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With OpenAI's Dota playing AI making the rounds over major media and serving as a major advertisement for the game itself, why would Tencent develop and publish

by gota 8y ago

With OpenAI's Dota playing AI making the rounds over major media and serving as a major advertisement for the game itself, why would Tencent develop and publish an AI of a game they don't own (Starcraft) as opposed to one they do own (League of Legends)? Seems like a such a trivially better decision

tylerhou 8y ago
They don't own League of Legends; they have a significant interest in the company which created it. League also doesn't have an API while Starcraft 2 does.
- oblio 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games#History > In February 2011, Tencent paid $400 million for a 93 percent stake in Riot Games.[2][8] Tencent bought the remaining 7 percent in December 16, 2015; the price was not disclosed. I don't know about you, but having 100% of the shares seems like a quite a bit more than "significant interest" in the company. Some would say that this "significant interest" qualifies as ownership :)
  - tylerhou 8y ago
    If I recall correctly, the ownership structure is set up in a way such that Riot has creative license over the game - when Tencent wanted Riot to build a mobile version of League, for example, Riot refused: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tensions-flare-behind-the-scenes-of-league-of-legends https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tensions-flare-behin... From the article: > Two years later, after watching the game take off in the U.S., Tencent raised its stake to 94% at a price valuing Riot at about $400 million. The remainder was held by the founders and employees, who wanted to keep at least some equity. > That deal would prove pivotal in what was to come. To persuade Messrs. Beck and Merrill to sell most of the equity, Tencent’s international chief David Wallerstein negotiated an agreement that ensured Riot could operate almost like a separate company. Tencent took two seats on Riot’s five-member board, while Riot’s founders took two others. The fifth seat was empty, a structure which remains in place. So yes, technically Tencent owns Riot, but they don't control Riot. I guess from a semantic viewpoint I was incorrect in that they "own" League of Legends, but as far as Riot is concerned Tencent doesn't have any control over its development, including building an API to support AI/ML research.
kowdermeister 8y ago
Maybe because then they couldn't be accused of knowing the inner workings of the game? I think they picked Starcraft because they can truly handle it like a black box.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  OpenAI gets very low level access to the DOTA source code and bot API, there is nothing hidden there but it facilitates integration. Tencent just owns a majority stake in Riot they didnt develop LoL and have very little to do with the actual game more likely they went with SC2 because it’s easier to integrate with as it has a bot API and it looks less like they are copying OpenAI and making another MOBA AI. SC2 and DOTA/LoL are also fundamentally different games with SC2 not being cooperative and presenting a different set of problems and solutions than MOBAs.
thomasahle 8y ago
After Deep Mind beat Go (and before), there was a lot of Starcraft being "the next thing" for AI. That's why a lot of research institutions (including Deep Mind and Facebook) are working on that. In fact, it was always a bit suspicious that Open AI chose to work on a different game, which may or may not be as hard. Having multiple groups working on the same problem makes it easier to understand the progress made.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  I suspect Dota 2 is a lot easier than Starcraft. I watched a video of that AI, and it was mostly tactical optimizations ("micro" in Starcraft-speak). The AI would position its unit just right, aim perfectly, optimize for maximum damage. The stuff machines are best at. Dota 2 is tactical, so having perfect micro is enough to win at least simple matches. Starcraft 2 is a different story.
  - cakebrewery 8y ago
    Slow humans is not as much a bottleneck in Dota as it is in Starcraft. It's easier to "brute force" Starcraft by sheer APM, which is easy for AI to do.
    - thomasahle 8y ago
      Nobody would find that interesting though. Just like the Dota not, and Deep Mind's Quake bot, accuracy and APM would of course be capped to human levels.
ndh2 8y ago
Because Starcraft is 1v1 and LoL is 5v5. Poker AIs also focus on 1v1 as opposed to full ring games. It's easier. Also because Starcraft has three races, i. e. 9 matchups. But if you pick one race for your AI, you only have three matchups to worry about. LoL on the other hand has about 500 champions (give or take), whose strengths and weaknesses are vastly dependent on the current patch. LoL is less about skill or strategy, and more about picking the champion of the week. Starcraft works because they have such a small number of matchups that balancing them is possible. Certainly not easy, and players keep figuring out ways to evolve the meta game. Maybe an AI could even find interesting new strategies. But LoL has so many matchups that their balancing team has an absolutely impossible task of trying to catch up. It's so complex that they can't just think about in theory, but they have to look at win-rate statistics, over different skill ranges. At this point it's more a problem of data science. And the number of champions keeps growing, because that's how they make money.
- LitFan 8y ago
  > LoL on the other hand has about 500 champions (give or take) LoL has 141 champions. Still significantly higher than Dota's 116. A common note I hear when people discuss open AI playing dota is that it uses pre-made matchups, which reduces the number of matchups considerably. Would it be that difficult to have the AI play the picking stage? Compared to the complexity of the decisions you have to make during the game, the picks are straightforward - especially if you have performance data on matchups. The number of practice games the AI would have to play to learn to handle all the heroes goes up drastically, but that's only a matter of time.
  - maaark 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure OpenAI only plays the single simplest hero, mechanically. The other 115 would be varying degrees of "more difficult" to play competently. Also, it only played mirror matches. If it had to play any hero against any hero, that's 3.393109e+190 possible matchups.
    - wrsh07 8y ago

by gota 8y ago

tylerhou 8y ago

They don't own League of Legends; they have a significant interest in the company which created it. League also doesn't have an API while Starcraft 2 does.

