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Nerds Program Videogame Bots to Wage Nuclear War

by Caleb Johnson on June 20, 2009 at 07:20 AM

What happens when you take one large group of nerds, throw them in a convention, and tell them to cut loose? Well, we'll give you a hint: it doesn't involve boatloads of booze, loud music, or a conga line.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers challenged the attendants of its convention to create a big, bad bot to ultimately win a one-on-one tournament in DEFCON -- a strategy game that Fidgit calls a "thermonuclear chess match." Essentially, the programmers try to convince judges that the artificial intelligence is a person playing the game.The person whose AI bot racks up the most kills wins $500 and a legion of nerdy fans.


Aside from the fact that programming an AI bot sounds like a lot of work, we don't think DEFCON, which was created by indie developer Introversion, sounds like much fun, either. The words 'thermonuclear' and 'chess' in the same sentence certainly don't make us want to pick up a joystick. Maybe next year the event organizers should just use that $500 to throw a dance party for attendees. Five bills would probably be enough to hire these ladies. [From: Fidgit, via DVICE]

Tags: ai, bots, engineering, programming, top, videogames

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