Why Humans Will Always Defeat Terminators at Magic: The Gathering
If you hadn’t already caught the exciting news, Magic: The Gathering and its latest digital incarnation, Magic 2015 – Duels of the Planeswalkers, star on the cover of Episode 6 of Grab It. We spoke in-depth with the creator, Wizards of the Coast, who gave us an insight into the origins of the tabletop experience that started the whole Collectable Card Game craze, and the successful adaptation of that pastime into a killer video game.
We thought we’d share a snippet of that conversation with you, which came from lead designer Nik Davidson when discussing the challenges of recreating the tabletop experience in a virtual world. Here he explains why computers can topple the mighty human mind:
“Humans are actually a lot better than computers at playing games like Magic. Computers are great at chess, because there’s no unknown information, but when it comes to games where you need to rapidly synthesise known and unknown information to make decisions, the human is still at an advantage. Our AI does a good job of imitating a middling-skill player; it doesn’t misread cards or forget to attack, but it’s not as good as a human at crafting a long term strategy.”
Take that Skynet! For the full epic feature, and a tonne of other exclusives relating to all things indie iPad gaming, be sure to pick up Episode 6 now.
Reference:
- Magic 2015
