The Automatons are taking over!

It isn’t uncommon to unbox a new game and pull out a weird looking deck of cards, and flip through the rules trying to figure out why they weren’t in the how to play video you watched last night, only to realize that that deck of cards is the Automa. The AI, the non-player character, the mind in the machine.

Automatons come in all sorts of flavors, from random event decks to intricate instructions to play out an NPC turn. Some are easy, some are unbeatable (I refuse to believe anyone has beaten the level III AI in Through the Ages). Whatever the case we always have a clear idea as to who, we, the player, is, and what is the AI.

That is until now.

Turing (in its final days on KS) is a game that asks whether we can differentiate between man and game mechanic, and whether we are more human than a random sequence of cards.

Turing - Play this card to prove your humanity

In the game, one player lays out a sequence of cards to try and communicate their humanity. The game generates an alternate sequence of cards. Other players must vote on who is the AI, and who is the real boy (or girl but I wanted to make the Pinocchio reference).

I caught up with designer Glenn Ford for some thoughts on his inspiration for the game.

What inspired you to make a Turing test game?

I have a bit of a background in philosophy and I’ve always been interested in the opposite side of philosophical questions.  The Turing test is, on the face of it, about a machine proving itself to be human, but at the same time its about a human being failing to do exactly that.  I don’t have the capacity to make a cardboard AI that could pass the Turing test, but it occurred to me playing games like Mysterium and Greenville 1989 that I could create a form of communication that could lead a human intelligence to fail a sort of Turing test.  Once I realized that making Turing was pretty inevitable.

What were the challenges in making an automaton that is not only competitive with a human, but is indistinguishable?

Most of the challenges in making the game’s choice indistinguishable from a human’s in a tabletop game were actually physical.  Ironically, if Turing was played digitally through a remote interface disguising the automaton’s choices would be totally trivial, but on the tabletop having a player operate the automata was always going to be a total give away.  The steps of the game, the little rituals of picking and passing the cards and the shield used to cover choices were all part of covering those physical actions.  Ultimately, the game Turing is designed to occlude human communication in such a way that the AI can make choices that are inherently hard to spot because it’s a form of communication built on the human ability to spot patterns.  Humans are great at spotting patterns, which makes it very easy to confuse us by handing out a series of semi-random elements that could have patterns in them, which is exactly what Turing does.

The Turing test was text based, what was the driving force behind using pictures?

Humans are creatures of language, we’re great at spotting when words or phrases don’t quite sit right because we use them so constantly and at such a high level of sophistication.  If I’d based Turing on text then the automata’s choices would have stood out like a sore thumb.  With pictures though we see so much richness and on so many levels, we could be trying to suggest a shape, or a colour, or an idea with them to make a connection and so by using images I can leverage that human drive to make patterns even when there are none so that only humans who know each other very well, who make a real connection, can reach each other.  Also, having a set of cards with really striking and cool weird and abstract images just looks great and that never hurts when you’re trying to get a game out there.

Are you a human?

As far as I’m aware, yes.  But then, if I wasn’t that’s exactly what I would say isn’t it?

It is always exciting to see interesting ideas making their way to the tabletop. I never knew that I wanted my friends to doubt my humanity, but at the affordable rate of $14, I’ll be picking up my own copy of Turing.