I don't think that AI would win unfortunately. How long has it been since FEAR? And FEAR still has better AI than any other game released after it? The only other games that really stand out to me in terms of AI are Rage and Halo Reach, and neither is actually as good as FEAR's.

I couldn't stand Bioshock 1, so I had no interest in Infinite. Also, I'm not a fan of "dynamic storytelling", aka, "let's just make them talk and do stuff while you're running around". I prefer cutscenes, so that just doesn't interest me. And I didn't enjoy Oblivion at all, so I didn't play Skyrim. Everything I've seen of it looks incredibly boring. Even if the AI was better, I still think the presentation of the story is absolutely poor. And sure, great stories can obviously be told with unimpressive graphics, but having access to more realistic facial animation/body animation, as well as more detail in models/environment/faces, will help sell certain types of stories way better than they had before. Take The Last of Us, for example. I'm sure that game wouldn't be nearly as impressive if the characters weren't as expressive as they are(though I have a TON of problems with the game itself).

FEAR does have good AI, but honestly, I'd rather play Condemned over it any day of the week. Why? Better story, better told. Gameplay is fun for a bit, but it gets old after a while. However, great stories, as you see with movies and books, last a good long while.

I can understand why people would want the increase in AI, and that's great and I'm totally cool with it, it's just that for me personally, I would find it to be kind of a waste. For where I'm at in my gaming life right now, big, immersive gameplay is not what I'm after. I just want a good story. And while there are certainly stories that can be done with less, having the option for more powerful visuals could potentially bring about different storytelling techniques, as well as different stories altogether.

I would want the AI simply because you could have really flexible stories and emergent gameplay. Although, I would guess we would not get real AI in a game, it's not worth it for system resources. But we could see AI-like Expert System that can hold conversations, form opinions, and even create unique situations as free agents in the game world.

The other thing about AI is that we don't need true AI, we just need expert system that are good a chattering about a few subjects. a The AI need only understand questions or smoothly steer conversations back to what it knows and the game at hand, and also function in the game world believable. A soldier AI needs to act and talk like a soldier. That means act like a soldier in battle, a soldier on a weekend pass, or a soldier chewing the fat over chow in a fox hole.

The above is 100x more complex than what we call 'in game AI' today, but the above is almost functional in the lab setting now. The combination of several AI projects already in labs could in less than ten years give us the above. If I were EA or Activision I would be hiring graduate students from MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Illinois or a few others to develop flexible game AI. Games will need special AI and it is probably better to make it for games instead of relying on an AI made for phone centers or hospitals.

AI is definitely way way higher on the list than graphics. While truly realistic graphics would be impressive, it's ultimately nothing more than a cosmetic achievement. Good AI however can drastically and fundamentally change how a game is played. It's not really a contest.

Another way to look at is that realistic graphics need realistic AI first to be truly believable.

To be honest I'm not sure "real" AI necessarily makes games better. Sure, it would be great for multiplayer style games, but there are plenty of other gameplay experiences that rely on the AI being somewhat predictable. Great AI is good for an intense challenging experience, but I don't want all my games to be like that.

@ares42: That's rather close-minded if you think that's all AI can do. Once we get to the point where AI can realistically "think" and act that would be HUGE for RPGs.

Realistic graphics just sounds like the ultimate nightmare of cost and asset generation being so impractical that it while "possible" is completely irrelevant. The second is probably more of a profound achievement that is going to extend beyond games into everything. The realistic version of the AI goal though is better semantic AI that can essentially pass the Turing test without being this mega-robust thing.

Games getting less expensive to make, interchangeability in engine and dev tools, and a robust international market are what I want out of the future in terms of games. Oh and better standardized labor practices/policies that prevents a lot of people from fall through the cracks in over-working with no benefit to anyone. Related to that, getting over the "you're lucky to be working in this industry kid" and "you only matter if you make it to the end" justifying the same over-working habits and lack of company benefits for vacations and parental leave.

@falserelic: that's the funniest thing i've seen all day, thank you :)

@zeik: I didn't say that's all it can do. I agree that it would probably be great for the presentation of RPGs, but if it bled into the gameplay most RPGs would require some serious redesign to not become incredibly frustrating experiences. Could you imagine fighting a dragon in Skyrim if it had real AI ? It would be completely impossible, or at best it would force everyone to play a very specific style.

@ares42: I would hope by that point we'd have gameplay that's a hell of a lot better than what Skyrim offers. Giving the player more control and options in the world would make intelligent AI much less impossible.

In most cases they probably would put some reigns on the AI though, so it behaves in some kind of predictable manner.

@zeik: That was pretty much point. By implementing real AI you would see a ton of gameplay experiences getting out-dated as they just don't work that way. Hopefully some would evolve, but most of them would probably start leaning towards what we already see in multiplayer games as those are already proven concepts that work with "intelligence" on both sides. It could just as easily homogenise games rather than making them more diverse.

Of course, noone says that every game has to have real AI and it would be great for the games that it serves, but I'd say it's just as much of a rabbit chase as real graphics.

On behalf of the community I'd like to thank you for there gifs, you and @truthtellah post the best shit I've seen.

But this one tops them all, I can't stop looking at it!

A.I. Have the console figure out what castle do I wanna roam through today based on how bored my face looks. So that means having the console talk to me, and figuring out what community picks have gotten big in the past week, and throw surprises in my way so I have fun.

@ares42: I think our game industry right now proves that most gameplay experiences don't just go away. There will always be people who still like how those old games play so there will always be those who will make them, even if they aren't in AAA games. Even if/when we get to that point with AI I'm quite sure that will be plenty that will choose not to fully utilize it, depending on the type of game that is being made. But even if there's only like two or three franchises that truly utilize it, that's two or three franchises that will provide new experiences in gaming.

