Microsoft Research Cambridge collaborates with Rare Ltd and Lionhead Studios on joint research to investigate future AI in games. The aim of the contest was to encourage understanding of how gaming research, artificial intelligence and machine learning contribute to innovative gameplay and more realistic and fun gaming experiences.

“At Microsoft Research Cambridge, we believe that artificial intelligence is the next frontier in computer games”, said Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, researcher in the Applied Games group at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. “Enabling game characters and virtual environments to react in more realistic ways is the central focus of our research group and we’re committed to State of the Art Research in AI for games as we believe it’s an important part of the future of games. The group is delighted to be involved in the Silicon Minds Warm-Up Challenge that brings these visions to the next generation of games developers.”

Contestants had only 7 weeks to create their game using innovative AI and the competition received broad international interest with over 600 registered participants and 31 valid submissions. Overall, the organisers of the competition were very impressed with the quality of submissions.

“I was blown away by what many of the contestants managed to achieve in such a short space of time. It’s really inspiring for professional game developers like ourselves to see the passion and talents of a future generation of programmers demonstrated in such a unique and exciting way through this competition. Artificial intelligence is such a key component of creating fun and enjoyable games so we were more than happy to extend the offer of interviews for internships here at Rare to the winners so they may get the chance to see how these ideas and techniques are applied in a big studio environment.” said Kieran Connell from Rare Ltd.

"I thoroughly enjoyed the Dream-Build-Play Silicon Minds 2008 Warm-Up Challenge!” said John Montemorano, co-winner of the Silicon Minds Challenge and creator of game ‘Orblast’. “XNA [Game Studio 2.0] is awesome... I was able to learn XNA and deploy a fun game within a month. For hobby game programmers like me, XNA [Game Studio] is a perfect fit and coding with it made it easy to focus on fun and game-play. The contest's AI focus was brilliant; the future of games just got a little closer."

Winners of the Dream-Build-Play Silicon Minds 2008 Warm Up Challenge:

• Nicholas Barratt and Gillian Allen, creators of Conquerator
• Nancy McCourt and Alexandre Coutur, creators of Hive
• Markus Jost and Remo Zehnder, creators of iSheep.
• John Montemorano, creator of Orblast
• Brent Strandy, creator of Specimen

"Microsoft is doing a great job in providing an easy entrance to future game developers,” said Markus Jost and Remo Zehnder, creators of one of the winning games, iSheep. “With XNA [Game Studio] it’s possible to build high standard 3D games in no time. XNA XNA [Game Studio] perfectly demonstrates how effectively a framework can assist you in developing complex applications”

The winning teams received:

• The opportunity to interview for a three month internship at the Microsoft Research Cambridge lab, UK and/or at one of the Microsoft game studios Rare Ltd or Lionhead Studios (from Summer 2008)
• A $3000 stipend per finalist team for their projects / travel to Games Developer Conference (GDC) 2008
• An invitation to show the project entry at GDC 2008 conference in San Francisco
• A one-year subscription to the XNA Creators Club for each team member