2K Marin sponsors 2010 BotPrize contest in Copenhagen
The third 2K BotPrize competition will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark at the 2010 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games.
The aim of the contest is to see if a computer game playing bot can play like a human. In the contest, bots try to convince human players that they are also actually human players.
Twice before, the best bots created by international teams have failed the test - could 2010 be the breakthrough year?
Computers are superbly fast and accurate at playing games, but can they be programmed to be more fun to play - to play like you and me? People like to play against opponents who are like themselves - opponents with personality, who can surprise, who sometimes make mistakes, yet don't blindly make the same mistakes over and over. Can a computer be programmed to seem to have personality, fallibility and cunning?
The first contest was held in Perth, Western Australia in December 2008. Although none of the competitors was able to fool 4 out of 5 judges and take the major prize, some did fool 2 out of 5! You can read about the 2008 contest here.
The second contest was held at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy on 9 September 2009. Once again none of the bots was able to fool enough judges to take the major prize. But all the bots fooled at least one of the judges. You can read about the 2009 contest here.
Now, as they did in 2008 and 2009, Game Development Studio 2K Marin is offering a prize of A$7,000 cash plus a trip to their studio in Canberra for anyone who can create a bot to pass this "Turing Test for Bots" in Copenhagen.
New in-game judging system
A new judging system has been developed for this year's competition. Players will have a "special weapon" that can be used to score an instant kill against an opponent if you think you know whether he/she is a human or a bot. If you're right, you score bonus points, but if you're wrong ... you die horribly and lose points.
We have just set up the BotPrize Server, a new UT2004 game server, so that you can try the new system out yourself! If you would like to try, please read how on the BotPrize leaderboard web page.
Teams announced
Eleven international teams have entered for this year's competition. See here.
Call for judges
If you will be at the 2010 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, and would like to be a judge, please email us. You will need to be available for the final judging session at the conference, as well as for a couple of one hour sessions in the week before the conference. You should be someone who can play UT2004, and who is not closely connected to any of the competition entrants.
