Speedgate: The World's First AI Generated Sport

I thought this was kind of interesting and i'd share here. I debated putting this into one of the sports forums bur wasn't sure where it would fit, seeing as it's not a real sport. So here seemed best.

news.developer.nvidia.com...

Developers from AKQA, a global innovation agency most known for working with some of the hottest brands and public figures, trained a recurrent neural network and a deep convolutional generative adversarial network on over 400 sports with the aim of creating a new and original sport.

Picture Rugby, Soccer, sprinkled with a little football, and marinated with some field hockey, scrambled all into one sport, you get Speedgate.

“Speedgate is fun, fast and physical, relying heavily on teamwork and passing to score and win,” the company wrote in a post. “Going all out for victory is applauded, but it should never come at the expense of having an awesome time. Speedgate is all about enjoyment, inclusivity, and sportsmanship.” 

The rules are simple, players team up in two groups of six, and try to kick or pass the ball into a gate at either end of the field. To do so, they need to keep the ball moving every three seconds. However, they cannot cross a circle in the middle of the field. Teams can either get two points by kicking the ball through the gates at either end and three points for ricocheting the ball through the gate.

Using NVIDIA Tesla GPUs for both training their neural networks and inference, the models generated over 1,000 different sport concept outputs, rules and gameplay outputs.

Many of the sports included descriptions such as “underwater parkour,” or an exploding Frisbee game. Another one dared players to pass a ball back-and-forth while standing on a tightrope in a hot air balloon. Sound interesting? The AKQA team thought so too, and after a thorough back and forth process, the developers narrowed the list down to three sports for a real-life test

Speedgate the world's first AI generated sport. Sounds pretty much like soccer and rugby mixed together to me. Personally, I liked the sound of the exploding Frisbee game or the tightrope air balloon ball passing one better myself, but I suppose there may be safety concerns with them. What you guys think? Anybody wanna get a pickup game of some speedgate going?

This looks interesting. I'd play this!

Looks too complicated. And I don't know about all that "teamwork" jazz.

It is too much like soccer and too little like a sport.

a reply to: dug88

I'm surprised it did not include hunting in the rules. Hunting is a sport.

a reply to: dug88

It's almost exactly indoor 5 a side football but with 6 a side and no go area in the middle, the other stuff doesn't sound all that original either, I'm disapointed.

"Speedgate"

Sounds like a rednecky Clinton scandal.

originally posted by: surfer_soul
a reply to: dug88

It's almost exactly indoor 5 a side football but with 6 a side and no go area in the middle, the other stuff doesn't sound all that original either, I'm disapointed.

I seem to recall playing a dumb game like this in junior high school, and it was called "speedball," or something like that. It was ridiculous. Take three steps, dribble, pass the ball, try to get it in a little goal.

There's already a perfectly good sport called "basketball" that people seem to like. The AI should take a look at it. Otherwise, we have artificial intelligence concluding that the best way to create a new game is to rip off several other games and do a mash-up.

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: dug88

I'm surprised it did not include hunting in the rules. Hunting is a sport.

That comes later, once the AI gains full sentience and decides that the carbon-based units that it is using to carry out it's algorithmic permutations in meatspace are expendable and, perhaps, even not all that useful.

You laugh now. Just wait ...

We played this too, back in the 80's.
A hybrid of football, soccer, and basketball.

I can't remember what we called it though.
43 man squeamish, was our nickname for it.

I'm sure I'll remember the name later...