AI Sliders: Questionable Intelligence

Not too long ago I ran across a sports developer I know eating lunch at Wendy's. After chatting about what games we were playing, and in between mouthfuls of the double Baconator combo I was eating, we talked about AI sliders in sports games. You know, those toggles in the options menu that supposedly let you customize the computer AI so guys act as dumb or smart as you want.

In the course of our conversation, the developer told me that he remembers a time in his development days at an unnamable EA Sports studio where some AI sliders didn't even work! They were there for the player to fool around with, but the sliders themselves weren't connected to anything under the hood. While he pointed out that this was something he knew had happened in the past, and not necessarily recently, his statement didn't surprise me in the least. I've always been a little suspicious when it comes to the effectiveness of AI sliders (beyond the standard alterable difficulty setting) in any game – not just EA Sports ones – and it got me thinking about whether they work at all.

I contacted both EA Sports and 2K Sports about their AI sliders, and while (not surprisingly) both swore up and down that their sliders work and aren't just there for show, there's no doubt that controlling a game's AI isn't as easy as just twisting a few knobs. I asked Erick Boenisch, lead feature designer for the NBA 2K series, if he knew of times where AI sliders in a game didn't work, and he was as curious as I was. "I've played sports games all my life," he told me, "and I've seen that numerous time where in my head I think that to be true, but I really don't have any defining evidence."

Both Boesnich and Steve Chiang, the senior vice president & group GM for EA Sports, told me that part of the problem regarding AI is based on perception. Sometimes the slider you move doesn't perform the way you expect it to or may not manifest itself in a clear way. While this sounds like a fault of the game menu because it doesn't communicate correctly to the player, tweaking a game's AI rarely generates a clear-cut cause-effect experience. "Some have the effect the developer intended; some might do other things." said Boenisch.

An AI slider might be tied to a players attributes and how that player reacts in a certain game situation above and beyond the slider itself. For instance, Boesnich points out that the NBA's double team slider first checks the defensive player's attributes (which assess the offensive threat at hand) before double teaming a player. If the defensive player is smart enough not to deem a certain player a threat, it will override the double team slider.

Chiang said that there can be gaps in perception because each slider is its own beast. "There isn’t a 'one-size fits all' formula for each slider, as each differs based on what in-game calculation it’s modifying. Depending on the slider, an adjustment of a few ticks could represent a very small percentage, while in others it could be quite drastic. Fine tuning is entirely possible, but the perception of the change by the gamer can be subjective."

Boesnisch says developers can run into problems when an AI slider from a past game might have been tied to a particular feature that has subsequently been dropped from the franchise, even though the slider itself remains. Other times a slider can be too complicated for its own good. "Each slider has a very specific part of the AI code that it goes and checks," Boesnisch explains regarding his own NBA 2K series. "We don't develop sliders that cross over each other. That can get you in trouble. You have to be really careful in designing those so that one slider doesn't step over the toes of another."

Is questionable AI the fault of the developers or somehow a testament to the complexity of human behavior which computers cannot yet replicate? I tend to think the latter, and until technology can catch up we'll have to settle with developers doing their best to bring real-life into our living rooms.