FAQ

Q: Uh, hi?

Hello! I am Noah and I have started this Itch page to share my terrible bird children.

Q: This game looks horrifying, why should I not leave immediately?

Wait! Don't go! Bird by Example is — and I say this with great passion:

"An MMORPG where all the other players are horrifying birds who mimic your behaviour with deep learning."

Q: Oh shit, what?

Well you're still here, so I guess I'll explain further.

Right now, this game consists of a bunch of artificially intelligent Birds™. These birds have artificial brains conceivably capable of learning basic tasks, and have rudimentary environmental awareness and a knack for peer-to-peer teaching. You also get to play as a bird, or a Bird Mother™ if you will, and experiment with teaching your children how to survive in this harsh bird world.

Q: What is a bird?

A bird is a fictional creature which came to me in a dream last February during an especially cold night. I fear they might be inspired (subconsciously) by both a small subset of lizards, and the darker, distrustful side of us humans.

Q: Can the birds die?

No. Next question.

Q: Will the birds be able to die one day?

Okay you caught me — yes — birds will be able to die violent deaths, but they do not age in the conventional sense.

Q: Concerning. So the birds learn? What do they learn?

The birds always learn from their mother (you), so you can always try to teach them new things! This will be important for getting them started, as initially their brains are random and ill-equipped for living in this bird-world.

However, birds also learn from each other! This means you can teach one bird, and that bird will teach their friends! But this is a double edged sword as it suffers from the issue that shitty birds will teach better birds to be shittier.

Q: Oh no! Shitty birds!

I empathize with, and mirror your distress.

So the solution to this problem is I will be implementing a system for on-the-fly success metrics that you (the player) can set from your town hall! You can design your own success metric and see how it affects your median population. Maybe you try out communism (labour = good), or capitalism (personal wealth = good), or a warrior society (mortal combat = good), or a dictatorship (pampering you = good)! The options will be limitless. Based on the regime you choose, it will rank birds' effectiveness within this regime, and the most successful ~20% of birds within the current regime will be considered 'teachers', and will pass on their knowledge to the youngsters.

Q: Umm, I know a little bit about machine learning and I have some questions...

If we're talking tech, each bird uses a deep (6 hidden layers) Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) with ~30 inputs and ~10 outputs. I chose a recurrent neural network because they are most handy for working with sequenced inputs. The sequence these birds use is time. They currently run back-propagation every 0.1 seconds and currently have no preference for 'what' they are learning.

They also 'read' about 20 categories of metadata about objects they see in the environment, including but not limited to:

• Does this object evoke DEATH?
• Does this object evoke FAMINE?
• Does this object evoke POWER?
• Does this object evoke COWARDICE?

And these evocations inform the transferal of skills between objects of similar category! Amazing! Teach a bird to eat a juicy pineapple, and if they see another juicy lookin' thing (raspberry, worm, another bird) they'll probably choose to eat that too!

Q: Cool, this is scary! (?)

Thank you! Yes, it is.

Q: Can I play this game?

Pretty soon! I neglected a lot of UX design until I was certain the birds would even be able to learn. I'm currently working on some basic user interface, and getting ready for the first alpha release.

Q: Whe-

Thank you! I hope you stick around and join me on this adventure.

- Noah