by johan jordaan
i have been listening to a lot of podcasts that talk about artefact, the new tcg from valve, by richard garfield. the conversation usually go to how good it will be as spectator sport. this go me thinking about the aiiterator. the idea of users creating games and players and letting them fight it out for the tops spot appeals to me a lot. but i am technical. so the question becomes how can i make this platform accessible and exciting to people without a technical background. my initial thoughts are that we will have to provide interesting games that lend themselves to players being created with lots of heuristic-levers(tm). these games will have to be statistical in nature to make them interesting. so a game player writer will create a player for the game and expose a lot of levers and settings that influence the way the player plays the game. in the case of card games like hearthstone and magic the gathering this will include the deck to be used. the user that has configured the player now enters the player into a pool and can track its performance. a bit like a coach of a team. a player will be able to modify his bot based on stats provided by the system. so it could end up that a player modifies his bot almost in real time. games might take less than a minute to complete.
tags: ramblings - blog