AI to complete video games and sell them

[Jannes]

How hard would it be to train an AI to play video games for you? I thought about video games that require a lot of grind. Clash of Clans is a good example. You only need to collect gold and elixir once a day and upgrade some stuff. There is no action required. My idea is to make like 500 accounts that are all run by an AI. After a year or two I could sell these accounts to people who don’t want to grind through all of the beginning.

[zurew]

Its hard to make an AI and then to train that AI to play videogames for you. I think there are better ways to do the automatization (for example creating a bot), especially, if we are not talking about complex actions.

Its not that hard to make a bot that can do some easy repetitive steps for you. Sometimes the problem is that some game engines can detect that you use a bot and that can be a challenge to try to get around. Other thing you will need to be aware of , is that after every game update, you will need to check, whether your bot is still working fine or not.

[Jannes]

1 hour ago, zurew said:

Its hard to make an AI and then to train that AI to play videogames for you. I think there are better ways to do the automatization (for example creating a bot), especially, if we are not talking about complex actions.

Okay I think I meant a bot. Yes there are only very simple actions required.

1 hour ago, zurew said:

Its not that hard to make a bot that can do some easy repetitive steps for you. Sometimes the problem is that some game engines can detect that you use a bot and that can be a challenge to try to get around. Other thing you will need to be aware of , is that after every game update, you will need to check, whether your bot is still working fine or not.

Hmm okay might still be worth the risk. Do you know where I could find somebody who would do that for me? And what would it Cost ?

[Yarco]

Not hard, people have been botting in games like Runescape and World of Warcraft for 20 years.

I made a script to automate playing Farmville for myself in my teens using AutoHotkey.

People make careers out of it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/comments/cnbuif/i_make_58k_usd_a_year_after_taxes_with_bot/

It's much more lucrative to farm currency in games that have it and sell that to players, instead of selling whole accounts.

I don't recommend it as a life purpose though, you're doing something very low consciousness. The whole market is full of scammers and thieves. Your clients don't have morals so they'll do credit card chargebacks or report you to the game, getting every account created on your IP banned in one swoop. Besides, game companies are way better at detecting and banning cheaters nowadays. It's a game of whack a mole where they make an improvement, hackers get all their accounts banned and need to find a way around it, the company patches it, repeat.

If you're interested in the training AI side of things as a life purpose, as opposed to just an easy way to make money, you might be better off learning about general AI, machine learning, and neural networks. Then you can create an AI that can teach itself to beat any game all on its own through trial and error:

IMO this is much cooler and more fulfilling than making a dumb bot that just mines ore from rocks and sells it in a loop for 24 hours a day.

Edited August 4, 2022 by Yarco

[zurew]

27 minutes ago, Jannes said:

Hmm okay might still be worth the risk. Do you know where I could find somebody who would do that for me? And what would it Cost ?

I think if you have some time to learn a little python (one of the easiest programming language) ,then i think its better to do it by yourself.  But if you don't want to spend any time with it and you have enough money to pay for it , then you could search for bots on freelance sites.

 

I think a clash of clans bot will be a cheap project.

here is a freelance site: https://www.fiverr.com/gigs/bot-development

Other freelance sites:

• https://www.upwork.com/
• https://www.freelancer.com/jobs/?keyword=bot

[Jannes]

4 hours ago, Yarco said:

Not hard, people have been botting in games like Runescape and World of Warcraft for 20 years.

I made a script to automate playing Farmville for myself in my teens using AutoHotkey.

People make careers out of it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/comments/cnbuif/i_make_58k_usd_a_year_after_taxes_with_bot/

lol that’s actually kinda cool ?

4 hours ago, Yarco said:

It's much more lucrative to farm currency in games that have it and sell that to players, instead of selling whole accounts.

I don't recommend it as a life purpose though, you're doing something very low consciousness. The whole market is full of scammers and thieves. Your clients don't have morals so they'll do credit card chargebacks or report you to the game, getting every account created on your IP banned in one swoop. Besides, game companies are way better at detecting and banning cheaters nowadays. It's a game of whack a mole where they make an improvement, hackers get all their accounts banned and need to find a way around it, the company patches it, repeat.

Okay I see, this might be a lot more tricky then I initially thought..

I actually got the idea because I wanted to buy myself a maxed out account. I am a bit addicted to clash of clans right now. Partly because of the constant grind and so I just wanted to buy a maxed out account so that I would have nothing to do except having fun with different attack strategies. The only one I found was for 250€. That’s when I thought I could make a lot of money by it myself. I think a lot of people would be interested in getting an account like that because it takes 1 year grind minimum to just unlock the really interesting attack strategies. 

4 hours ago, Yarco said:

If you're interested in the training AI side of things as a life purpose, as opposed to just an easy way to make money, you might be better off learning about general AI, machine learning, and neural networks. Then you can create an AI that can teach itself to beat any game all on its own through trial and error:

IMO this is much cooler and more fulfilling than making a dumb bot that just mines ore from rocks and sells it in a loop for 24 hours a day.

I haven’t found my life purpose yet. It’s definetly about inventing stuff, being my own boss and being creative. I tried a bit of coding and it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. I loved the amount of options you have and building something complex from ground up. Finding creative solutions and stuff like that… Maybe I just didn’t give it enough time, I only did a beginner course. But I feel like it was a bit too heavy on pure logical thinking. I really like having heavy puzzles to solve but I think it was just a bit to one sided. Looking at black on white text all day isn’t it for me. I need to integrate emotions, colors, impressions, .. and all kinds of stuff into my thinking. 

[Jannes]

@zurew thanks for the tips!

[Seth]

Here is one of my favorite AIs 
Simulating a game within a neural network...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udPY5rQVoW0

[JonasVE12]

You can also import 10 guys from Bangladesh and let them play for you in exchange for a place to sleep. If you have a basement that's perfect. And in terms of food, you just give them dry bread. 

[Michael569]

people have been doing this on Runescape 15 years ago lol

Most of MMORPGs will have strategies in place to kick bots but you may still be able to get away with it. But in games that have options to actually sell in game items, getting over the in-place firewalls against bots may actually be pretty challenging. If you can get over anti-cheat systems that companies like Blizzard have spend millions of dollars to put in place, you deserve the money you make from that 

Stop looking for shortcuts

Or do what @JonasVE12 suggested But make sure to keep those chains locked at all times. 

[zurew]

22 minutes ago, Michael569 said:

Stop looking for shortcuts

This is maybe the wisest answer here.

 

@Jannes There would be one more thing here.  Sometimes the best thing to do is to search directly for the thing that you actually want, and not for parts. (In this case search for bots that are specifically created for clash of clans). So, you could directly search for clash of clans bots, and you might as well find one that could work, that way you don't need to create it yourself, and you don't need to hire anyone to do it for you. But of course, you have to be careful not to download some virus, so you will need to make sure if its something reliable or not before you try it out.

 

Edited August 5, 2022 by zurew

[Leo Gura]

You would make way more money if you started a general games AI company that creates AIs to give players a more fun user experience within games.

Such a technology company would be worth billions in the near future and would be acquired by the likes of Microsoft, Sony, or EA to enhance their games.

The intersection of games and AI is a huge multi-billion dollar niche.

[thenondualtankie]

@Leo Gura What would be an example of this? Of course you could use AI to enhance the user experience of anything, but I'm curious to know what kind of ideas you had in mind for games. Seeing as you're a game dev and all!