One of the things that separate MS 360 console from the PS3 when it first came out was the Gamerscore system.  This Gamerscore became an addiction for a lot of gamers and achievements was the engine that drove it.  Gamerscore is at the point that people who want to move to another system are hard press to give up that number they worked so hard to achieve.  Gamerscore even made Sony introduce their Trophy system in response.

The next addiction that I can see happening if MS so choose to go this route is to make the Drivetar system within Forza global to the console. Here is my reasoning on why this could be just as addictive to gamers as the Gamerscore Achievement system

The feature of the DrivAtar that I am talking about is how it goes out and play within other people singleplayer or maybe even a mix of singleplayer/multiplayer games.  Your Drivatar is always learning about how you play within the game, how you round corners, how you pass opponents, what tricks you use and how well you manage the course.  There is a skill level giving to your Drivatar and it goes out and get downloaded to other gamers system and become their opponents.  You are notified when your Drivetar win games and are giving points and awards for when it does.

Now picture this same system setup for your Avatar that pretty much does nothing on the 360.  So instead of just dressing up your Avatar MS could set it up so that your Avatar can be download as a AI character within multiplayer or even Singleplayer games.

Think of a multiplayer game that has a singleplayer component which you can practice in.  I know a lot of people do not like playing MP online but they would not mind playing a MP style game with bots in them.  Based on skill level, people could download an AI Avatar based on your playing style and play a perfectly balance match that way.  If your Avatar is downloaded it can gain points by doing the things you normally do in a match.  These points and awards would be sent to your Avatar and displayed there for your profile.  If you really want to get crazy you can have the Avatars ranked between friends and global leaderboards.

A system like this can easily be setup within games like COD, Battlefield, Crysis to just name a few.  So now instead of playing against the prescripted AI characters within a MP or SP game, people can now play against other people AI Avatars.  This would be a great system for developers to put into place because people would be interested in advancing their Avatars abilities thus they would play more games and increase the lifespan of that game.  It would also add sort of a meta game within the MS Ecosystem where not your Avatar actually does something and can be shone off like a Gamerscore or achievement.  I believe this can make your Avatar feel like an extension of yourself, going out there kicking butt and taking names.

Of course this system is not limited to MS, its just that MS is already develop a system so they probably would have first jump.

Sounds like a great concept with a lot of potential. If they choose to expand this idea even further we may even reach a point sometime in the future where our avatar AIs complete achievements, online matches and even single player games for us, eventually nullifying our need to even play the games ourselves.


Make it happen, Microsoft.

That sounds incredible. If this isn't innovation then I don't know what is!

I don't think you understand this technology...

Drivatar merely records stats about how you play and then gives those stats to an ai. If you drive like an a hole always hitting players, your drivatar will do the same. This really only works since ai in racing games is sooooooooooooooo simple (relatively). Your drivatar is still just as smart as the game's ai. Expanding the concept of drivatars to fps for example just wouldn't work when even in the last of us the ai plays nothing like a human.

It also can play the game for you while you're at work! Ultimately defeating the purpose of...actually playing a game yourself.

The future.

I think soul calibur 2 at the arcade had a feature like that, it was pretty neat seeing my character shitting on noobs using the same moves I did vs the AI

I used to find the achievement system to be addictive but then Trophies took it a step further and forced me to become a completionist.

I heard that with the new kinect it can read your feelings and start to develop a personality for your avatar. Eventually your avatar will start to log in and play games for you. It even starts to add freinds and starts to chat with other avatars. It also purchases games that it likes to play using your credit card information! 

That is the future!

What Forza is calling Drivatar is at the core the same AI system used in all previous Forza. The AI is compose using a set of decisions inputed (samples) by training session made by Turn 10.

So what the difference?

The difference now is that Turn 10 will try to use a lot of more data to make the AI... they will use all the player input in Forza 5 instead to use the few employee tranning input.

Why they are doing that?

To make the game feels more real... when you use data from a session training made by the company (or using professional races) the data will be always the same... so the default AI will always says to make a turn at 60 mph but the Drivatar will choose the best "AI" in the Cloud based in a player that fits better with your style ant that AI will make this turn at 75 mph.

I know... that is not the best example... it is a little more complex.

The big difference is that instead a default AI created by 100 "racers" input the Drivatar will give you a AI created by 1 million "racers"... so every player will collaborate to Forza 5' AI.

But that's not will make the AI better... it will make it more real... like when you play a MP with real-life person... because some Drivatar inputs will be dumb, really dumb, because some players sucks at driving skills for games.

I think Turn 10 will tray to make a balance... so if you suck then you will play against sucks AIs... and if you good then you play against good AIs.

The ideia is increase the numbers of samples to the AI take the decision into the game... the decision (AI) will be calculated by the console yet (CPU/GPU) based in the Drivatar samples collected from the players.

All driving games have samples to run the AI... Forza 5 will have the default samples (like Forza 4) and it will increase the samples with Drivatar through neural networks.

BTW there is nothing in Drivatar that can't be made by any simple dedicated server... the Drivatar is just a server that collect the data to be used by the AI Engine in the game... the AI will continue to run offline in the console CPU/GPU.

You know that part is exactly what the B-Spec Remote Play in GT5 do.

The difference is that in GT5 the racers that you share in the Cloud uses a standard samples of AI based in their level.... now in Drivatar your racer will use your own samples AI... and in Forza 5 this shared racer will play against others players in their console, GT5 just permits that it play agaist other AI racers from others gamers.

The Forza 5 is a improviment over what GT5 have.