The company behind the long-running space simulation Eve online has entered into a partnership with Google in which the search giant will take a minority stake. In exchange, Google’s DeepMind will train its AI technology on the game, according to a report from Bloomberg.
CCP Games, the developer that created and maintains Eve onlinewas also renamed Fenris Creations. This happened right after the company bought the rights to the game from Korean developer Pearl Abyss.
Google’s investment is “in the millions” of dollars, according to Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of Fenris Creations. DeepMind will first study player behavior on isolated servers, because Eve Online “requires skills that the AI has not yet fully mastered.” That’s according to DeepMind’s Adrian Bolton, who cited obstacles like “long-term planning and continuous learning.”
Eve online has been around for over 20 years and is known for giving players unprecedented choice in how they navigate the gaming world. This makes it an extremely attractive source of social simulation data for DeepMind’s technology to delve into. “We joke that the final AI boss in the games would obviously be Eve online“, said Pétursson. “Eve provides insight into our own society and the human condition.”
Will players gain anything from this collaboration beyond having their actions tracked and cataloged by researchers? The companies promise that this partnership will also “explore new gaming experiences enabled by these technologies.” It’s incredibly vague, but whatever.
Google’s AI lab has already trained its technology on other games, from arcade classics to StarCraft II. As for the brand new Fenris Creations, it creates or maintains several titles in the universe of Eve online. There’s the next FPS-focused spin-off Eve Avant-garde and the recently launched mobile title Conquest of the Eve Galaxy.
Finally, there is the probably doomed Eve Border. This is a sort of blockchain-based spin-off that used to be called Awakening of the project.