The Restaurant Game

[leunas]

Contribute to First Collaboratively Authored Game

The Restaurant Game is a research project at the MIT Media Lab that will algorithmically combine the gameplay experiences of thousands of players to create a new game. In a few months, machine learning algorithms will be applied to data collected through the multiplayer Restaurant Game, and will produce a new single-player game that will be entered into the 2008 Independent Games Festival. Everyone who plays The Restaurant Game will be credited as a Game Designer.

Details available at: www.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/restaurant


www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=437654

[leunas]

The Restaurant Game



Contribute to the first collaboratively authored computer game and earn Game Designer credit!

The Restaurant Game is a research project at the MIT Media Lab that will algorithmically combine the gameplay experiences of thousands of players to create a new game. In a few months, we will apply machine learning algorithms to data collected through the multiplayer Restaurant Game, and produce a new single-player game that we will enter into the 2008 Independent Games Festival. Everyone who plays The Restaurant Game will be credited as a Game Designer. It's never been easier to earn Game Designer credentials!

All contributions are not equal, however. Designers will be ranked based on how well they play their assigned roles, and accomplish their objectives. There will be only one Lead Designer. Remaining credits will be divided into Game Designers and Assistant Game Designers, and within each category individuals will be ranked according to the quality of their performance(s). Quality will be determined computationally, based on a number of factors.

The Restaurant Game takes about 10 minutes to play. It is a two-player game that will automatically find partners for players once you join a server. You are welcome encouraged to play multiple times. In order for this project to be at all successful, we will need to collect a lot of data -- data from over 1,000 gameplay sessions. Play early, play often, and please spread the word!

This project attempts to address two frustrations I experienced as a professional game developer. 1) Convincing human social behavior is difficult to model with existing hand crafted AI systems. 2) Play testing by people outside of the development team typically comes too late to have a major impact on the final product. This experiment aims to generate AI behaviors that conform to the way players actually choose to interact with other characters and the environment; behaviors that are convincingly human because they capture the nuances of real human behavior and language.

Please email me at [e-mail] with questions or technical problems, or post comments to the Game/AI blog.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION!


www.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/restaurant

[leunas]

How Will it be Paying the $95 Entrance Fee?



So there’s this game set in a restaurant, yeah? And people play it, and based on how people play it the game writes another game all by itself, which will then be entered into next year’s Independent Games Festival. It’ll probably win, too, knowing my luck.

The concept of machines making machines is so horrifically nut-curdling it’s almost unthinkable, but as with any new, mis-understood, inherently evil-waiting-to-happen technology it raises more questions than it answers.

For one, how will it be paying the $95 entrance fee?

Will it be learning html and setting up a Plimus 'Buy Now' page all by itself as well and then selling itself over The Internet in order to raise the cash?

This whole nightmarish scenario is so utterly terrifying it’s making my brain cry.


If you like, you can hide yourself away over at The Official Gibbage Forums, but can you really be sure everyone else posting there isn't just a robot in a wig?

Article:
www.gibbage.co.uk/2007/03/how-will-it-be-paying-95-entrance-fee.html