DeepMinds AlphaStar is going to play some StarCraft II games in European ladder

DeepMinds artificial intelligence for playing StarCraft II will anonymously play a number of games in the European ladder competition. Players who want to take the chance to play against the agent can indicate this via opt-in.

DeepMind and Blizzard cannot say how big the chance is that they will play against AlphaStar. It concerns a small number of test matches that will play different versions of AlphaStar based on the existing matchmaking rules. The companies also do not want it to be known when in which games the agent participates to prevent influence and guarantee that the game runs as if it were between two people.

AlphaStar only participates in 1v1 matches against European players who have opted-in. The outcome counts towards the player’s MMR or Match Making Rating. The artificial intelligence is more restricted than in testing in January, when a Team Liquid professional player lost five games but won a live match at a demonstration. That demonstration was criticized because the comparisons of actions per minute between humans and AI would be unfair.

The restrictions have been implemented in consultation with a professional player and concern, among other things, the number of effective actions per minute and per second. Also, AlphaStar can only receive information from its opponent when it enters its ‘virtual field of view’, similar to how a human perceives the game.

DeepMind will release images of the matches to be played and publish the results of the research in a scientific paper.