The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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10:04am on Thursday, 24th November, 2005:
Outburst
Apparently, Microsoft have applied for a patent on "adaptive agents" in video games.
So let's see. You take an idea that has been kicking around in AI for at least 30 years, which has already been used in many different applications, and which people have been trying to get put into video games since the 1980s, and all of a sudden you can patent it? Uh? My original PhD proposal was to do precisely this kind of thing for the mobiles in MUD1, and it was only the fact that I'd have to rewrite MUD1 that meant I wasn't allowed to do it.
Why are these travesties of patent law permitted? It's like the patent system is a drunk, staggering across the road barely able to see, waiting to be hit by a passing motorist and sent to casualty to be patched up while sternly being told to mend its ways.
NPCs that are self-motivated and learn, wow, what an idea that is — for 1981.
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Copyright © 2005 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).