| Blizzard Entertainment CEO Michael Morhaime speaks during an interview after the opening ceremony of the company's international e-sports competition “Heroes Spring Championship” at the Olympic Hall in Songpa, eastern Seoul, Friday. / Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment Korea |
The CEO expected that a highly advanced AI system will be able to beat the sophisticated strategies of professional Starcraft gamers.
“A Starcraft showdown between humans and AI itself will be interesting,” said Morhaime, Friday. The CEO made the remark in an interview after an opening ceremony for the first “Heroes of the Storm” e-sports league in Seoul.
“Starcraft is a fairly strategic game with depth. Though it will not be easy for an AI program to imitate the state-of-the-art strategic plays of professional gamers, they may go beyond humans in the future in the game once they are improved enough.”
The idea of a Starcraft match between professional gamers and an advanced AI system was first been suggested during the historic go match last month between world go champion Lee Se-dol and the AI system AlphaGo, developed by Google's subsidiary DeepMind.
Google's senior researcher Jeff Dean said on March 9 that DeepMind is considering Starcraft as one of its next goals for the AI systems it is developing.
Expectations have been high over the possibility of a Starcraft match between man and machine, as the game has been one of the world's most sought-after strategy games since its launch in 1998.
Regarding speculations that Blizzard is already in discussions with Google over the match, however, Morhaime made it clear that details about a possible match have not been discussed with Google.
“I was excited after watching the match between Lee and AlphaGo and I am excited about what Google has announced,” the CEO said. “There is nothing to proceed with now that we do not even know how much Google has developed.”
Morhaime also stressed that an AI program's capabilities should be limited for a fair competition. In the computer strategy game, a gamer's physical capabilities to quickly input orders using a keyboard and a mouse have been considered one of the key factors in winning.
“If the match is actually confirmed, the computer's capability to physically input orders should be limited. It is also important whom to choose as the human challenger,” he said. “But above all, Google should first confirm that Starcraft is the next subject for a challenge.”
Meanwhile, Blizzard said it will host the global e-sports competition, dubbed “Heroes Spring Championships” until April 3. A total of 12 teams from China, Korea, Europe, America, Oceania and Southeast Asia will compete in the strategy game competition, it said.
“I hope the competition has favorable and interesting events such as in go and in chess,” Morhaime said. “I expect the e-sports event will unite game fans from around the world.”