**UPDATE:
April fools' day**
Thanks for all your nice comments, and sorry for those who searched this feature everywhere 😉
To chat or not to chat during a BGA game: that is the question!
The most important thing we always keep in mind at BGA is that board games is a way to express human interactions. This is why on BGA you play only against other humans, and also why our baseline is "Play with the world".
Beside playing your moves, we consider that chatting with your opponents is part of playing board games. This is the reason why on BGA we let you tell (almost) anything you want in the chat, instead of limiting you to a set of pre-defined interactions like other gaming platforms do.
However, for a fraction of our community, this "chat" part of the game is also a pain. Some of them are too shy to communicate.
Some do not speak the same language than the other players, or not enough to participate. Some may have other reasons, but whatever the reason we, at BGA, care about this part of the community and would like to work on integrating them more.
Thanks to the support of our parent company Asmodee, we have been put in touch at the beginning of last year with OpenAI, a leading company in the domain of AI chatbot, to work on advanced prototypes in order to find commercial applications to their next product which you have now probably heard about: ChatGPT.
The result of this collaboration has been a 12 months joint development effort to build a new feature for Board Game Arena: ShyChat.
By enabling ShyChat on your BGA profile, you will be able to focus 100% on the game you play, while our AI engine takes care of the conversation with your opponents.
Thanks to the powerful technology behind ShyChat, our bot will answer to everything written by your opponents during your BGA game: give the proper salutation and "good luck" when game starts (each time in a very unique way, depending on the context), makes the appropriate comments when an opponent suggests that you could have played a better move (politely explaining him/her to mind their own business), and even defend yourself if your opponent says innapropriate things in an appropriate way (applying best conflict reduction strategies).
But ShyChat do not only answer: it has the initiative to speak when appropriate. ShyChat has been trained ("Machine learning" technology) to recognize certain games situations, and has learned to react in a certain way based on what real human players have said in similar situations. Thus, on your behalf, ShyChat will comment the game when appropriate, doing some interesting comments on the game. If you target again and again the same opponents, it will find you very good rational reasons to do it ("Sorry, I really do not want to target you, but I am forced to do it because of XXX"). If have to quickly quit your computer for few minutes when it is your turn to play, it will tell your opponents something like "I really sorry, I must really take my time on this move" or will enjoy everyone with some jokes to make sure your opponents will no be made at you.
In addition to all of this, ShyChat is strongly customizable so that it matches perfectly your needs. The default "over-polite" will make sure everything is always fine with everyone at your table, while some other settings like "passive-aggressive" (available for Premium players only) will limit the exchange to what is exactly needed to devolve your opponents while you are 100% focused on the game itself. The "multilingual" option allows ShyChat to pretend that you are fluent in all the available languages, and combined with the "make friends" option, it will allow you to make close friends in the whole world with absolutely no effort.
We just would like to do an important disclaimer about the "flirting" option: this option will try to seduce your opponents in a rather effective way. However, and even if our technical partner ensured us that the AI is doing it "in a way that matches the 2023 highest standards", we should recall you that at the end, you are accountable of everything that has been said by you on BGA, even if the messages has been written by ShyChat.
So obviously one question at this step is: why not move this to the next level and create an AI that takes care of your games moves themselves, and not only of the chat message?
Indeed, we are receiving tons of messages from players on BGA that are annoyed by playing board games against humans: "they are so slow", "they are making unmeaningful moves", "you have to learn all these rules, and moving these strange pieces on these overcomplicated boards", "why would I need to do all that while I just want to have fun?".
Well, for now we must admit that the technology is not mature enough, but we are working on a prototype named "DumbBot" that will allow even non gamers to play on BGA, thanks to the AI.
We hope that you will enjoy this new feature a lot, and would like to mention that against all odds... this news has been written by a human.
ShyChat: Nič več sramežljivosti pri igranju na BGA zahvaljujoč OpenAI
Klepetati ali ne klepetati med igro BGA: to je vprašanje!
Najpomembnejša stvar, ki jo imamo pri BGA vedno v mislih, je, da so družabne igre način izražanja človeških interakcij.
To je razlog, zakaj na BGA igrate samo proti drugim ljudem in tudi zato je naša osnovna linija "Igraj s svetom".
Poleg igranja potez menimo, da je klepet z nasprotniki del igranja družabnih iger.
To je razlog, zakaj vam pri BGA dovolimo, da v klepetu poveste (skoraj) vse, kar želite, namesto da bi vas omejili na nabor vnaprej določenih interakcij, kot to počnejo druge igralne platforme.
Vendar pa je za del naše skupnosti ta "klepetalni" del igre tudi bolečina.
Nekateri od njih so preveč sramežljivi, da bi komunicirali.
Nekateri ne govorijo istega jezika kot drugi igralci ali pa premalo za sodelovanje.
