Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual

Trigger Happy

What a huge challenge for programmers. But the results would be worth it. It’s all very well to try to script every possible interaction, but then—as we have seen—the game’s story engineer has to write an awful lot to approach any semblance of interactivity. The artificial intelligence algorithms that are present embryonically in Outcast, however, while being very hard to set up initially, result thereafter in interesting and believable behavior “for free.” The videogame designer, like a deity, sets up laws of behavior for his creatures, and then lets the processor do all the calculation to create the actual behavior at any given point in the game. Algorithmic processes solve our problem of storytelling data intensiveness at a stroke.

In a certain crude sense, this has been the case for a long time. For instance, the enemy machines in Robotron are programmed with simple movement algorithms that tell them either to hunt down the player or go straight for the other humans on screen. But now that such movement rules are being combined with simulations of curiosity or fear, and if in the future they may even be accompanied by rules for communication, the illusion of other “life” in the gameworld will be vastly enhanced.

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