Microsoft’s Invasion of the Robots Contest
“Microsoft is challenging developers worldwide to create conversational robots, or BOTs, for MSN® Messenger and Windows Liveâ„¢ Messenger. The most original, useful robots collect $40,000 in total prizes.â€
This is one of the more interesting competitions Microsoft has run, the Invasion of the Robots Contest, and I’m very excited to see that it’s open to the world (except Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and residents of the province of Quebec in Canada; see rules).
The grand prize is a NVIDIA Quadro FX Alienware MJ-12 7550 Workstation (including processor and system, monitor, keyboard and mouse) valued at $10,000 and first prize is a Bose Lifestyle 48 DVD Home Entertainment System and Bose Wireless Audio Link at $5,000.
I think the focus is a bit whacked though; at least judging by the inspiration. You’re judged by interaction, usefulness, creativity and the number of services you use (Alerts, Virtual Earth, MSN Spaces, Gadgets and Windows Live); and if you stop to think and realise that an IM window is just a console app talking to a service there are any number of possibilities.
Rather than a boring chat bots or reminder bot, just look at the bots running around in IRC! For just one example what about the trivia bot who posts questions and rewards the player who answers first, and then keeps a log of players scores? The work’s already done, all someone has to do is port it to MSN.
Like I said, if you realise that the IM window is just like a console app talking to a service, what about building a MUD? It wouldn’t be very difficult to manage multiple people playing at once and chatting to each other with the service managing actions.
I have an idea for game (which I’m not going to mention here for fear of copying) which I’ve managed to convince a couple of friends to get involved with. It’s game and I hope to incorporate Virtual Earth (we’ll have to see about the other services) for some neat effects.
So I’ll see you on the playing field, enjoy!
