back to article Microsoft urges PhD-grade devs to play Minecraft for money

Microsoft wants PhD researchers to pitch their bots into a Minecraft landscape, but it's not some simple “robot wars” remake: to win, your AI will have to learn to co-operate with humans. And you don't get to choose who you co-operate with: in Project Malmo, the other players your code works with will be randomly assigned. …

  1. tr1ck5t3r

    Monkeys do tricks to get some magic tokens to keep quiet and docile and exchange for tricks from other monkeys. Are more people becoming disillusioned with the ponzi scheme that is the financial system?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Just a 'simple game, huh? ;)

    I'm a decently vivid Minecraft player, been playing for three years now and I still haven't reached a point where I got bored with it. Of course it does help that I've never really had much problems with keeping myself occupied and entertained, but on the other hand I also think that Minecraft is a seriously underrated game.

    Of course the reason why is obvious and fully understandable. Because let's be honest: at first glimpse things can look very simplistic and simple. Isn't this basically a virtual block collection to build with? Well, yes and no... Of course there is a building aspect in the game, and if you can set your prejudice aside for "pixelated environments" then you may come to appreciate a world which provides much more detail than you may give it credit for. Trees, flowers, rivers, cliffs, ravines, deserts, oceans, jungles... You can all find those within Minecraft.

    But there's more. The Minecraft game mechanic itself is pretty special. Because it doesn't only allow you to play the game, it also provides all the tools you might need to create the game. Whatever game you might want but all within the Minecraft world of course. From more simple things such as four in a row, a maze, a dropper (jump down into a world and try to survive the fall) right to more complicated things like battleships (with 'real ships' which can be blown up and sunk) or puzzle / adventure maps where you need to perform specific actions in order to solve things.

    There are players who have build whole computers within Minecraft, capable of performing basic mathematical operations. Creations which are at their core directly comparable to circuit board designs.

    Within that context the vivid player in me wants to cry out to you guys and point his fingers to this while saying: "See? A bit more complex than you thought, huh?".

    But even though I meant every word I said above we also need to be a little realistic. Because lets face it: the gaming environment eventually doesn't really matter. The real challenge will be the AI <-> player interaction, where the stage is simply set to Minecraft. An interesting stage, sure, but given the very nature of the game it also remains to be seen how much influence the environment is going to have.

    In the end one could also approach this with the impression that Microsoft is now utilizing a rather famous name to draw more attention to their other projects.

    Either way, I for one am not really looking forward to having to face even smarter creepers :P

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