Gamasutra is running a feature written by Mick West, co-founder of Neversoft, about creating game AI that is dumb enough to defeat, yet intelligent enough that its "mistakes" are similar to those a real player would make, thus preserving the illusion that the AI is not just throwing the game. "The simplest way to introduce stupidity into AI is to reduce the amount of computation that it's allowed to perform. Chess AI generally performs billions of calculations when deciding what move to make. ... The problem with this approach is that it decreases the realism of the AI player. When you reduce the amount of computation, the AI will begin to make incredibly stupid mistakes — mistakes that are so stupid, no human would ever make them. The artificial nature of the game will then become apparent, which destroys the illusion of playing against a real opponent. ... By reducing the amount of computation, we create an AI opponent that is trying to win, but has been crippled in a way that leads to unrealistic gameplay."

Bloomberg is running a story about several video game publishers and developers who are pushing for a long overdue price cut on Sony's PS3 console. Sales of the PS3 are lagging behind both the Wii and the Xbox 360 despite the PS2's resounding victory in sales of the previous generation of consoles. One of the creators of LittleBigPlanet, a PS3 exclusive, made similar comments in an interview with Gamasutra, acknowledging that they're looking forward to the day Sony drops the PS3's price. An analyst from Janco said such an action is necessary if Sony doesn't want to "lose support from game developers and publishers."

Not long ago, we discussed the realities of selling a game on the iPhone App Store. Now, spidweb sends in his experiences with a realistic level of success as an independent PC game developer. He writes "There is a lot of excitement about casual gaming and Indie game development these days, but there's also very little public information about how many games actually get sold, or the sort of income one can reasonably expect in this line of work. We've released full sales figures for a recent product to illustrate what sort of earnings can be generated by a quality niche product that isn't a massive hit. From the post: 'I am not the first Indie developer to reveal this sort of information. However, most public sales figures come from projects that were either blockbusters or disasters. Our games have never landed in either pool. I have been doing this for a living for almost fifteen years.'"

Ask Stenum writes "Rock Paper Shotgun has an interesting write-up about how Unreal Tournament 3 has risen from the dead after Epic Games patched it, made a deal with Valve to put it on Steam and making it available for free for a weekend. It's interesting to see how a multiplayer game that's almost one and a half years old suddenly has become what it never could be; a game with multiple players. What other (maybe older?) online multiplayer games would you like to see make a comeback?" UT3's resurgence was mentioned here briefly last week as part of our discussion on the future of game pricing.

Gamasutra held a contest this year to describe what hit video games in the year 2020 would be like. Over 150 detailed entries were sent in, and they've posted the top 20. One persistent theme is the ever-present connectedness to the outside world, both in reality-based games and with multiplayer modes that are part of typical daily interactions. Quoting: "It's just an average day at your job. Noon swings around and it's time to amble out of the cubicle farm and venture outside into the city to find some lunch. You put on your slick steel framed Hunters Glasses, place your Hunters earpiece, and with black and white Hunters Gloves on, step out of the building and onto the street. After a block suddenly your dark tinted shades switch to a red tint. A silky female voice echoes in your ear, 'Players within range. Good Hunting.' The glasses are acting as a WiFi enabled computer screen. You swivel your head to scope the scene and find someone standing out within the red crowd as a white outline. The man with the white outline is scouting the area as well, trying to find who else is in the game right now. You get within range, pack a virtual snow ball with your gloves, approach slowly, wind up and throw with all your might the virtual snow ball at the man with the white outline. 'Player Eliminated,' says the female voice, 'Uploading Statistics.'"

Saul J writes with an update to the patent lawsuit that was filed by Fenner Investments back in 2007 against Nintendo and Microsoft. The suit alleged that the two companies had infringed upon a patent for a joystick port interface. The trial was set to begin today, but now Judge Leonard Davis of the US District Court in Tyler, Texas has ruled that there is no need for a jury trial. One of Nintendo's lawyers said, "Nintendo has a long history of developing innovative products while respecting the intellectual property rights of others. We also vigorously defend patent lawsuits when we firmly believe that we have not infringed another party's patent, despite the risks that this policy entails."

