This volume is the third in a series of edited volumes dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) game programming wisdom. Its stated intention is to offer useful, insightful, clever, and practical ideas. The ideas should help the reader build tools or devise techniques to support commercial game development. One important property of those ideas is their novelty, with respect to the current state of the art. I do not want to go so far as to try to match this setting to the situation of formulating a patent submission. I would like to note, however, that a book like this one might very well be treated as a contribution to the discussion about protecting intellectual property rights.
The book includes eight sections devoted to the AI concepts and methods that are most relevant in programming games. Each section groups a half dozen or so papers on a similar topic. Each section has its own editor, who was responsible for managing the authors, and directing the contents of the section. The eight sections are: “General Wisdom,” “Pathfinding,” “Movement,” “Architecture,” “Tactics and Planning,” “Genre Specific,” “Scripting and Dialog,” and “Learning and Adaptation.” The papers are written by respected specialists within the game industry.
The contributions are written in a very readable style. Each paper can be read and understood independently from the others. Moreover, each paper introduces its topic briefly, but comprehensively enough to allow it to be understood also by those who have only had an introductory course on AI. The particular topic is developed in the paper, usually including a description of the methods and techniques used. An important positive feature is that, usually, a discussion of the suitability of various approaches is included. An implementation of the core algorithms or representation techniques is also often outlined. The book could serve, to some extent, as a guide to practical problem solving using AI, applied to one special area, namely, games.
The graphical and technical design of the book deserves credit. I have, however, one comment about the cover images. There are four images used on the cover page. All of them are war scenes, with a massive presence of heavy guns. They all are traceable to particular games, and all represent achievements by the authors of the book, but this does not justify their use. Because of these images, this scholarly book, advancing knowledge about the state of the art in AI programming, looks almost like a catalogue of weaponry. I do not believe it was necessary to take this approach to make the book attractive to its readers.
The editors express their strong belief that freedom of information and ideas is more important than the reasons that lead to the protection of intellectual property rights. Among the contributions, there is indeed one that includes ideas that have a patent pending. Still, the editors decided, after some discussions, to include it, because of its merits. They argue that it is interesting, inspirational, and enlightening, exposing readers to some cutting-edge research. However, it remains to be seen if the option of publishing a book on innovative ideas is a viable alternative for innovators who, in other areas of expertise, would seek patent, copyright, or other protection for their work, in order to potentially gain compensation for their efforts, and motivation for further research.
