Event Date: 15/12/2008
This year will see the first international competition to create a
perfect computer game playing bot – a bot that you can't distinguish from a human player.

The 2K Bot Prize Contest will take place this December, as part of the Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, in Perth, Western Australia. Australian game development company 2K Australia (creator of the award-winning BioShock) is providing a sizable prize of $7,000 cash plus a trip to their Canberra studio for the team that can create a bot to
fool a panel of expert judges into thinking it is actually a human player.

A "bot" is a character in a computer game that is controlled using artificial intelligence. Bots are common in combat games. The very best bots act a lot like a human player: they run, they hide, they make surprise attacks - they even taunt the other players with well-chosen words and gestures.

Bots that play like humans can make a game more fun. But it's not easy to make a bot play the way a human does. A bot that never misses or makes a mistake is frustrating to play. A bot that always does the same things is
predictable and boring to play, and easy to beat.

While the contest is all about fun and games, there is a serious side to it too. More realistic bots could help make a game a commercial success. Bots are also used in serious simulations for defence and security planning
(but then they're called "intelligent agents"). A bot that can adapt to different opponents
and learn to play different games as well as a human can would be a breakthrough
in artificial intelligence, with far-reaching consequences.