while True: learn() Release or The Story About 1 Year of Weekly Updates, Machine Learning and Cats
Hello. It is hard to believe that this day has finally come. Our small machine learning specialist simulator is leaving Early Access. You know, Release day is always a truly magical day for any developer out there, because none can believe that it is really happening.
We found our company, — Luden.io, — having one simple thought in mind. We wanted the player to learn the rules of how the game world works, and if the rules were taken from a real occupation field, the player would learn a lot about this topic while playing. This way, games can be educational and meaningful. ‘We are making games for our whole lives. Our friends are always asking us to recommend a meaningful game for their children. Let’s try to make one like that’ — we decided.
When we came up with the idea of while True: learn() in 2017, it looked like so: a freelancer character, who appears to be a machine learning specialist, receives letters with orders. He completes them and receives money. He spends his cash to buy food and clothes for his cat and upgrade his PC. And like any other programmer, he has a project he makes on his own step by step.
It took us a lot of time to get to the idea of how the programming process will look like. Ivan made about 30 different drafts and all of them were thrown into the bin. In the end, we took a huge risk and decided to make it using visual programming, but with a little trick. We did not allow using all known logical blocks in all tasks. Blocks are given to the player one by one according to the chronology of machine learning development in the real world from the 1950s to the present day.
We also came up with an idea of a mode with no limitations. The player can join a startup. In this case, the success of the company depends solely on the quality of his/her program and the speed of its implementation. Sometimes the program is cool but nobody needs it. And sometimes, the program is terrible, but people are starting to use it massively and it is difficult to keep up with updating it under the inflow of users. You can make a lot of money or go broke.
When we began showing our game to other people, we were sure that a couple of lads who were interested in understanding machine learning would like it. And a few more people, who often see news on how artificial intelligence is about to lead humanity to great trouble and finally want to figure out what is going on.
At the end of 2017, we decided to give our game away for free. If a player liked it, he/she could pay as much as he/she wanted for it. And the rest is history, which you might have already heard. In the first months, dozens of times more people than we expected came to try our game out, then hundreds of times more, and then… Then we realized that our idea of meaningful games was not only pleasant to us and that great responsibility now lies on our shoulders. Since then, we have promised to release updates weekly (oh, if we only knew how hard that’s going to be).
Of course, we would not have been able to run this marathon if one more miracle had not happened. A group of active players formed around the game, who willingly helped us with testing, translating and searching for bugs in the game process. Knowing that we cannot let them down and being inspired by their activity, we released an update after an update.
Schools, universities, teachers, and students reached to us and used our game for educational purposes. It was amazing. Our tiny little game has just been made and here it is, being used in huge universities, helping students understand how machine learning works. One teacher even made students stream how they played in order to receive a good grade. And some 10 y/o children used our game to explain their parents how machine learning works and helped them beat the game themselves.
Some of the players told us their stories about how they stopped being afraid to dive into the unfamiliar world of machine learning after playing our game. And today they have already gotten a job in this field!
Finally, after almost 60 weeks, we are happy to present Steam players our story about a programmer who once decided to decipher his cat’s speech using machine learning. Many updates are waiting for us in the future, along with game’s launches on new platforms and so many other things that we will show our players because the world of machine learning is developing so actively and interestingly nowadays.
We are very happy to include the names of all our friends and assistants in the credits of the game. The fact that I can write about the launch of the game today is primarily your merit, thank you so much!
We believe that games can bring benefit to players and dream that our projects and our amazing player base will inspire other developers. Together, we are able to make learning fun and interesting for everyone. Just imagine a world where you can learn anything you want by playing a game… wait, does it mean that streamers will become teachers then? What?…
