Gamasutra Expert Blogs: From Atari 7800 Sales To A.I. Awards

In our weekly Best of Expert Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game development community who maintain Expert Blogs on Gamasutra. Member Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while the invitation-only Expert Blogs are written by development professionals with a wealth of experience to share. We hope that both sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information about the blogs, check out the official posting guidelines. This Week's Standout Expert Blogs And the Award for Best Artificial Intelligence Goes To... (Dave Mark) A.I. is a pervasive discipline that permeates throughout numerous aspects of a game, but Dave Mark feels that advancements in A.I. development aren't as recognized as prominently as they should be. The tiniest slip-up in a game's A.I. can render a game virtually useless, he says, so shouldn't the industry start awarding stellar A.I. alongside writing and game design? Atari 7800 Sales Figures (1986 - 1990) (Matt Matthews) Graph wiz and regular Gamasutra contributor Matt Matthews picks through some recently-released Atari documents to find sales figures for the company's third major console, the Atari 7800. Launched in 1986, it fell victim to competition from Nintendo and Sega -- but Matthews finds that it sold a surprising amount of units nonetheless. The Origin Of Serious War-Gaming (Stephen Dinehart) Stephen Dinehart, narrative designer and lead writer at Fracture developer Day 1 Studios, writes a brief history of war-gaming, from chess and its predecessors to Risk to Company of Heroes. A must read, especially for fans of classic board wargames. Accessible Provocation (Adam Saltsman) Adam Saltsman is back another week, this time with a post examining films that are both accessible and provocative on varying levels. But can more video games strike the balance? Design Tool Programmers Have No Excuses Any More Borut Pfeifer Borut Pfeifer, lead AI and game programmer for EALA, offers a couple of tips and useful links for programmers. He says adding P4.Net and ExcelPackage API to design tools can simplify the development process and save time. Click through for more info...