This Week in Video Game Blogging: Applications of weak AI and board games

This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Taylor Hidalgo on topics ranging from board games and weak AI to monetizing for bots.

G. Christopher Williams at PopMatters Moving Pixels discusses how board games’ variable strategies lend poorly to artificial intelligence, but how the innate rules-based intelligence can still teach meaningful lessons on them all the same.

On the opposite hand, Alex Wiltshire over at Rock Paper Shotgun interviews developer Alex Vostrov while exploring Infected Planet’s mutation mechanic, and its special AI to counter single-strategy play.

Elsewhere, on the Gamasutra Member Blogs, Jane Friedhoff takes the definition of “personal games” to task by examining game design based on the Riot Grrrl movement, explaining that “it means that a personal game must always be about making something legible to outsiders--which feels like the opposite of personal to me.”

Ed Smith, for Playboy, writes about how games paint a beautiful, rustic facade of England that reflects on older, more conservative past, one that is dishonest about how it truly looks.

Buried in the halls of Medium, Patrick Miller tells a story of a fictionalized game developer who creates a monetized game for bots to save a sinking studio, with boggling results.

Pixel Popper presents a video from Doctor Professor, who speaks on the value density of tight game design, rather than pure scale (video).

That’s it for this week’s pieces, and as always thank you so very much for coming by! We always value your contributions, and we encourage you to submit links to us via Twitter at @CritDistance or by sending us an email.

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