An artificially intelligent virtual gamer created by computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin has won the BotPrize by convincing a panel of judges that it was more human-like than half the humans it competed against.

“People tend to tenaciously pursue specific opponents without regard for optimality,” said Schrum. “When humans have a grudge, they’ll chase after an enemy even when it’s not in their interests. We can mimic that behavior.” Way cool, but Unreal Tournament is a poor choice in my opinion.

What would be a better choice?

I wont name a specific game because this the internet and fanboyism will ensue. But something slower paced, with a team objective, that would require cooperation. I think it would be a lot easier to spot the bots if they had to think of multiple strategies at once, rather than run n' gun and get head shots. If they had weigh pros and cons of defending a flag, running to help a teammate, going to capture a flag, go for revenge kill, or just ignore the game type entirely as many people do.. It would be a lot trickier. Although the article didnt make very clear what game type they played.

All this could still be done within Unreal Tournament but its not in its best nature. Unreal is more geared toward what bots are already good at which is reaction and aiming. It would be like trying to make a human seem like a robot by having them compete in stand-up comedy.

Bots also never try exploit flaws within the game or cheat. Nearly every first person shooter has some minor flaw where if you do some random thing in a certain spot you can get outside of the level and many times you need a teammate to do it. Lets see a bot do that.

Ha! Well said.

Someday someone will design a game that gives both robots and humans a chance at winning...