Alexander Alusheff

Lansing State Journal

LANSING – Imagine playing a video game that could learn your strategies.

Say your team is defending against a scourge of computer-controlled enemies. The first few waves of bad guys rush straight in your line of fire. The next day, you find the enemy dodging and flanking you. The artificial intelligence, or AI, has adapted to your strategies and will continue to do so throughout the game, creating different experiences over time.

That's exactly the sort of experience the Lansing-made video game "Tuebor" will offer when the cooperative multiplayer action game is released across all gaming platforms this spring.

Lansing independent game developer Strength in Numbers Studios has teamed up with Arend Hintze, a professor in the departments of integrative biology and of computer science and engineering at Michigan State University, who developed the AI.

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“The most core thing here is that it will make the AI better,” said Hintze, who has been working with the studio since January. “We’re evolving the computer AI against the player.”

This evolving AI, dubbed the “Hintze Machine” by the studio, will be incorporated into all four game types used in "Tuebor", which include a survival mode, where players try to last the longest against each other and the computer-controlled enemies; a last stand mode, where a team of six players will defend a base against waves of enemies; a core breach mode, where players battle each other and are given squads of non-player characters to control and fight for them; and a mode where three competing player teams will fend off enemies and sabotage one another in an attempt to get to the resources in the middle of the map.

The AI will be programmed with a variety of behaviors, allowing it to choose how to respond to situations the players put it in, Hintze said. The system will be able to collect information about how people play and develop the AI further. When players figure out how to defeat the AI and tell their friends about their strategy, it may not work again, he said.

“This could be a game changer,” said Scott Reschke, CEO of the game studio. In most games, the challenge of the most daunting enemies is that they deal more damage and survive more damage, “but we’re working to change their behavior dynamic so they come at you in different ways. At the end of the day, we’re taking AI to the next level.”

In January, a Google AI program beat the European champion of the Chinese board game Go, a game considered harder than chess. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced on the social media website in January that his own research team was close to developing AI that could do the same.

Hintze said this advancement is an awesome accomplishment, but not something that would translate well into video games. Google’s AI will perform only the best calculated move every time, he said, instead of reacting differently.

“It’s an AI we don’t want,” he said. “It is super good for Go, but very boring for a massively multiplayer online game.”

"Tuebor" is set on a battle-scarred Earth in the year 7235, where humans have evolved, mutated or replaced their body parts with technology and now battle each other resources. Players will be able unlock 30 playable heroes throughout the game as well as upgrade skills, equipment and weapons.

“It’s 'Mad Max' meets 'Blade Runner' with some 'Fifth Element' mixed in,” Reschke said.

The game is a result of the culmination of 500,000 hours of aggregated game-time statistics from players of all demographics who visited Reschke’s cyber-café in East Lansing called the Frag Center, which closed in 2010. In Latin, Tuebor means, “I will defend,” a word which appears on Michigan’s state seal.

Reschke said the studio raised $1 million from investors to develop what he calls the first stage of the game. The game could be expanded if successful upon release. If the evolving AI is successful, then Reschke said they could license the Hintze Machine to other studios to better their games.

“For an indie studio, this is really cool,” Reschke said. “Our chance to survive in the industry is a lot greater when we incorporate this AI in.”

Contact Alexander Alusheff at (517) 388-5973 or aalusheff@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexalusheff.

About Tuebor

Developer: Strength in Numbers Studios

Release date: Spring 2016

Platforms: PC, Xbox One, PS4

Website: http://tueborgame.com/