oblio 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games#History > In February 2011, Tencent paid $400 million for a 93 percent stake in Riot Games.[2][8] Tencent bought the remaining 7 percent in December 16, 2015; the price was not disclosed. I don't know about you, but having 100% of the shares seems like a quite a bit more than "significant interest" in the company. Some would say that this "significant interest" qualifies as ownership :)
- tylerhou 8y ago
  If I recall correctly, the ownership structure is set up in a way such that Riot has creative license over the game - when Tencent wanted Riot to build a mobile version of League, for example, Riot refused: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tensions-flare-behind-the-scenes-of-league-of-legends https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tensions-flare-behin... From the article: > Two years later, after watching the game take off in the U.S., Tencent raised its stake to 94% at a price valuing Riot at about $400 million. The remainder was held by the founders and employees, who wanted to keep at least some equity. > That deal would prove pivotal in what was to come. To persuade Messrs. Beck and Merrill to sell most of the equity, Tencent’s international chief David Wallerstein negotiated an agreement that ensured Riot could operate almost like a separate company. Tencent took two seats on Riot’s five-member board, while Riot’s founders took two others. The fifth seat was empty, a structure which remains in place. So yes, technically Tencent owns Riot, but they don't control Riot. I guess from a semantic viewpoint I was incorrect in that they "own" League of Legends, but as far as Riot is concerned Tencent doesn't have any control over its development, including building an API to support AI/ML research.

kowdermeister 8y ago

Maybe because then they couldn't be accused of knowing the inner workings of the game? I think they picked Starcraft because they can truly handle it like a black box.

dogma1138 8y ago
OpenAI gets very low level access to the DOTA source code and bot API, there is nothing hidden there but it facilitates integration. Tencent just owns a majority stake in Riot they didnt develop LoL and have very little to do with the actual game more likely they went with SC2 because it’s easier to integrate with as it has a bot API and it looks less like they are copying OpenAI and making another MOBA AI. SC2 and DOTA/LoL are also fundamentally different games with SC2 not being cooperative and presenting a different set of problems and solutions than MOBAs.

thomasahle 8y ago

After Deep Mind beat Go (and before), there was a lot of Starcraft being "the next thing" for AI. That's why a lot of research institutions (including Deep Mind and Facebook) are working on that. In fact, it was always a bit suspicious that Open AI chose to work on a different game, which may or may not be as hard. Having multiple groups working on the same problem makes it easier to understand the progress made.

dunpeal 8y ago
I suspect Dota 2 is a lot easier than Starcraft. I watched a video of that AI, and it was mostly tactical optimizations ("micro" in Starcraft-speak). The AI would position its unit just right, aim perfectly, optimize for maximum damage. The stuff machines are best at. Dota 2 is tactical, so having perfect micro is enough to win at least simple matches. Starcraft 2 is a different story.
- cakebrewery 8y ago
  Slow humans is not as much a bottleneck in Dota as it is in Starcraft. It's easier to "brute force" Starcraft by sheer APM, which is easy for AI to do.
  - thomasahle 8y ago
    Nobody would find that interesting though. Just like the Dota not, and Deep Mind's Quake bot, accuracy and APM would of course be capped to human levels.

ndh2 8y ago

Because Starcraft is 1v1 and LoL is 5v5. Poker AIs also focus on 1v1 as opposed to full ring games. It's easier. Also because Starcraft has three races, i. e. 9 matchups. But if you pick one race for your AI, you only have three matchups to worry about. LoL on the other hand has about 500 champions (give or take), whose strengths and weaknesses are vastly dependent on the current patch. LoL is less about skill or strategy, and more about picking the champion of the week. Starcraft works because they have such a small number of matchups that balancing them is possible. Certainly not easy, and players keep figuring out ways to evolve the meta game. Maybe an AI could even find interesting new strategies. But LoL has so many matchups that their balancing team has an absolutely impossible task of trying to catch up. It's so complex that they can't just think about in theory, but they have to look at win-rate statistics, over different skill ranges. At this point it's more a problem of data science. And the number of champions keeps growing, because that's how they make money.

LitFan 8y ago
> LoL on the other hand has about 500 champions (give or take) LoL has 141 champions. Still significantly higher than Dota's 116. A common note I hear when people discuss open AI playing dota is that it uses pre-made matchups, which reduces the number of matchups considerably. Would it be that difficult to have the AI play the picking stage? Compared to the complexity of the decisions you have to make during the game, the picks are straightforward - especially if you have performance data on matchups. The number of practice games the AI would have to play to learn to handle all the heroes goes up drastically, but that's only a matter of time.
- maaark 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure OpenAI only plays the single simplest hero, mechanically. The other 115 would be varying degrees of "more difficult" to play competently. Also, it only played mirror matches. If it had to play any hero against any hero, that's 3.393109e+190 possible matchups.
  - wrsh07 8y ago