QuackenDuck writes "The latest video-game headlines are all about virtual sex, violence, and taxes. Here's a story that turns the 'Think of the Children' battle-cry against games on its head. VOA News reports on how the video game medium is being used to educate Kenyan youths about risky behaviors that lead to HIV infection: 'Kenya has an HIV prevalence rate of about five percent, with young women among the most vulnerable to new infection. Now, the US government and a private entertainment company have teamed up to produce and distribute a video game that teaches Kenyan youth how to avoid contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.' Many parts of the world are gritty, violent and dangerous, and this game designer is using gritty, violent and dangerous content to teach the children of Kenya."

Ars Technica reports that the Utah State Senate and House have both passed Jack Thompson's proposed legislation that would stiffen penalties for the sale of M-rated games to minors. Oddly, on its trip through the state legislature, amendments rendered it largely ineffective; retailers are in the clear if the employee who sold the game goes through a training program, or if the minor misrepresents his age. It's also possible that the bill could cause some retailers to simply take down their ESRB-related advertising. Thompson's statements about the bill put the focus on advertising, but discussion on the Utah Senate floor had a familiar ring, touching on the story of a Grand Theft Auto player who killed two policemen in 2003. The ESRB wrote an open letter in opposition of the bill, saying it could undo the efforts they've made to popularize their rating system. The bill's sponsors fired back, questioning the industry's overall commitment to ratings, and now it awaits only the governor's signature before becoming law.

Eurogamer sat down with Bill Roper of Cryptic Studios to discuss Champions Online, their superhero MMO due out in a few months. Roper mentioned that the PC version of the game will be coming out well ahead of any console versions, and he provided some insight into the game's Nemesis system. "When you get around the mid-game, you have the ability to create your Nemesis... Then you start going on these separate Nemesis missions — you'll start getting ambushed by the minions of your Nemesis, and eventually one of these minions will kind of break down, and say 'oh no please don't, I'll tell you I'll you,' and you get a clue off him. You go through a whole series of these very Nemesis-specific quests which revolve around the things you put in about your Nemesis, but it's not always the same path that you take, there's multiple story directions that you could be going through." Examiner also spoke briefly with Randy Mosiondz, lead designer for the game, about the questing and the game environment. IGN got a look at Lemuria itself, and Cryptic posted some of the concept art.

Eurogamer reports that Sony Online Entertainment will be adding the ability to do real money trading to at least some of their Vanguard: Saga of Heroes servers. It's the same service they opened for a pair of Everquest II servers a while back. Quoting: "The service, offered by Live Gamer, allows players to sell items, currency and characters for real cash through a secure channel, authorised by the game operator. Most real-money trading in MMOs is a 'grey' market that doesn't have the operator's consent. ... Sony Online Entertainment recently said that it had no intention to bring its other real-money trading initiative — the Station Cash item shop — to Vanguard."

Gamespot reports that Gears of War 2 will soon be getting a new experience system to facilitate multiplayer progression. Epic's Rod Ferguson had this to say: "Basically, it was a matter of listening to what people were saying about the TrueSkill system. We spent a lot of time on the forums and talking with other players, and we were noticing that people were sort of plateauing really quickly. ... So to remedy the issues, we figured we should impose a system where people could earn experience; even if they lost the match they would feel like they're moving up the ladder. We want them to feel like they're progressing, gaining levels of experience in multiplayer play." Gears of War 2 will also be getting a new set of maps, including Fuel Depot, a popular selection from the first game.

billlava writes "Tired of Team Fortress 2 servers that lie in order to attract players, engineers at Valve (creators of the Half Life franchise) have come up with a way to weed out servers that give false information about the number of players online, or custom server options. 'After kicking around some proposals, we came up with a simple system built around the theory that player time on a server is a useful metric for how happy the player is with that server. It's game rules agnostic, and we can measure it on our steam backend entirely from steam client data, so servers can't interfere with it. We already had this data for all the TF2 servers in the world, allowing us to try several different scoring formulas out before settling on this simple one that successfully identified good & bad servers.' Of course, this only works with their games running on Steam."

