StarCraft II is now a laboratory for AI research

Blizzard's partnership with DeepMind, a firm that specializes in machine learning, has culminated in the release of the StarCraft II API, which is available now. This mechanism for enabling outside creators into integrate their apps into StarCraft II is going to open up the competitive sci-fi strategy game to researchers working in the field of A.I. At the 2016 BlizzCon fan gathering in Anaheim, Blizzard revealed that it was working with DeepMind to test the same sort of learning algorithms that helped the company's AlphaGo A.I. beat some of the top players of the complicated board game, Go. "On behalf of Blizzard Entertainment, the StarCraft II development team is very pleased to announce the release of the StarCraft II API," reads a Blizzard blog post. "We recognize the efforts made by researchers over the years to advance AI using the original StarCraft. With the StarCraft II API, we're providing powerful tools for researchers, gamers, and hobbyists to utilize the game as a platform to further advance the state of AI research."