Oops I meant to say method rather than idea. If one of the entrants figures out a good AI method to do this problem then EA can just copy that method in one of their later games. The code of the contestants will remain their intellectual property, but EA are not interested in code, they are interested in the AI methods that the code is based on. Such a competetition seems like a great way for a games company to get a group of people to research AI solutions for them for free.

When EA employees view all the different solutions they will remember the good ones in their minds, and get ideas from all of them, and they can use all this later, even in many years time.

Please stop it, this is not an evil scheme by EA. If someone is afraid that EA is gonna use their code or idea, they can just use a code obfuscator. Et vlan! Of course, you realise that almost all of research in AI is public?

EA think that games needs better AI (which is true), so they sponsor a contest to encourage new ideas. Frankly I dont see what's wrong in it. A LOT of stuff was discovered that way. There is a big lack of interest in AI in the game industry. Just compare this forum with the CG forum.

Quote: Original post by RunningInt
Oops I meant to say method rather than idea. If one of the entrants figures out a good AI method to do this problem then EA can just copy that method in one of their later games.[...]

You forget that the US allows software patents, and they can be filed for quite some time after the creation (iirc it's 1 year, maybe more) so the entrant can notice 'hey they really like my idea and are going to use it' and then file a patent (at least, I think so).

I happen to go to one of the universities on the invite list. Looks interesting but to be honest I haven't heard a thing about it, and as an EE major I don't really know much about AI besides what I do in my spare time. I wonder if the CS students even know about this.