
Neural MMO – A Multiagent Game Environment - jfreax
https://blog.openai.com/neural-mmo/
======
harias
Microsoft project Malmo is attempting the same using Minecraft.

Github: [https://github.com/Microsoft/malmo#getting-
started](https://github.com/Microsoft/malmo#getting-started)

Homepage: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-
mal...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-malmo/)

~~~
jsuarez5341
Hi! I'm well aware of Malmo -- it's a project I'm fond of, but not quite the
same thing. I wouldn't quite consider Minecraft an MMO -- it doesn't really
scale with the player base as nicely as, say, Runescape or WoW. There's a
2-pager on the high level objective and approach in the Github repo if you're
interested.

------
zebrafish
What I find interesting about this is that the agents naturally become
"pacifists". To optimize for survival, they try keep their neighbors at arms
length and avoid conflict.

I wonder what would happen if they took the 8 species model that developed
niches and introduced some kind of "boredom" feature. Or what might be more
interesting is to have the agents produce offspring that stay with them early
in life but consume equal resources and see if a "boredom" naturally occurs in
the offspring.

I guess given that agents optimizing for survival creates routine, I'm curious
where boredom or the desire to explore the world might originate from.

~~~
setr
I wouldn’t see it as that surprising; most of human history is... not
fighting. Its doing exactly that: staying at arms length, because war is
expensive (and even victory can leave you weak enough to a third party
invasion).

If you want to see combat, increasing the number of actors beyond
sustainability will naturally cause fights until the same equilibrium is
reached.. add total resource depletion (not just regeneration) to break the
equilibrium again

You don’t need anything as complex as boredom to break pacifist behavior; just
variable resource constraints will easily do the trick

------
droobles
Plot twist: This research's purpose is covertly to make the best Runescape
bots possible. :)

~~~
ben_jones
Why, there's not much money in those anymore unless you invest a ton of time
on huge amounts of automation/infrastructure and at that point you couldve
built a much more reliable SaaS business and playing RS isnt fun anymore.

source: invested a ton of time in that during HS when the getting was good
($5/m)

~~~
ve55
There is a lot of money in them, there have been plenty of companies and
individuals making >$100,000 ARR by just working on MMO automation. Maybe some
other SaaS ideas are more reliable, but it is more difficult to ensure you
have a profitable idea and more uncertainty exists throughout the process.

------
lawlessone
maybe i'm wrong, but as far as movement is concerned it appears to be a 2d
environment rendered to 3d.

edit: i'm misunderstanding the whole purpose of this, it's very cool.

~~~
jsuarez5341
You're right that it's 2d, but that's beside the point. You could say the same
of Runescape -- the internal state is basically 2D and tile based. This is
actually quite a nice feature, as it makes the environment very efficient to
simulate.

------
SketchySeaBeast
That's really neat. I'm wondering if this can have implications for NPC's in
MMO's proper.

I'm not looking forward to when they introduce chat though.

~~~
droobles
I look forward to the day where "scripted" characters can grow and learn.
Characters with certain tendencies and traits set by writers can grow and
learn in different ways since they are weighted differently and have different
goals. Think the AI in S.T.A.L.K.E.R, but more "organic".

------
zwaps
So far, they are replicating known results from evolutionary game theory
(pacifism & niches) to economics (distance & diversification).

I wonder when and if they will surprise some novel results.

~~~
jsuarez5341
Well aware of a ton of results in older Alife work. A main goal here was to
couple the ideas there with MMOs. I think a lot of older Alife projects
puttered out because it was not clear where to take the environment next. In
contrast, MMOs are an established game genre that we know how to build out and
develop in order to support more and more complex play.

