Machine learning is often associated with the few studios that can afford dedicated research teams, but now London’s WildMeta aims to make machine learning-based bots more accessible than ever.
Following in the footsteps of leading machine learning research organisations, WildMeta went out of stealth in January of this year (2021) and unveiled its own framework to build machine learning-based bots capable of playing video games and react naturally to their environment. The team has now announced integrations with Unity and Unreal Engine, as well as compatibility with most engines thanks to its game developer-friendly library that acts as a bridge between game data and WildMeta’s machine learning systems.
Over the past year, the company’s founders, Amandine Flachs and Dr Alexandre Borghi have been initiating discussions with game studios on machine learning potential and adoption. While many game developers showed a genuine interest in the technology, most of their questions focused on how it would actually fit into their existing tech stack. WildMeta’s new integrations and C++ library are a direct solution to these questions.
Using the API and library will enable teams to reduce the amount of custom development required to make machine learning technology compatible with games and will let it concentrate its efforts on the game AI itself.
Bots aren’t bad – dumb bots are!
Amandine Flachs, CEO and co-founder of WildMeta said, “Bots aren’t a bad thing; dumb bots are! Research teams have shown you can train machine learning-bots to beat the best professional players. We don’t want to beat players. Instead, we want this technology to help game developers for example with QA, to improve players’ experience, offer worthy opponents that react to your moves instead of following a script, squad team members that actually contribute to your game or training bots that prepare you to known tactics. We have managed to turn research into a production-ready system that fits studios’ existing tech stacks, now our focus is to drive adoption of this technology.”
Steve is an award-winning editor and copywriter with more than 20 years’ experience specialising in consumer technology and video games. With a career spanning from the first PlayStation to the latest in VR, he's proud to be a lifelong gamer.
