Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 183)

Trigger Happy
185
A fascinating corollary of this arm’s-length
approach—set it up and let it roll—is that what happens
in the videogame, though not random, then becomes
highly unpredictable. This idea is seconded at Core
Design’s development studios, during the early stages
of work on a beautiful PlayStation2 game that requires
the player to herd eccentric cartoon wildlife. Never
mind the humans; every creature in the forest, from
insects to deer and cows, has its own specific web of AI
algorithms. And this complexity leads to very rich and
varied possibilities of behavior. “We may have written
the game,” a programmer insists with amazed pride at
his creation, “but we don’t know what’s going to
happen.”
These developments are analogous to Mathengine’s
work on the physical modeling of dynamic properties.
And just as convincing feelings of bounciness, heft or
inertia in virtual objects increase the aesthetic pleasure
of the game, so will more convincing simulations of
other wills, whether enemy or ally. The Holy Grail now
for story-led videogames is nothing less than the
physical modeling of personality.
Yes, this sounds like a tall order. But note that we do
not need to believe in the cognitive science project