I would much rather have advanced AI. By then we'll all be Video Game masters that need a fitting challenge.

Currently, AI seems almost indistinguishable from RNG so there might be quite a long way to go there.

I'd like a framerate indistinguishable from reality.

But AI still does a whole lot for presentation, if only because characters walk around and move in more believable ways. Regardless of whether you liked Bioshock or Infinite, it's still a good example of my point.

The strengths of video games lie in what make them special, the interactive part. You say that great stories last longer, but to that I tell you that Doom is still one of the best first person shooters ever made, more mechanically sound than almost every shooter released since. They both have a hell of a lot of staying power, but you can get great stories from movies and books. Better than the ones in video games, for that matter. Something has to be keeping you interested in games or you would have moved on. What is that? Are you really telling me that the promise of slightly better graphics are keeping you interested in these cheesy, pulp-ish sci-fi and fantasy stories? Or do you honestly get something from the participation in these stories, i.e. the part where you're interacting with them? Realistic AI would do a hell of a lot for the latter. Graphics aren't going to do a single thing to fix the generally bad writing and cheesy stories of the former.

By "games", I assume you mean sex simulators, in which case I'd want better graphics. Anything with vaguely realistic AI wouldn't go to bed with me.

I don't want pure reality in games, I want fantasy. I want AI to be stupid, I want graphics to look less than real. If gaming got to the point where it was 1:1 with reality, nothing good will come of it. Hopefully I won't live to see that happen

I should state that I'm in no way a graphics whore or anything like that, despite if I sound like that or not. Crap, I still think Chrono Trigger is probably the best JRPG ever made, and a close second for me would be FFVIII(I don't know why, it just clicks with me). And as for the whole "unique to games" thing, I do indeed enjoy games for some of the interaction, but I don't need it to be that in depth. I love crap like Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophecy, or even just making choices in anything from Mass Effect to inFamous. That alone is enough to separate games from movies for me. And when I was younger, I did really enjoy the gameplay, but now, it just isn't as important to me. I enjoy playing them alright, but honestly, I turn games down to their easiest level or outright use codes when I play them now. Mass Effect 3 is a perfect example. I played it on the "Story" mode, which let me blitz through the combat. Yet, I still got to make all the choices and participate in the story in that fashion. That's the type of interaction I truly enjoy. I just like experiencing them. Better AI will mainly lead to more of a challenge, which I am not at all interested in. Sure, it'd be cool to not have worthless teammate AI, but I'd rather have the better presentation potential.

I guess in some ways that I'm a kind of gamer that isn't that popular right now. I love QTEs, long cutscenes, and railroaded, short experiences. I don't like games that take 40+ hours to get through, or games that just use ambiance/background details to tell their story, or just throw me out into a kind of crappy story but with a gigantic world that I can "live" in(such as Skyrim). That's why I haven't been able to get through Dragon's Dogma(though the combat is well done).

And truth be told, I feel the thing about "games shouldn't be like movies" isn't a fair argument. Sure, they may use similar techniques, but those universes aren't going to exist in books or movies for the most part. It's the universes that fascinate me. Why do you think video game movies always have so much trouble? It's because people just don't know how to tell those stories outside of the games. As evidenced by my avatar, I love Metal Gear. Despite their efforts, I doubt they will ever get the movie off the ground, and even if they do, it'll probably be heavily compromised. Therefore, the games are how I enjoy them. The same goes for Mass Effect, or Dead Space, or Devil May Cry, or Kingdom Hearts, or Saints Row, or whatever random series I love. I enjoy these universes, and the games are the only way to do so without suffering serious compromises within the stories. Therefore, that's why I play them.

Again, I'm not saying I'm "right" or anything like that, this is just where I am now in my gaming life.

Realistic art styles are boring as shit. Better AI could be really cool though.

FuuuuUUUUuuck graphics.

If you have A.I., you could literally have a game that is making itself up as it goes along and endlessly has new, different things to show you, as opposed to games nowadays that, at best, have a mish-mash of premade components that are randomly getting thrown together, or thrown together by some sort of algorithm.

Ai. I could play a real game of DnD any time I wanted whenever! Just fire up the DM Ai and throw in a mix of my favourite "people" ai routes and have at it. Not to mention all the hot online sex chat you could do with it.

All I want is games that have an awesome story, have an big ass open world and many things to do in it, and fun gameplay(fun doesnt have to mean challenging) by fun I mean something that makes me feel like a badass(for example like in Dishonored with all the powers, etc.). But I guess I am, especially in this gen of gaming, asking WAY too much. Most games will rather try to impress people with pointless "competitive" shooting and launching killstreaks that are stupidly easy to obtain and make you camp and play like a douche, well I dont think I need to go on further...

Easy. AI. It's all about that gameplay

Realistic Graphics will come way sooner than Realistic AI... I don't think that level of AI will come during our lifetimes so I'm going with graphics :)

Would love Realistic AI. But not in every game. Shooters mostly and then just used for NPCs and such in other games. I'd hate it if every enemy in every game was like a real person.

Advanced AI for me. Except if that did happen it would probably be a bigger problem since that would be scary as fuck having such an advanced AI in your console .

Relistic graphics are not something I care about. it will just be uncanny without that ai/realistic animation. Game graphics are in a good place now.

I don't come to video games for reality.

I would take the better graphics, but I would rather they don't use that power on realistic stuff. Actually, if graphics got to that point than games would be so expensive to develop that the only publishers who would be able to utilize visuals of that scale would be companies like Activision or EA... So maybe AI. But then again, I don't want man to be capable of creating something that intelligent. Damn it.