When playing video games, there’s a very large gap between playing against a computer controlled opponent as compared to another player. But what is it that causes such a massive disparity?

Many view the playing of a computer as noticeably easier than a player. To a large degree, this is often right. The problem isn’t actual difficulty, but more complexity.

Playing against a human opponent has an inherent unpredictability. Think about it for a second, when you’re playing against an opponent in almost any sports video game, isn’t it sometimes obvious what a computer opponent will do in a given situation?

No matter how complex the AI is in a given video game, it’s still constrained by the breadth of its programming limits. This is where a human opponent can prove to be infinitely more difficult.  Where an AI will analyze the score and other factors, there will always be the intangibles, the things you can’t see, that it won’t factor in.

Put a human opponent in a third in long, and you’re likely to see just about any number of different plays. He or she will read the defense, audible to exploit a gap in the coverage, or maybe drop down and run through a hole that’s been exploited all game long.  Put an AI opponent in a similar situation and things will play out similarly, only not nearly as complex. Most likely, an audible won’t happen, just running the play and trying to take advantage of trends from the rest of the game.

Now that’s not to say the AI opponent will always be easier though. The AI opponent has the advantage of all the data on each play selection as well as how the plays were run and can analyze it in a heartbeat. The computer is still going to be complex enough to catch trends that a human opponent may not catch.  Maybe I’m hitting a certain gap when running a certain play. Maybe I always pass to my slot receiver when I roll out to the right. Sure, a human opponent might catch it, but that’s the joy of human error, people miss things.

Regardless of which you prefer to play, or which you play better against, there will always be noticeable differences between playing against a human opponent and playing against an AI opponent.

Which do you prefer? Do you think one is easier than the other? Let us know.

Chris Sanner: I agree with Erik's assessment here. I believe the hardest thing about playing a player is the unpredictability they present. A more recent example of this for me is MLB: The Show. I was playing my brother and I could not even begin to predict what pitch he was about to throw.

He was all over the place because he could do that to me. He had no set pattern and it made it very difficult to hit him. When I'm playing an AI opponent on The Show, it's a lot easier to hit because I know most likely on a 2-0 or 3-0 count there's gonna be a fastball coming in.

So in hindsight, maybe if developers made the AI unpredictable as well as more flexible we might see the difficulty really ramp up. If it were that easy it would have already been done though, but I do wish that certain trends weren't programmed into a game without exceptions.