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What makes this amazing isn't specific to StarCraft 2. AI in strategy games has been really lackluster. I can't think of a single example of a strategy game whe

What makes this amazing isn't specific to StarCraft 2. AI in strategy games has been really lackluster. I can't think of a single example of a strategy game where an AI was competitive against experienced players due to strategy and tactics, rather than inhuman speed, accuracy or cheating. So it's not just about AI in StarCraft 2, but rather AI in essentially any (strategy) game. Now we have an example of an AI that can compete with real players.

skybrian 7y ago
There is a genuine advance here, but keep in mind that when an AI is developed by the game developers, they're not necessarily playing to win, but to make the AI fun to beat, and without using too much computer power, which would make the game slower. Also, due to commercial pressures it's tough to put a lot of effort into the AI for a game that's still being changed to make it more fun. Even now, I wouldn't really expect to see most game developers start using the latest machine learning techniques to build their own AI's. Maybe the really successful games with competitive leagues might be interested?
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >There is a genuine advance here, but keep in mind that when an AI is developed by the game developers, they're not necessarily playing to win, but to make the AI fun to beat, and without using too much computer power, which would make the game slower. This point is being brought up a lot, but I don't really buy it. Yes, there have been instances where the AI being too good discouraged players from playing the game as much, but this almost always happens due to the AI having some inhuman advantage that a person could not really replicate. I think players do want the AI to pose a challenge - that's what a lot of casual PvP games are about. Humans are (were?) the only ones that could offer a fair match against another human. I will absolutely grant you the computational power point though. However, as hardware advances, this cost will become more and more acceptable. I don't expect to see widedspread adoption of this in commercial games within a decade, but I think that in 2 or 3 decades this will be the norm. In fact, I would bet that once we can make an AI that is good at a game, we can also make it weaker. A game could estimate a player's skill rating silently and then adjust the AI's strength to give the player a difficult/fun time. Of course, it could just be that AlphaStar is able to play well against humans, because players treat it like a human. Maybe the AI still has standard game AI-like weaknesses that can be exploited if people know that they're playing against an AI. Eg some Diamond league player went mass ravens and kicked AlphaStar's ass. The AI would have to learn how to deal with stuff like this on the fly and I don't think we're there yet.
  - skybrian 7y ago
    Well, yes, you need to ramp up the difficulty in a way that's fun. The article describes "exploiter agents that focus on helping the main agent grow stronger" as key to their approach. That seems promising? Maybe it could be used to make bosses with specific strengths and weaknesses where part of the game is figuring out how to beat them.
  - the_af 7y ago
    I think part of the problem is that every videogame is a parlor trick in a sense. Unless you are a tournament player or someone who enjoys a really hard challenge, the bulk of the customers who buy the game just want to enjoy the illusion of a challenge. You don't really need a complex AI directing the hordes of enemies you want to defeat; you just want the illusion of battling enemies and emerging the victor, and how the game accomplishes this is not that relevant... unless the trick is so blatant that it breaks the suspension of disbelief, of course. Why does this matter? Because the trick is often less effort than the real deal. The point of videogames is to entertain you, and the goal of game publishers is to turn a profit while doing so. Obviously there are some exceptions, and indie/free games might have different goals (we all know indie games that can be punishing, like Dwarf Fortress). I remember with the original Left 4 Dead by Valve, they claimed there was an "AI Director" that modified the map according to how well you were doing, "adapting" to how you were playing. In practice it amounted to closing some sections of the map according to how easy you were killing zombies without dying. So this wasn't really AI but a glorified IF-THEN-ELSE trick, but what does it matter? It served its purpose. Do we really need something more complex (and expensive!) when killing zombies in L4D?
    - freddie_mercury 7y ago
      To extend your point, it is also clear from analytics in Steam & mobile gaming that games have massive amounts of player dropout. It is pretty rare, even in relatively short single player campaigns, to see 30% of people who bought the game finish it. So effort making the AI even better is always going to only be for an extremely small niche of players that play a game long enough to exhaust the limits of simple AI. Just look at the achievements for Left for Dead. Only 40% of all players have got the achievement for "kill one of each Uncommon type" which is trivial to get if you play for a few hours.
- floitsch 7y ago
  Hi Brian, I really hope this will change, though. Skilled AIs could make so many games more interesting and better. Many online games really suffer from bad multiplayer experiences. Players that drop in the middle of a game, ... If Overwatch, Destiny, ... had really good AIs, that would make the game more attractive. If a player drops, they could replace it with similarly skilled AI. Instead of waiting for 12 players of the same skill-level, they could just play with some AIs. They could even make it such, that humans win 70% of the time, and let the AIs just lose more often.
  - skybrian 7y ago
    Yep, I'd like to see it too. If one popular game really did single-player with AI opponents well, maybe it would start a trend? AI development probably needs to be made easier, somehow. Game developers have a lot to do.
evandijk70 7y ago
I am not sure what you mean by 'strategy' here, don't Chess, Go, and No-Limit Hold'em fall under those categories?
- username90 7y ago
  They don't really count as the computer game genre "strategy games". Computer strategy games tend to have many orders of magnitude more complex rules and state than Chess, Go or poker, so the game-play is very different and making an AI for them is also very different.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  The video game examples they give are what's called Real Time Strategy which is quite different from the games you described in which players explicitly take turns. Chess and Go are already quite different from NLH, because they are purely about strategy. The best strategy in Chess either wins or leads to a draw if played by both sides every game. In NLH an optimal strategy just breaks even (ignoring the rake) against other optimal players and makes money on average against anybody else. But over even a few hundred hands you can't tell.
JamesBarney 7y ago
If you watch the alphastar games inhuman speed and accuracy are a big part Of why it is so successful
baddox 7y ago
Is this AI better due to strategy and tactics? I am a low-level player but a fairly consistent spectacle, and in the videos I have seen I didn’t spot anything that looks like superior strategy or tactics. Just insanely good mechanics (which is still awesome!)

skybrian 7y ago

There is a genuine advance here, but keep in mind that when an AI is developed by the game developers, they're not necessarily playing to win, but to make the AI fun to beat, and without using too much computer power, which would make the game slower. Also, due to commercial pressures it's tough to put a lot of effort into the AI for a game that's still being changed to make it more fun. Even now, I wouldn't really expect to see most game developers start using the latest machine learning techniques to build their own AI's. Maybe the really successful games with competitive leagues might be interested?

