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The Best Ideas Come at the Strangest of Times
Today during class I had a great idea for a research project. Can monkeys (or apes) be taught to play Super Mario Brothers? They have opposable thumbs, how long will it take for one, given a Nintendo controller, to realize that their actions control the character on the screen? And from their, if we penalize them for losing lives by shocking them with electricity and reward them for completing a level by giving them delicious bananas, how long before they can play the game competently? This is important research, and could give us real insights into the minds of monkeys playing video games. I suggest that the DOC group where I work take up this project immediately before some other enterprising researcher steals it.
Comments
It's an interesting idea, but it would take away research monkeys from other, more important projects, such as reenacting the Civil War.
Posted by: ab9 at November 12, 2003 2:02 AM
What of Donkey Kong?
Surely apes would have more of a vested interest in protecting the life of DK than they would Mario.
Posted by: ben at November 12, 2003 10:17 AM
Hmm...I don't think Donkey Kong would be a good idea, or at least not the original.
I suggest the king of single-minded SNES games, F-Zero. Everybody loves that game.
Ooo..I'm gonna download an Emulator for my work computer and play F-Zero all day, rather than doing work. Mmmm.
Posted by: Brian at November 12, 2003 10:25 AM
That would be great! Then there would finally be someone I could beat in Super Smash Brothers. (this is of course assuming that I would be better than a monkey, which is a big assumption).
Posted by: Eileen at November 12, 2003 8:05 PM
How about Super Monkey Ball? Give the monkeys something to relate to.
Posted by: jim at November 12, 2003 10:06 PM
There's ongoing research which is looking into precisely the same thing.
They also performed an experiment where the monkey's thoughts were enough to move the on-screen character and the monkey figured out after some time that it didn't even need to use the joystick!
I am lazy to dig up the URL now. It was in TIME magazine a couple of weeks ago.
Posted by: Ravi at November 17, 2003 3:57 PM
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