Nekateri imajo morda druge razloge, toda ne glede na razlog nam v BGA ni vseeno za ta del skupnosti in bi si radi prizadevali za njihovo večjo integracijo.
Zahvaljujoč podpori našega matičnega podjetja Asmodee smo v začetku lanskega leta vzpostavili stik z OpenAI, vodilnim podjetjem na področju klepetalnih robotov AI, da bi delali na naprednih prototipih, da bi našli komercialne aplikacije za njihov naslednji izdelek za katerega ste verjetno že slišali: ChatGPT.
Rezultat tega sodelovanja je bilo 12-mesečno skupno razvojno prizadevanje za izgradnjo nove funkcije za Board Game Arena: ShyChat.
Če omogočite ShyChat v svojem BGA profilu, se boste lahko 100 % osredotočili na igro, ki jo igrate, medtem ko naš motor AI skrbi za pogovor z vašimi nasprotniki.
Zahvaljujoč zmogljivi tehnologiji, ki stoji za ShyChat, bo naš bot odgovoril na vse, kar so napisali vaši nasprotniki med igro BGA: dajte ustrezen pozdrav in "srečno", ko se igra začne (vsakič na zelo edinstven način, odvisno od konteksta), daje ustrezne pripombe, ko nasprotnik predlaga, da bi lahko odigral boljšo potezo (mu/ji vljudno pojasni, da mislijo svoje zadeve), in se celo brani, če nasprotnik pove neprimerne stvari na ustrezen način (uporaba najboljših strategij za zmanjšanje konflikta) .
Toda ShyChat ne odgovarja samo: ima pobudo, da spregovori, ko je to primerno.
ShyChat je bil usposobljen (tehnologija "strojnega učenja") za prepoznavanje določenih situacij v igrah in se je naučil reagirati na določen način na podlagi tega, kar pravijo resnični človeški igralci v podobnih situacijah.
Tako bo ShyChat v vašem imenu komentiral igro, ko bo to primerno, in naredil nekaj zanimivih komentarjev o igri.
Če vedno znova ciljate na iste nasprotnike, bo našel zelo dobre razumne razloge za to ("Oprosti, res te ne želim ciljati, vendar sem prisiljen to storiti zaradi XXX").
Če morate za nekaj minut hitro zapreti računalnik, ko ste na vrsti za igro, bo vašim nasprotnikom povedal nekaj takega, kot je "Res mi je žal, res si moram vzeti čas za to potezo" ali pa bo vse razveselil z nekaj šalami, da se prepričate. vaši nasprotniki vam ne bodo naklonjeni.
Poleg vsega tega je ShyChat močno prilagodljiv, tako da se popolnoma ujema z vašimi potrebami.
Privzeta "preveč vljudna" bo poskrbela, da bo vedno vse v redu z vsemi za vašo mizo, medtem ko bodo nekatere druge nastavitve, kot je "pasivno-agresivno" (na voljo samo za igralce Premium) omejile izmenjavo na tisto, kar je točno potrebno za prenos vaših nasprotnikov medtem ko ste 100% osredotočeni na samo igro.
Možnost "večjezikov" omogoča ShyChatu, da se pretvarja, da tekoče govorite vse razpoložljive jezike, v kombinaciji z možnostjo "sprijazni se" pa vam bo omogočila sklepanje tesnih prijateljstev po celem svetu brez napora.
Radi bi le podali pomembno opozorilo o možnosti "flirtanja": ta možnost bo poskušala zapeljati vaše nasprotnike na precej učinkovit način.
Toda tudi če nam je naš tehnični partner zagotovil, da AI to počne "na način, ki ustreza najvišjim standardom iz leta 2023", vas moramo spomniti, da ste na koncu odgovorni za vse, kar ste povedali na BGA , tudi če je sporočilo napisal ShyChat.
Očitno je eno vprašanje v tem koraku: zakaj ne bi tega premaknili na naslednjo raven in ustvarili umetne inteligence, ki sama poskrbi za poteze vaših iger in ne samo za sporočilo klepeta?
Dejansko prejemamo na tone sporočil igralcev na BGA, ki so jezni nad igranjem družabnih iger proti ljudem: "tako počasni so", "delajo nesmiselne poteze", "moraš se naučiti vseh teh pravil in premikanje teh čudnih kosov na teh preveč zapletenih ploščah", "zakaj bi moral početi vse to, medtem ko se želim samo zabavati?".
No, zaenkrat moramo priznati, da tehnologija še ni dovolj zrela, vendar delamo na prototipu z imenom "DumbBot", ki bo zahvaljujoč AI omogočil igranje na BGA tudi neigralcem.
Upamo, da boste v tej novi funkciji zelo uživali, in radi bi omenili, da kljub vsemu...
to novico je napisal človek.
