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Luca Redwood's new game is an experiment in deception, AI, altruism, and free-to-play

Is the 10000000 developer Smarter Than You?

Luca Redwood's new game is an experiment in deception, AI, altruism, and free-to-play
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iOS
| Smarter Than You

In a Starbucks in Central London, I accuse 10000000 creator Luca Redwood of dabbling in some "Peter Molyneux level shit."

His pitch for devious social duelling game Smarter Than You, and its various experiments into everything from national pride to human psychology, carries the electrifying enthusiasm of gaming's biggest bullshitter.

He's trying things that have never been done before, he says. He rattles off mad predictions, and shares ideas that should probably be kept secret, and may never come into fruition. He's just so excited about his plans, and traps you in a reality distortion bubble so you are too.

So maybe I'm still stuck in the bubble, but I think his new project - a turn-taking rock-paper-scissors variant with a few ingenious twists - sounds wonderfully interesting.

Luca Redwood

For starters, the three moves (attack, counter, and arrow) are given a random amount of attack power. And instead of playing best-of-three, you duel until one player's health is depleted.

And then there's the deception. Before you make each move, you can construct a sentence from pre-canned words to throw your opponent off, or mess with her mind, or bluff, or double bluff.

If you're planning to counter, you might want to tell your opponent to attack you - and hope that your cunning bit of reverse- reverse-psychology works out.

Or you can say "I like to pickles". Sometimes the sentence building tool just falls apart, but Redwood says that's all part of the charm.

As you play, Redwood will be collecting all your moves, phrases, bluffs, lies, records, and stats, and then he'll crunch the numbers and give them to M.E.T.I.S - a glitchy artificial intelligence that's been bugging me on Twitter.

Armed with detailed stats on what moves people play and what they say when unleashing them, M.E.T.I.S will become a roaming player in the game, randomly battling humans with his database of psychology and probability.

"I predict that M.E.T.I.S will have an 80 percent win rate," reckons Redwood.

Are humans so predictable that a computer can learn what bluffs we try to make, or the probability that we'll go for a certain move, and use the aggregate data to beat individual players? Who knows, but it will certainly be interesting.

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Finally, there's the experiment into altruism, and free-to-play.

Redwood's no fan of the model, but as Smarter Than You needs to be free - "I want people to connect with someone else on the other side of the world. That requires a big pool of diverse players" - he's using it as a chance to toy with the formula.

Smarter Than You gives you experience points when you play (more if you win, of course), which let you unlock new customisation options like faces, colours, national flags - and other secret treats.

After the game ends, you get the opportunity to pay some real-world cash to tip your opponent an experience bonus. "You can never buy anything for yourself, you can only reward your opponent," Redwood explains.

"I was going to give players a small experience bump for tipping people, but that felt like a cop out."

The tip jar idea stems from the fact that it feels good to give, and to receive. And it's not just about bumping each other's experience points, but giving a mark of respect, or acknowledgement that it was a fun match.

Will players spend money, when they have nothing to gain themselves? "I’ve consulted with a lot of people, and everybody has told me there is literally no way this will work," admits Redwood. "They’re probably right and thats OK."

Smarter Than You

Because whether the game is a tremendous success or a hilarious failure, it doesn't really matter. 10000000's success means it's okay for Smarter Than You to be a flop, and it was only ever intended as a mental break from Ten Million follow-up, You Must Build A Boat.

So maybe Redwood isn't really much like Molyneux. He has a full head of hair and no turtle-neck sweaters in his wardrobe, for one. And there's a lot more modesty and self awareness (and self deprecation) in his statements about changing the nature of video games.

But I still sense a little Molyneux in the indie designer. Not the tiresome claims of a man who's broken too many promises, though, but the dizzying, intoxicating ambition of a new developer with some seriously smart ideas, and the enthusiasm to try something daring and new.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer