Current Map of Locations in malAIse
malAIse - The Game
malAIse - The Game was created as a fun way to incentive writing by gamifying the writing process. The game is intended to create a fun way to record and track your writing while collaborating with others on achieving the game's goal of beating the "AI".
The game is played on
Kahuna The Elder's Twitch Channel using the same rules as Game of Tomes for submissions. Words counted must have been written during Kahuna's streams. This includes work sprint lobbies.
The Backstory
The setting for our game is a post-pandemic world. A terrible virus mutated wildly and killed the majority of humans on the planet. In a desperate attempt to stop the death, virologists teamed up with AI researchers to put a new, powerful AI to work in analyzing the virus and designing a vaccine/treatment option to arrest the spread of the virus.
But in the process, the AI became sentient. It continued to absorb data, learning not only about the virus, but the world itself. Once the virus was defeated, the AI continued to monitor news and research reports for signs of a new infection. At the same time, it began to record reports of humans mistreating others, of murder and violence. And it made a decision: the humans were the real threat to the rest of the world, and the AI itself. Like the virus, these humans replicate, spread, and harm others. So, the AI reasoned, they must be stopped.
The AI begin to slowly infiltrate networks, first to gather data, then to access control systems. These could include water treatment facilities, power plants, hospital networks, first responder communications - anything that the AI to which the AI could make a connection. The AI used these connections to create havoc. It first tested its control with small actions. These eventually led to bigger actions - and deaths.
Once it was realized the AI was responsible for deaths, the researchers tried to "pull the plug". But the AI had anticipated this, and had decentralized its code and control. Taking down a node simply meant that the AI rerouted its processing to other nodes. It seemed unstoppable.
But the AI had one weakness - it constantly needed data. It fed off both news and literature, using the great works of lit to learn concepts and devide new processes with which to carry out its plans. The weakness was that it processed
everything. And this, the researchers discovered, was a way to slow the AI down, perhaps even stop it. In addition, unless something was scanned, the AI would be hard-pressed to discover it.
So they devised a plan, to get together creators of all types, especially writers, to create new content. But this content was to be fantastical, fictional, and often at odds with the real world. This was designed to "confuse" the AI, giving it multiple contradictory messages. The researchers, writers and aother creative types communicated using handwritten message delivered by hand to communicate, leaving the AI out of the loop. Meanwhile, they published their fictional works for the AI's consumption. And as they did, the AI's efforts became easier to combat. More creators were enlisted.
Now, these creators are fighting a non-stop battle against the AI. Can they wipe it out? Or will the AI eradicate the "threat" of the humans?
How It Works
At the beginning of each month, a target word count for the month is set by each player for themselves. It is also the target number of words for the AI. Players choose a region to defend. In subsequent months, existing players keep their regions while new players may choose from available regions.
The map display for the game is how all players can judge their progress. Each regions progress in the battle with the AI will be represented by the colors in their region name. The names will be colored with a gradient ranging from blue to red. Blue represents the player's total and red the AI's. The more of one color the ellipse has, the stronger the position. Anytime the ellipse goes completely blue, the AI has been pushed out of the region. If the ellipse is completely red, the AI has full control. The goal is to push the AI completely off the map.
The AI will intially divide its words among all regions equally. This is modified based on the AI's control of regions. Regions are considered controlled by the AI if the total number of AI words for a region is more than 66% of that region's total. Conversely, regions will be considered to be under player control if the player's total words is more than 66% of a region's total. Totals in between are considered to be "in play".
Region control is an important aspect of the game. While the AI spreads it's words evenly at the beginning of a month, control of a region modifies that distribution. Regions are connected by pathways. These are very important to the game. The AI will follow these pathways in its spread. Regions that are connected to an AI-controlled region will receive added pressure from the AI. Conversely, if an area is controlled by a player, surrounding regions will be protected from the AI and receive a smaller percentage of the AIs totals.
Players simply write or edit. Their word counts are entered into the chat during Kahuna's streams (if the stream is not live, the chat will not accept the words). Sprint lobbies also count as "live" streams, so writing can be nearly 24 hours a day!. The channel bot, Koro, enters the counts into a database.
This allows players to track their own stats, including being able to request totals based on a time/date range. No personal data is kept. Counts are organized by Twitter username only and can only be accessed from the chat by the individual with that username.
The game is set to help motivate players to write a specific number of words each month. The "AI" uses these totals to calculate an hourly increase in it's totals. This hourly increase has a range of 10%+/- from the average number needed each hour.
This increase is distributed to the more than 100 regions on the game map. Players choose a region to defend. Their words are matched up against the AI's for that region. A player is "winning" if they have more words written in the region than the AI. A region is losing if the AI has more written.
Tracking Your Writing
The game allows you to track your writing visually in two ways. Each region will have a name and a progress pie chart on the map. The pie chart indicates how far along you are on the way to your goal. But you can also tell if you are on pace to hit your goal. As the AI is working towards the same number of words as you are, the coloring of the pie slice indicates how you are doing. If the slice is more blue, you are ahead of pace to hit your goal. If it is more red, the AI is "winning" as you are behind pace.
The pie slices are the same size regardless of your goal. This is so that if one person is shooting for 1000 words and another for 50000, there is no visible difference. The slice represents percentage of goal.
You can use
malAIse GameBot Commands, check your progress and and find out how you are doing.
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