DailyDirt: Computers Are Learning How To Play More Video Games, But They'll Never Appreciate A Good Game?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Researchers can program computers to play all kinds of games and even beat the best humans at them. So far, we're not worried about AI that can beat us at chess or Jeopardy, but maybe we'll be more worried when a computer can program another computer to play chess at a grandmaster level. Luckily, there's at least one billionaire willing to chip in a few million bucks to try to keep Terminators from destroying humanity. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
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Filed Under: ai, artificial intelligence, atari, civilization v, elon musk, flappy bird, game algorithms, machine learning, robotics, video games, wargames
Companies: deepmind, google


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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2015 @ 5:40pm

    Did 'Nuclear Gandhi' emerge at any point during this AI game?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2015 @ 6:38pm

    I'd pay a buck to see two AIs argue about ethics in gaming journalism.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    orbitalinsertion (profile), 3 Mar 2015 @ 7:27pm

    Re:

    I'd up the bid to see 2 or more AIs pretend that that was what they were arguing about when in reality it is about something else entirely.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    orbitalinsertion (profile), 3 Mar 2015 @ 7:29pm

    Civ V match

    So, not so much like having the game play both sides in PTO.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2015 @ 10:55pm

    Re: Re:

    If, after 2 minutes of arguing, I find myself wishing that all the AIs would shut up & drop dead, they'll have passed the Turing Test.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Shree, 3 Mar 2015 @ 11:29pm

    Well a billionaire has agreed to save humanity. Today it's games and tomorrow it will be people. Why are we even encouraging this.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Rekrul, 4 Mar 2015 @ 11:24am

    Those Atari games are more difficult than you might think...

    There's no correlation between simple graphics and ease of gameplay. A game can have state of the art graphics and be a cakewalk to play, or have really simple graphics and be insanely difficult.

    Plus, many later Atari games were quite deep for the time. Games like Tunnel Runner, Escape from the Mindmaster, Dragonstomper, Star Raiders, Mountain King, Montezuma's Revenge, Solaris, etc.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    John Fenderson (profile), 5 Mar 2015 @ 8:22am

    Re:

    "There's no correlation between simple graphics and ease of gameplay."

    Or quality of gameplay. Most of the games that are the most fun to play happen to be older ones with low quality graphics. I have noticed, personally, that there is a loose inverse correlation between graphics quality and game quality: much like with movies, the better the graphics the higher the odds that the game isn't that good. There are plenty of exceptions, of course, but it seem a good rule of thumb. I think it has a lot to do with where the development resources are used.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    Rekrul, 5 Mar 2015 @ 11:39am

    Re: Re:

    Or quality of gameplay. Most of the games that are the most fun to play happen to be older ones with low quality graphics. I have noticed, personally, that there is a loose inverse correlation between graphics quality and game quality: much like with movies, the better the graphics the higher the odds that the game isn't that good. There are plenty of exceptions, of course, but it seem a good rule of thumb. I think it has a lot to do with where the development resources are used.

    Today it seems that graphics are considered more important than good gameplay.

    Although I'm guilty of liking gorgeous graphics, I don't like a lot of conventions used in modern games. Like the over use of cutscenes/FMVs, having the game be stuck in a sort of permanent tutorial mode (Press [X] to open door!), not allowing you to explore, having to press a separate key to "aim", including DLC in the game which is unlocked with a code that you buy, DLC that should have been in the base game, achievements for every stupid thing you do in the game (Achievement unlocked: Standing in place for ten seconds!), motion blur, haze making everything look like there's a smog problem, extensive focus on multi-player with the single-player campaign treated almost as an afterthought, separate camera controls in third-person games (is there anyone who though that Jedi Academy was difficult to play because you couldn't look at your character from any angle?), automatically regenerating health, using checkpoints rather than allowing you to save the game, and more that I'm probably forgetting.

    I don't have a state of the art system, but even if I did, I'd still prefer playing many of the older games over anything newer. Plus, the fact that I refuse to buy any games that requires online activation (Steam, Origin, etc) means that there's virtually nothing today that I would be willing to spend money on.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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