Not just games

Simple games are very popular now, if not to say “stupid”. The criterion for stupidity (for me) is that the simplest bot could play such a game much better than humans. However, we spend a terrible amount of time playing these games. But there are tasks that are not too tough for computer programs. But at the same time people solve them with ease. Is it possible to make such tasks from the game? And is it possible to get both benefits and Fun at the same time?

It turns out that many are asking a similar question. Everyone knows the story of how spammers used porn sites visitors as live computers (forcing them to solve captchas). But this was not the end. Inquiring minds began to invent new puzzles for "meat robots" (c) Crank. One of these tasks, still not solved algorithmically,


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This recognition and indexing images. Of course, computer vision has progressed significantly in recent years, but researchers simply do not have enough statistical data to train the “iron boobies” (c) Goblin.

But this is a wonderful material for the game. People really like to recognize pictures and they are even willing to pay money so that they can only be given such an opportunity (see the BigFish top and games in the Hidden Object genre or “I'm looking for”).

The guys from Carnegie Mellon University have made a very simple, but exciting multiplayer game. The rules are pretty simple. The game has two roles: "describing" (Describer) and "seeker" (Seeker). "Descriptive" show the picture and he must tell about it as much as possible. His descriptions show several "seekers." The seeker has a search string. Based on the descriptions, the seeker creates a search query and receives a set of pictures. His task is to choose among all the pictures exactly the one that is described. And do it faster than others. For the correct answer, the points are obtained by describing and finding. Then things change roles, and so on. All this is limited in time.



It turned out surprisingly addictive. It is not known whether, in fact, the results of this game will bring the benefits that the creators are talking about (indexing pictures on the Internet). But in any case, the process itself is already enjoyable, which means it makes sense.

Play Phetch .

PS The game works in a browser and requires Java (jre) .

Original on www.puzzled.ru