Mirioron 7y ago
>There is a genuine advance here, but keep in mind that when an AI is developed by the game developers, they're not necessarily playing to win, but to make the AI fun to beat, and without using too much computer power, which would make the game slower. This point is being brought up a lot, but I don't really buy it. Yes, there have been instances where the AI being too good discouraged players from playing the game as much, but this almost always happens due to the AI having some inhuman advantage that a person could not really replicate. I think players do want the AI to pose a challenge - that's what a lot of casual PvP games are about. Humans are (were?) the only ones that could offer a fair match against another human. I will absolutely grant you the computational power point though. However, as hardware advances, this cost will become more and more acceptable. I don't expect to see widedspread adoption of this in commercial games within a decade, but I think that in 2 or 3 decades this will be the norm. In fact, I would bet that once we can make an AI that is good at a game, we can also make it weaker. A game could estimate a player's skill rating silently and then adjust the AI's strength to give the player a difficult/fun time. Of course, it could just be that AlphaStar is able to play well against humans, because players treat it like a human. Maybe the AI still has standard game AI-like weaknesses that can be exploited if people know that they're playing against an AI. Eg some Diamond league player went mass ravens and kicked AlphaStar's ass. The AI would have to learn how to deal with stuff like this on the fly and I don't think we're there yet.
- skybrian 7y ago
  Well, yes, you need to ramp up the difficulty in a way that's fun. The article describes "exploiter agents that focus on helping the main agent grow stronger" as key to their approach. That seems promising? Maybe it could be used to make bosses with specific strengths and weaknesses where part of the game is figuring out how to beat them.
- the_af 7y ago
  I think part of the problem is that every videogame is a parlor trick in a sense. Unless you are a tournament player or someone who enjoys a really hard challenge, the bulk of the customers who buy the game just want to enjoy the illusion of a challenge. You don't really need a complex AI directing the hordes of enemies you want to defeat; you just want the illusion of battling enemies and emerging the victor, and how the game accomplishes this is not that relevant... unless the trick is so blatant that it breaks the suspension of disbelief, of course. Why does this matter? Because the trick is often less effort than the real deal. The point of videogames is to entertain you, and the goal of game publishers is to turn a profit while doing so. Obviously there are some exceptions, and indie/free games might have different goals (we all know indie games that can be punishing, like Dwarf Fortress). I remember with the original Left 4 Dead by Valve, they claimed there was an "AI Director" that modified the map according to how well you were doing, "adapting" to how you were playing. In practice it amounted to closing some sections of the map according to how easy you were killing zombies without dying. So this wasn't really AI but a glorified IF-THEN-ELSE trick, but what does it matter? It served its purpose. Do we really need something more complex (and expensive!) when killing zombies in L4D?
  - freddie_mercury 7y ago
    To extend your point, it is also clear from analytics in Steam & mobile gaming that games have massive amounts of player dropout. It is pretty rare, even in relatively short single player campaigns, to see 30% of people who bought the game finish it. So effort making the AI even better is always going to only be for an extremely small niche of players that play a game long enough to exhaust the limits of simple AI. Just look at the achievements for Left for Dead. Only 40% of all players have got the achievement for "kill one of each Uncommon type" which is trivial to get if you play for a few hours.
floitsch 7y ago
Hi Brian, I really hope this will change, though. Skilled AIs could make so many games more interesting and better. Many online games really suffer from bad multiplayer experiences. Players that drop in the middle of a game, ... If Overwatch, Destiny, ... had really good AIs, that would make the game more attractive. If a player drops, they could replace it with similarly skilled AI. Instead of waiting for 12 players of the same skill-level, they could just play with some AIs. They could even make it such, that humans win 70% of the time, and let the AIs just lose more often.
- skybrian 7y ago
  Yep, I'd like to see it too. If one popular game really did single-player with AI opponents well, maybe it would start a trend? AI development probably needs to be made easier, somehow. Game developers have a lot to do.

evandijk70 7y ago

I am not sure what you mean by 'strategy' here, don't Chess, Go, and No-Limit Hold'em fall under those categories?

username90 7y ago
They don't really count as the computer game genre "strategy games". Computer strategy games tend to have many orders of magnitude more complex rules and state than Chess, Go or poker, so the game-play is very different and making an AI for them is also very different.
tialaramex 7y ago
The video game examples they give are what's called Real Time Strategy which is quite different from the games you described in which players explicitly take turns. Chess and Go are already quite different from NLH, because they are purely about strategy. The best strategy in Chess either wins or leads to a draw if played by both sides every game. In NLH an optimal strategy just breaks even (ignoring the rake) against other optimal players and makes money on average against anybody else. But over even a few hundred hands you can't tell.

JamesBarney 7y ago

If you watch the alphastar games inhuman speed and accuracy are a big part Of why it is so successful

baddox 7y ago

Is this AI better due to strategy and tactics? I am a low-level player but a fairly consistent spectacle, and in the videos I have seen I didn’t spot anything that looks like superior strategy or tactics. Just insanely good mechanics (which is still awesome!)