'They have a lot of layered behaviors, so they can be holding a drink while they're having a conversation, and the system tries to balance between these,' says Hecker.

This meant creating a pretty complex system of AI behavior for the avatars at the party - but also making it routine enough that a human can learn to emulate an AI: So in some sense flipping around the usual 'make the AIs behave like people' thing to make the player behave like an AI was squarely in my wheelhouse.' ( Here is Hecker hanging with his former boss Will Wright, lead creator of Spore, among other industry leaders, including Rod Humble.) 'hroughout my work in games,' Hecker tells me, 'I've always tended to flip things around. So for the Spore creature animation system, instead of trying to procedurally generate animations, I tried to figure out how animators work and map that back onto the player-created creatures. (Watch the trailer above to see what I mean.) Which, yes, means competing with another player who has to pretend to be an avatar-based AI.

In SpyParty, from acclaimed game designer Chris Hecker, you have to guess which avatar among a crowd of AI-powered avatars is actually being controlled by a human, based on what they do. In Alan Turing's challenge, you have to guess whether you're communicating with an AI or a human, based on what they say. SpyParty, the long-awaited indie game which recently hit the Steam store, is pretty much like the Turing Test, except with headshots.

How to make spyparty account