I tend to agree with you a bit,
Etnu, though I think advances will most likely come out of the big online multiplayer game arena. (The simple fact is, that''s where a heck of a lot of money is being dumped over the next couple of years.)

I''m finding the results of this year''s poll on the subject interesting. Here are the numbers as of 9:15PM Thursday night (5/17/00) compared to the original poll taken during the month of May, 1999:

Where do you think the next innovations in game AI will come from?                                            2000 Poll       1999 PollFirst-person shooters?             19%              24%Real-time strategy games?          20%              38%Turn-based strategy games?          5%               9%RPGs?                              18%              22%Sports games?                       1%               7%"Classic" games of some kind (checkers, chess, etc.)?           2%              N/AThe academic world?                 4%              N/AThe military research world?        9%              N/AI don''t forsee any real innovations coming for quite some time yet.     6%              N/AOther (type in your own genre).    10%              N/A

Note that while I didn''t offer all the choices last year that I did this year, the percentages of the groups that I did offer are roughly comparable, particularly if we allocate the "other" and "none" categories even across the original five choices. Sports and RTS games seem to be the "winners" so far, however, with fairly large increases from last year.

Personally that surprises me a bit, I guess....RTS games don''t seem to require the same level of interaction for success as other genres (note that I didn''t say they didn''t need it, just that it didn''t seem necessary for market success). Sports games I can kinda understand, I guess, since the developer is driven by highly knowledgeable players of the "real" game in that respect.

Interesting numbers, nonetheless.





Ferretman

From the High Mountains of Colorado