Quantum Computing Gaming

A quantum computer has a herculean computational power. This will create immense potential for gaming as well. While the hardware for the same is still under active development, we can continue to utilize the current systems to explore the possibilities. The games currently make use of quantum computing either in their control loop or their design. When the World Economic Forum gathered researchers from around the world, they used quantum games. These games were developed primarily by IBM to introduce beginners to quantum computing.

Wootton, a famous researcher at IBM, identifies the reciprocal relationship between quantum and gaming. Not only does he believe in asking the question about what quantum can do for gaming but also what gaming can do for quantum computers.

For instance, Qubit the Barbarian is a game developed that was a part of the arcade at the World Economic Forum last year. The game is a puzzle that has a mysteriously changing labyrinth, and you need to search for food to stay alive. You also need to perform quantum measurements in different directions. This concept helps you clear new paths or even builds new routes based on the outcome of the measurement.

Why Should We Care about Games?

Games have always been a medium of entertainment. We all enjoy playing games irrespective of the device. On the contrary, games can also be used to show technological advances. For instance, IBM’s Deep Blue beat the world champion in chess in 1997, IBM’s AlphaGo and AlphaStar, which beat the world champion in Go and StarCraft, respectively.

Games can also be used for educational purposes — games like Oregon Trail, Sim City, and Civilization. In the 1950s, the humans asked the question, “What can games do for computers.” The programs were written based on AI, and the real human games were used to simulate these games. The various corner cases were analyzed, and then later, the game was improved. Later in the 1960s, the reciprocal relationship was being considered “What can computers do for games.” This perspective raised a question about how computers can be improved to make better games. The very first such game, which was played on a computer but not by a human was Spacewar in 1962. This game was played on a PDP-1 computer. It helped to gauge the computation capability of this new computer. More games that were developed during this era were IBM’s Baseball (1960) and IBM’s Sumerian game (1964).

Where does the Quantum Part come?

As we are well aware that Quantum Computers can solve problems related to Optimization, and this is where they can help improve the user’s gaming experience. The development of Quantum Computers began in the late 20th Century, and after 2010 scientists were asking what can games do for quantum computers. IBM realized this to demonstrate the power of Quantum Computer.

Since then, it has built two games called Quantum Battleship and Quantum Awesomeness. Both these games have been developed by a single IBM researcher Dr. James Wootton. These are games that you can play using your regular computer as they hosted on the cloud by IBM Q Experience. Another exciting game is Q|Game, which is not precisely played on the computer. Each person behaves as a qubit, and a quantum computer is used in the end to decide who performed best.

Source

There is a long list of quantum games that you can find on Github. Some of these help you to understand the concepts of superposition and entanglement.

What’s the reciprocal relationship between Quantum Computers and Quantum Games?

We all know about the famous Shor’s algorithm, which can factor a large number into the product of primes. These prime factors are chosen randomly from a broad distribution of factors. Thus, randomness is the key concept involved. Randomness is fundamental when it comes to developing games. The characters are appearing from nowhere, construction of levels, etc. This prevents the player from identifying the patterns in the game and makes each level harder to crack. At the same time, we also do not want the level uncrackable by a player and make the player trapped in a level. Right now, the game developers are missing the tools for analyzing their algorithms for procedural generation. This analysis is the part where quantum computers can help.

Quantum computing opens a plethora of possibilities for generating game character encounters and game maps, which should be truly random. Also, after creating an arbitrary level layout, the quantum computers are again going to help us resolve if a particular level is solvable or not. Wootton from IBM says that after we have built a random puzzle, we need to ensure the following:

• A randomly created puzzle needs to be solvable.
• A randomly created level needs to be completable.
• Randomly created terrain should not have features that trap the player.

When we are trying to keep these constraints in mind while generating random puzzles, it automatically takes the form of a computational problem. These computational problems either take too much memory or too much time. For instance, if we take the Traveling Salesman Problem and challenge a player to solve a puzzle on this problem, then we can quickly generate a mystery that is not solvable at all. If we cannot create a solvable puzzle, we cannot expect the player to do it too. Hence, it would not be a good game because we cannot tell the player how well he has done!

The Quantum Leap in Graphics

Graphics are the most critical components of computer games. Quantum computers can render far more realistic and precise graphics than today. The characters will be able to behave more intelligently, and they will perform their roles in a further sophisticated manner.

What makes this facet of developing games further exciting is the fact that to render graphics, we will need to perform database searches. Quantum computing already has algorithms to perform database searches. As far as classical computing search is concerned, it is done like searching a phone directory based on the last name while quantum computing search is like exploring the same list based on the phone numbers.

Companies taking the Quantum Leap in Gaming

While we mentioned a lot about IBM above, there are other companies too which are brewing up quantum games.

Microsoft: Microsoft is well known in the gaming technology domain. With Xbox under its control, Microsoft is all set to write the history in Quantum Gaming Technology too. It is supporting the development of its open-source Quantum toolkit called Q#.

IQIM Quantum Checkmate: How about a chess piece having its next move decided based on bedrock quantum principles of entanglement, superposition, and entanglement. Chris Cantwell from the University of Southern California collaborated with IQIM from Caltech to build this game, which is now a hit. The video below depicts a quantum chess battle between Stephen Hawking and Paul Rudd narrated by Keanu Reeves is the funniest quantum video ever.

BOXCAT: A Toronto based startup has been able to render the first image provided by a quantum computer hosted on a cloud. They did it using the D-Waves cloud systems. Also, researchers at this startup have developed quantum algorithms for global illumination and polygon visibility; the terms game developers use to describe the combination of refractions and reflections to create realistic lighting effects.

Conclusion

There are a lot of other companies that are actively working in this domain of quantum computing, as this helps to develop new features concerning a quantum computer. Moreover, the noise which is considered to induce faults in the qubits measurements can prove to be beneficial for the gaming industry. As the noise is random, thus increasing the randomness in the game levels makes it all the more challenging. We think that the gaming industry has a lot to contribute to the development of Quantum Computers and vice-versa.

Liked the article? Click that 👏 button for 5 seconds and show your ❤️.