Have you ever given thought to Zero-Player Games? Let’s

Information:
Zero-player games are games that have no human players
Wikipedia Entry

Examples:
Progress Quest
NPC Quest
Conway’s Game of Life

Most sports games (i.e. Madden Football) can be used to create CPU vs. CPU matches and are often used to simulate the outcomes of real games.  Fighting games, RTS games, and other games can also be used for this purpose.

Glider, a bot that plays World of Warcraft for you, is also worth mentioning.  Botting, in a sense, is cruise control that plays the game for the user. (When I had an active WoW account, my favorite thing about the game was using my bot to turn WoW into an entertaining screensaver featuring my avatar grinding.)

WarGames is a movie where a zero-player game controls the fate of mankind

Discussion:

  • Do you think there is a future for zero-player games?
  • What type of zero-player game do you think would be most interesting/marketable/entertaining?
  • If you’ve ever “played” a zero-player game before, what did you like/dislike about it?
  • Do you think incorporating “cruise-control” into on-line games is a good idea?

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