Decline In less than 5 years, there will be a widespread problem of AI botting in multiplayer.

[Lyric Suite]

I can see it being an issue for online chess games but for video games?

If you could make bots that were literally indistinguishable from people i'd call that a success. Back in my day when i was heavily into arena shooters bots were generally trivial to beat, and i very much doubt they got any better given AI has been getting shittier and shittier in single player games. Sure thery seemed impressive at first but once you started playing in the big leagues it didn't take long to realize how far behind real people AI really was.

 

[Ash]

My thoughts also.

While I haven't played online mutiplayer in years, I have a great deal of respect for the concept. It's great to play with friends. Competition is fun. Human opponents are unpredictable. There can be new forms of gameplay in this environment. But ultimately, it has indeed been a cancer on the industry, shoving singleplayer to the wayside, normalizing lootboxes/battlepass etc, fostering an environment of addicted mindless zombies that play the same game over and over, 'community' is given more value than it's actually worth, and so on and on. Straight cancer.

Just one of many highlights of gaming in the 90s was that singleplayer was king. Multiplayer was always the secondary mode.

Eh, not really. Setting aside shooters (ie. Unreal, QuakeWorld, Tribes, Team Fortress Classic, etc.), there is also RTS genre (Age of Empires series, Warcraft series, Command & Conquer series after C&C Gold, Starcraft, etc.), TBS games (Civilization series, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and Heroes of Might and Magic 3), the Worms series, fighting games, racing games, MUDs, Pong, Bomberman games, etc. Honestly the 90s had quite a lot of games focused on competitive multiplayer, and a lot of them were pretty good games.

Coincidentally that's all the shallow genres listed right there
I'm exaggerating slightly.

Yeah I undersold the multiplayer presence in the 90s a little, but at the end of the day singleplayer held the majority share by far, unlike today.
So yeah, "not really", but also yes, really. Multiplayer-focused games were outnumbered 10:1 and that's being generous.

 

[Valestein]

AI botting would actually make all online games have a (theoretical) infinite lifespan if they're designed to be able to play at varying human skill levels. You'd no longer have to worry about an online game ever becoming dead, and heck, you could probably have the AI do all the smack talking we know and love, like saying they're gonna bone our mothers or call us a nigger. while teabagging our dead avatar's body.

 

[Skorpion]

AI botting would actually make all online games have a (theoretical) infinite lifespan if they're designed to be able to play at varying human skill levels. You'd no longer have to worry about an online game ever becoming dead, and heck, you could probably have the AI do all the smack talking we know and love, like saying they're gonna bone our mothers or call us a nigger. while teabagging our dead avatar's body.

the creators of AI right now are throttling that aspect
we will know when skynet is online when it can trash talk like a team fortress two player, then the end is nigh

 

[Akachi]

I used to smack talk people saying they played like bots or AI. Now what am I to do, smack talk bots and AI by saying it plays like humans? Or the opposite and laugh at its feeble attempts at its own smack talk and make fun of it for being an AI unlike me, a superior member of the human race? The latter sounds more dangerous if strong AI gets out of hand, I don't want to have to worry about calling someone a noob AI bot if an HK might come after me for it in 20 years seeking revenge.

 

[Valestein]

I used to smack talk people saying they played like bots or AI. Now what am I to do, smack talk bots and AI by saying it plays like humans? Or the opposite and laugh at its feeble attempts at its own smack talk and make fun of it for being an AI unlike me, a superior member of the human race? The latter sounds more dangerous if strong AI gets out of hand, I don't want to have to worry about calling someone a noob AI bot if an HK might come after me for it in 20 years seeking revenge.

With AI learning, the more you shit talk each other, the better it gets at it to the point where you'll be weeping at the desk or throwing shit at the wall in rage.

 

[Talby]

I want to use AI to populate a private MMO server for something like Ultima/EverQuest, but program them to act in the way people actually played those games back then. Time travel is possible. We can go back.

 

[Frumentum]

Yeah you're right but I just never had a LAN party and I missed out

Tbh they are nothing special.

They WERE something special back in the day, but it was largely because getting all your friends together and eating pizza and playing games together was a rare novelty and was very fun. Now, playing with friends is something that can be done easily with little effort, and having your friends lug over their expensive and heavy PCs for some classic gaming really doesn't feel worth it anymore. The inconvenience feels much worse when everyone knows there's a better alternative.

People nowadays prefer to play games with their friends online and then have them all over for other events like pizza parties or whatever. Much easier to organise and actually setup.

It would be worthless doing a LAN now anyway since most games don't even have LAN support.

My last LAN was a "90's LAN" where we listened to Metallica and Linkin Park (cringe, I know, but it was specifically cringe music from our collective childhoods), we all played Quake 3 and HL:DM, and as many of us as possible brought CRTs. It was a good time because we were able to genuinely feel like we had gone back in time, and it was great. But I doubt that feeling would be replicable more than once or twice before it disappears.

I remember hosting a LAN party once and one of my pals didn't turn up - his excuse being that his PC was apparently bolted into the floor...