

What happens when a Social Game - is run with Bots? - win_ini
http://rothy.tumblr.com/post/6178566027/battle-tetris-social-impostor-software

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corprew
This would be a great science fiction story with the hook that he's a sim of
an actual person created to participate in social games

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flannell
Your comment made me think of the film "The Thirteenth Floor"

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/>

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pavel_lishin
Made me think of this: <http://qntm.org/difference>

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p4bl0
Thanks for the link! It also made me think of that but I couldn't find it
back.

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win_ini
Note: A friend just pointed out the explanation for this behaviour on Tetris
Battle's help area which is helpful to understand what may have happened:

All of the games with a Facebook name and profile picture are real game plays
from the actual player. If the server is unable to find a player, then the
title AI will appear on the opponent’s name to tell you that it is an AI bot
playing against you.

I should note - that in my screen shot, there is no indication of it being a
replay though.

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liuhenry
A friend of mine tried to do a statistics project on the algorithm. Made the
interesting discovery that the blocks are randomized within 7-piece sets, with
the system going through each different tetramino before repeating any one.

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bhickey
I believe that this feature is generally known as 'Grab Bag.' In a Tetris
implementation where tetraminos are sampled uniformly, the player is
guaranteed to lose. Given a sufficiently long run of Z or S blocks it's
impossible to make any lines. Grab Bag eliminates these pathological runs. It
also provides an upper bound on the maximum time between see identical blocks
at 13 and can make for a better play experience.

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bhickey
Hm. I should clarify. Runs of Z or S don't prevent lines, but they do
guarantee that you'll always leave an eye. It is the accumulated eyes that
prevent line formation and lead to a loss.

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ansy
The stock market?

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IvarTJ
Zwok is a Flash multiplayer shooter that I enjoyed and thought that I was
great at until I found that I could play it without an Internet connection.

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michaelcampbell
I used to play Zwok a lot. Are you saying the opponents are bots, always? If
so, some of them are really good (and some, horrible).

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pharrington
In the first Block Battle thread, someone noted[1] that the individual matches
are often just replays of past games. At the higher levels (around 20+) you
can actually randomly play against the AI, but this is at least a little more
honest, as its name is A.I., and it goes _very_ fast.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2389740>

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slig
Related: If you want to play only with real humans, try Block Battle
<http://blockbattle.net/>

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Xavi
Out of curiosity, how do you make sure only real people are playing?

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p4bl0
Because his bot is not that good and it still beat them all.