Martin Ralya writes "I've had the Player's Handbook 2 for two weeks (it releases on the 17th), and I've written an in-depth preview of the book from a GM's perspective for Gnome Stew. It's billed as 'the most significant expansion' of D&D 4th Edition yet, and that's accurate. The short version: No power creep, no balance problems, and all of the new classes are excellent — even the bard. They'll become part of D&D's lore in nothing flat."

gametunnel1 brings us the February round-up of reviews for recent independent game releases. The top game this time around was Crayon Physics, which was also celebrated at the Independent Games Festival. Also scoring high were Ragdoll Cannon and adventure game Emerald City Confidential, about which they say, "The game is set in the mythical land of Oz, but not quite the same one as the movie/books. Rather than a cheery and fun-filled world, Oz is depicted like a 1940s film noir, so things are much bleaker. ... The highlight of the gameplay would have to be the gathering of information, via investigation of the environment or questioning characters in the game. Talking to characters for leads and clues is fun, especially since sometimes you'll have to figure out if what they're saying has any significance or not."

FiveRings writes "BusinessInsider has a story about Worlds.com, a company that inherited the patent on virtual worlds from the Starlight Starbright Foundation and is taking it to court against NCSoft over the company's various MMOs. If successful, he will press on and sue the makers of Second Life and World of Warcraft as well. The article notes that the NCSoft case is being held in east Texas, which has been a favorable venue for patent trolls in the past."

TRNick writes "Is the future of gaming more or less free, perhaps funded by advertising or micropayments? A bunch of MMOs have pioneered the way, and now they are being followed by the likes of EA, Sony and id Software, each of which is offering some form of free gaming. But it's not just the big guys. TechRadar talks to a new generation of indie developers who are making names for themselves. 'I make most of my money from sponsors,' says one. 'We're all here because we love making games first and foremost,' says another. But can free games ever make enough money to fund the really ambitious, event games that get the headlines?" While paid games aren't likely to be on their way out any time soon, more and more developers and publishers are experimenting with cheaper pricing, and the results so far seem positive.

MarkN writes "Video games are subject to a number of balance issues from which traditional games have largely stayed free. It can be hard finding players of comparable skill-level to create even match-ups, diverse gameplay options can quickly become irrelevant if someone finds a broken feature that beats everything else, and some online games make your ability to play competitively a question of how much time and money you've invested in a game, rather than the skill you possess. In this article, I talk about some of the issues relating to fairness and balance in games, in terms of the factors and strategies under the player's control, the game's role in potentially handicapping players, and the role a community of gamers plays in setting standards for how games are to be played. What are your thoughts on managing a 'fair and balanced' gaming experience?"

The Opposable Thumbs blog reports that World of Warcraft's most recent expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is not being allowed into the Chinese market. The Escapist brings further details, saying, "According to an insider, two specific shortcomings included the presence of skeleton characters and a 'city raid.' Nor did the submitted version contain the starting area for the game's new Death Knight class." The Chinese version of World of Warcraft has been modified in the past to remove skeletons and zombies.

Gamasutra reports that Mythic Entertainment is consolidating a number of their Warhammer Online servers to keep population levels within an acceptable range. 43 servers are set to close in North America and Oceania, and 20 more in Europe. Mythic posted details of the character transfers at the game's website. CEO Mark Jacobs also made a "State of the Game" post, highlighting the live expansion that's currently underway, as well as the changes and updates they have planned for the near future.

chareverie writes "The Prime Minister of the UK is being urged to impose high taxes on violent video games in an effort to reduce the number of knife-related crime. The request comes from Richard Taylor, who argues that young people 'feel that the law has no control over them. They just feel that they can go on the streets and do whatever they like.' He doesn't have a definitive number on how much to tax on the offensive video games, but says that they should be 'very high.' Rap music is also voiced to be a concern due to the alleged negativity and language. Taylor's son, Damilola Taylor, was killed in November 2000 at the age of 10 by knife stabbing."