[Maleficus]

Its harder today to get excited about bots then it was back then because theres SO many games today. Back in the day, it was Quake( 1 & 2 ), Half Life, and Unreal ( which shipped with bots ) as your main FPS games. Odds were you were playing one ( or all ) of the three, and that was it. Even if you had broadband, it was nice to have bots as a training simulator, or a relaxing diversion.

Now, we have dozens of games. Considering how much of an investment of time it is to create a bot by a 3rd party author, often times great bots are being made for games that have become passe, with everyone running to the next big thing. Sometimes the bot author himself gets caught up in the rush to play the next big thing, and the bot dies. Sometimes theres no time to create a bot for the game, because the "Next Big Thing"(tm) hits the shelves before ppl are done playing the current one.

Most companies that do create bots, create them as a bullet point for the back of the box to help sell the game, and not as a true means to expand the gamer's experience. Either thru lack of experience or time ( or both ), they ship bots that aren't good for much more then target practice ( which has led to the rather frustrating belief by most gamers that bots aren't good for anything more then target practice ).

I do miss the old days - I watched Bot Epidemic very intently for the latest news on all the bots. I'd love to see it, or something akin to it, back in action, but I'm not sure how likely it will be. Unless some game came out that really held players attention, and showed it would benefit from bots somehow.