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MMOGology: Attack of the bots
A few weeks ago Tateru Nino wrote a great piece about the use of bots in Second Life as marketing tools to make virtual worlds feel less lonely and appear more populated than they actually are. The article got me thinking about the use of bots in games and the many purposes they serve, not only as virtual avatars, but more frequently as tools used by players to assist them with everyday tasks.So what exactly is a bot? Although bot is short for robot we're not talking about Tom Servo or Crow T. Robot from Mystery Science Theater 3000 (although I guess technically they're puppets). Bots are programs with some level of artificial intelligence that are typically created to automate mundane tasks otherwise performed by a human. At their finest, they are tools that help make a gaming experience more enjoyable by streamlining our gameplay, providing us with useful information, or automating otherwise irksome tasks. At their worst, bots are exploits used by hackers to grind through a game while the player is away from their keyboards. For the purposes of today's article, I'll be referring to the "legal" variety.Even if a bot is perfectly legal to use and is not technically exploiting the game, it's still automating tasks you'd otherwise be performing yourself. When we're talking about playing video games, if a bot is doing some of the "gaming" for us, then what exactly are we doing? In automating some of the hum-drum tasks of a game has something of the fun or challenge been lost; or, do bots just help us get to the parts of the game that are fun and challenging?
