games were similar in several ways. Due to the games being based on historical events, the team often had to do large amounts of research. However, the research was not in depth, which, according to Age of Empires designer Bruce Shelley, is "a good idea for most entertainment products." Shelley also said that Ensemble Studios took most of the reference material from children's sections at libraries. He pointed out the goal was for the players of the game to have fun, "not [its] designers or researchers." At the Games Convention Developers Conference in 2007, Shelley continued with this thought and explained that the success of the series laid in "making a game which appealed to both the casual and hardcore gamer." Shelley also remarked the Age of Empires games were not about history in itself, but rather "about the human experience;" they focused not simply on what humans had done but on what they could do in the future such as "going into space." Ensemble Studios developed Age of Mythology in a different way than the previous two games. The team had worried they "couldn't get away" with a third historical-based game, and chose mythology as the setting after they had discussed several options. Artificial intelligence The artificial intelligence (AI) used in the Age of Empires series has been developed and improved regularly by designers. AI specialist Dave Pottinger noted the development team gave the AI in the original game a very high priority, and spent over a year working on it. He said that the AI in the game relies on tactics and strategies to win, instead of "cheating" by giving bonus resources to itself, or tweaking its units to be stronger than normal. Pottinger later noted that the Age of Empires series team took great pride in their AI playing a "fair game" and didn't know what the player was doing and had to play by the same rules as its human opponents.Age of Empires allows players to choose to play either along specialized, story-backed conditions or as individual battles against the AI (and other players). Choosing to battle against the AI – rather than following the storyline – allows the AI to adapt to players' strategies and even remember which games it won and lost. The AI eventually overcomes players' strategies and easily destroys their villages after several games. For instance, in Age of Empires III, this