OT: The Future of Computer Strategy Games

[Artaud]

dogscoff said:...However the one thing I think will take off hugely is voice control. Serious gamers already use VOIP systems alongside their games to communicate with other players, it's only a matter of time before someone starts coding virtual players (bots) that respond to voice commands. Of course the technical obstacle is not so much the voice recognition but reliable machine-parsing of natural language. People have been working on this for years, with varying levels of success. However gaming systems now have the spare storage and processing power available for this kind of trickery, and I think games will be the arena where it actually happens. They will be crude at first, but you know how technology snowballs, especially when it has money behind it. Maybe one day we'll hit the point where you aren't sure whether that guy on your team is human or AI. Again, this technology will be driven by the FPS experience (since that's where most of the gamers are) but once developped it will soon slosh over into strategy.

Just imagine SE if you could issue natural language commands to fleet commanders, ship captains and planetary governors...

I hope we don't go this route. For people who stutter, like me, such games will be a nightmare to play. I simply won't bother with a game that causes me the same degree of stress that daily life does.

But I realize that those of us who stutter are a very tiny minority. What everybody else wants will become the norm.

I'll just stop buying games.