Keep Playing With AI

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports how a newly developed AI system 'learns' your playing behavior and can even play for you when its time to take out the garbage or do other non-essential things around the house. My only question is if it could even learn to bs for me on those laggy starcraft 3v3 games."

What's the point?

[Mr_Silver]

The company has developed an artificial intelligence system that learns a gamer's style of play and can take over and play for them if they have to spend time away from the game.

Ok, I'm no hard-core gamer but personally, I can't think of anything worse than AI making guesses about what my strategy is and what I'm planning and thinking of doing.

So the question is, what's the point? If "real life" intruides on my gaming, I simply hit pause and come back to it later.

It just seems to me like one of those things that'll make people go "wow!" for the first couple of minutes and then never use again.

In other words, a bit pointless, especially if you could have been spending that development time doing something more worthwhile (like adding depth to a game, improving other AI, adding extra levels, better documentation etc. etc.)

Virtual Fighter 4

[robbway]

Virtual Fighter 4 for Sony Playstation 2 (PS2) allows you to train fighters to fight in your style. It takes quite a bit of repetition to get it to learn, and then it can fight for you and like you do. It is very reminiscent of the portable Gigapets and their ilk.

Imagine, I can now eat hot buttered popcorn with both hands as the game plays for me! Is their no limit to my weight gain?

Netstorm

[Godeke]

Actually, at one point there was a game based in part on the ability to be disconnected and return called NetStorm. I actually liked it quite a bit (was a beta tester and bought it when it came out) but it ended up selling a very small number of copies and all the players on the server were using hacked clients by day two of the actual release.

Anyway, the game would fight on while you were gone, which was possible because the pieces were stationary cannons and the like, so when you came back you probably were a bit behind, but not wiped out. I won a few times after a reconnect, so the idea worked.

Re:To Game Developers

[beleg777]

If you've designed your game with lots of boring repetitious stuff which is well-suited for a machine, then you've gone the wrong direction.

Diablo II, check.

If your idea of making certain events rare is a spawn-rate measured in hours or days, then you've gone the wrong direction.

Diablo II, check.

If you think of your paying customers as gerbils who will do anything, especially hitting the spacebar or attack key every ten seconds, for eight hours at a stretch, then you've gone the wrong direction.

Diablo II, check.

Yup, I agree. I know you're talking about MMORPGs, but it applies here too. And I think the problem is the same as the ones we complain about in the business world as well. Making a quality product and making a successful product are often different. (see Blizzard vs Blizzard North)

My dream AI always plays just outside my reach

[dmorin]

What I want is AI that will suck at the game when I suck, and get better as I get better. That way it's not always a case of either I win all the time or lose all the time. Throughout the years I've noticed that chess programs tend to have that problem -- you can beat it all the time at level 1, but almost never win at level 2.

I thought this would be a great way for children to practice the game. Seemed very "Diamond Agey" to me.

is Tivo an electric monk?

[zrodney]

I've wondered if Tivo qualifies for the electric
monk from the Dirk Gently Holistic Detective book

I can't count the number of shows that the tivo
decided I should record which I've never really
watched before the space was reused for another
show.

granted, the Tivo doesn't ride a horse