Hi all, I was wanting to know if any major game studio outsources its GameAI to independent developers. By outsourcing, I mean bringing into their development team people who are experts in the AI domain. I understand that AI usually takes a backseat to say the graphics in a game, but it still would make sense to devote considerable time and effort to incorporate an exceptional AI component for a game, wouldn't it? And if a there was someone who provided this service to the studio, I think they might just take it (it wud be better than hiring an AI programmer on a contractual basis atleast). This set of people may have the experience in building robust AI and more importantly, integrating it into a given game. And yes, roughly what proportion of the total budget in a game is actually devoted to AI, lets say for a 1st person action shooter, where opponent AI will most certainly make a difference to the gaming experience? And are there already such 'AI providers'?? thanks...

I don't think that would be very practical, given how tightly coupled most game engines are. But I have heard of people bringing in external contractors to work on AI. To do it effectively I think would require the developer to be in the studio with the other programmers and designers on hand. After all, AI as a subsystem is often just as much a design issue as a programming issue, unlike rendering, networking, physics, input, etc.

Not that I know of. AI is _highly_ intertwined with design and you need lots of face-to-face engineer-designer time. It's not something that I can see being outsourced.

Now, certainly there are plenty of publishers using 3rd party AI Libraries, but I'm pretty sure they always have an in house engineer.

-me