December 8, 2010
Speaking of game AI…two Pac-Man-related links are making the blog rounds these days – one of them is new.
The new one is Chad Birch’s “Understanding Pac-Man Ghost Behavior”. It is clear and well illustrated.
As Chad points out, he was inspired by and used Jamey Pittman’s “Pac-Man Dossier”. This is a nice resource.
It also seems that I haven’t previously blogged Don Hodges’ fix to a bug in the behavior of two of the ghosts. (The bug-fixing of classic videogames is a topic we will return to in the future.)
Of course, the ghosts need a Pac-Man to chase. I have previously linked to a Ms. Pac-Man computer player competition. Of specific interest is this paper on evolving rules to play Ms. Pac-Man (seems that I have not directly linked it before).
(Post title is of course a play on the “magnets…” meme.)
2 Comments | 
AI, games, rules, video games | Tagged: AI, games, magnets...how do they work?, Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Man, rules, video games | 
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Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
December 7, 2010
The folks at the PokerStars online poker service actively police their games to make sure that bots are not being used to gain advantage.
Here’s a recent post from their Game Security staff demonstrating that they paid a visit to one player in order to witness the playing and playstyle in person.
It ends with the following wonderful quote:
We are pleased to report, however, that ‘rs03rs03′ is human.
(I also thought JWZ’s take on it was amusing. But you would need to have read Neuromancer to get it.)
1 Comment | AI, games, video games | Tagged: AI, games, poker, PokerStars, Turing Police, video games, William Gibson | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
March 17, 2010
Here’s the video for an interesting speech by Jesse Schell entitled “Design Outside The Box.”
Topics of the speech include:
- the psychology of games – making them sticky
- the consumer desire for realism and authenticity as a recent trend
- technological convergence/divergence of devices, the iPhone, the iPad, and the “pocket exception”
- the possibility of game achievements improving behavior
- the fact that there are more FarmVille players on FaceBook than there are Twitter accounts
Achievements are already leaking over to non-games, some items that could have been mentioned:
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No Comments » | games, video games | Tagged: Amazon.com, FaceBook, FarmVille, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Netflix, Ribbon Hero, Twitter, video games, XBox 360 | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
January 31, 2010
Scientific American’s online edition has an article touching on the study I previously blogged in which videogames were observed to improve vision. The article is a nice contrast to much of the game journalism coverage of the research, and gives me an opportunity to briefly revisit this topic.
Obviously, we know that games can teach information or hone motor skills – but there isn’t a lot of research around games and brain plasticity.
This article has a nice point calling out the lack of good research in this area (I’m looking at you, Brain Age.):
To date, much of the claims around this rapidly growing area of technology-supported medical interventions are insufficiently supported by scientific data.
(I have since found a study examining the effect of videogames upon memory and thinking skills in the elderly – using Boom Blox.)
Out of a number of online mentions of this research that I have seen, this article comes closest to referencing Steven Johnson‘s book “Everything Bad Is Good For You”. Perhaps I have just missed the articles that make the logical connection.
It also amuses me to see a study showing that playing Call Of Duty 2 or Unreal Tournament 2004 is in any measurable sense “better” than playing The Sims 2.
In other news, it seems that Dr. Richard Haier is still researching with Tetris. Dr. Haier did some of the original brain research with Tetris back in 1992 (two publications: one in Intelligence, another in Brain Research). In 2009, Dr. Haier did some new research involving Tetris while acting as a consultant to Blue Planet Software. MSNBC has a brief interview with Dr. Haier. Wired has another writeup on the research. (I would be remiss if I didn’t include a link to a certain someone declaring themselves as a Gameboy Tetris purist: “Tetris on the Gameboy…only.”)
I’ll close with another link I had lying around: scientists studying mice brains by using Quake 2.
Update, March 2010: Another bit of research on Tetris and PTSD.
No Comments » | brain science, games, video games | Tagged: Blue Planet Software, Boom Blox, brain, Brain Age, brain science, Call of Duty 2, Dallas Gaming Mafia, Dr. Richard Haier, Everything Bad Is Good For You, Gameboy, games, id Software, Nintendo, Oregon Trail, PTSD, Quake 2, Solitaire, Steve Wozniak, Steven Berlin Johnson, Steven Johnson, Tetris, The Sims 2, This Is Your Brain On Tetris, This Is Your Brain On Videogames, Unreal Tournament 2004, video games, Woz | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
November 19, 2009
The results of the Mario Bros. AI competition have been made available. (Not really surprising that the top three entries used A*.)
Robin Baumgarten has won, and has made his source code available. AIGameDev.com also has an interview with Robin.
No Comments » | AI, games, video games | Tagged: A*, AI, games, machine learning, Mario, Nintendo, video games | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
October 12, 2009
Certainly, if you’ve been around the rule space long enough, you will be familiar with such terms as “knowledge engineering” and “knowledge capture”.
Robert X. Cringely’s latest column is (somewhat) about a knowledge capture platform. Nestled in among the usual rant about IBM and outsourcing (and I say that as a fan), is a link to an IBM patent for a “Platform for Capturing Knowledge”.
I haven’t read the patent myself, only Cringely’s commentary. But it seems the end result is not an expert system, but a video game for training experts. That’s an interesting aspect, although I’m not sure what the patent has that is unique. I seem to recall seeing plenty of prior art in this area years ago, especially in terms of expert systems for training medical personnel.
I don’t have time to spend digging up prior art right now, but I bet a number of readers have seen some as well.
No Comments » | AI, games, video games | Tagged: expert systems, games, knowledge engineering, Robert X. Cringely, This Is Your Brain On Videogames, video games | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
August 6, 2009
Julian Togelius and Sergey Karakovskiy have organized a competition to create an agent (or AI) that plays the video game Super Mario Bros. – or, more accurately, Infinite Mario Bros. a tribute game featuring random level generation.
The advantage of using Infinite Mario Bros. is the random level generation – which can let the agent learn more generalized playing tactics rather than tactics that are tailored to a static set of levels as in Ms. Pac-Man or Pitfall.
I look forward to seeing the results of the competition, and hope to see source code published as well.
No Comments » | AI, games, video games | Tagged: AI, games, machine learning, Mario, Ms. Pac-Man, Nintendo, Pitfall, video games | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
June 29, 2009
From Rutgers university comes a learning algorithm that they have applied to playing the Atari 2600 game “Pitfall!”.
An example video is on YouTube.
One of the research papers is apparently here (although the site isn’t being very responsive at the moment).
I’ll get around to posting on machine learning for Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man at some point as well.
(Spotted on Kotaku and GameSetWatch.)
No Comments » | AI, games, video games | Tagged: AI, Atari 2600, games, machine learning, Pitfall, video games | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
April 21, 2009
I wasn’t previously aware of VideoGamePriceCharts.com, but I learned about them recently through Kotaku. The site tracks the prices of used video games. Of particular interest is their recent article tracking prices of series games when a new installment is released.
The article shows historical data for series games such as Resident Evil, Pokemon and Call of Duty that shows spikes in prices for used copies of the older series installments surrounding the release of the newer installments. This is not entirely surprising, but I’ve never seen real data laid out to support the idea. They also have a posting from last year that shows the release of GTA IV causing a spike in prices for the earlier GTA games.
This has a few interesting implications:
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No Comments » | games, video games | Tagged: capitalism, datamining, economics, video games | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
