A Neuroscientist from Hungary has, incredibly, trained fancy rats to play Doom II and says he has plans to stream their ‘gameplay’ on Twitch.
Viktor Tóth has created a rat-friendly VR setup and taught three rats how to play Doom II, including walking and running down corridors, as well as shooting.
The rats he’s taught are called Romeo, Carmack & Tom.
Tóth’s project allows the rats to explore 3D virtual environments. He has created a virtual reality machine that doesn’t restrain them too much, and with no need for any surgical procedures. This was really important to Tóth, he wanted them to enjoy the experience.
Unsurprisingly, funding a project like this can be quite costly. Tóth is hoping that streaming the rats’ gameplay on Twitch will help to raise the funds for this project.
Tóth says, “I think [streaming on Twitch is] a very valid way to monetise a project like this. The only problem is how long the rat can run for.”
Romeo outperformed Carmack and Tom. “I had Romero running for 15 minutes one time, which was great.” continues Tóth. “That was crazy because he was doing it for so long and didn’t get tired or want to get off.
“So, if you can actually get the rat to a point where it actually expresses a curiosity in the game, then it could get really interesting.
“If you could get to that point and rats would play for 10 or 20 minutes, then yeah. Twitch streaming would be a very valid way to get this in front of people.”
Each rat wasrewarded with sweet treats such as sugary water and baby food. And, if they became stressed, Tóth removed them from the ball and played with them instead.
Tóth liked to keep things fun for the rats and not overly challenging or stressful. He would like to try more experiments like this in the future, but fears his dreams of training rats to play 3D Pac-Man is too ambitious, and would be difficult and unfair on the rats.
“Behaviourally, it makes sense,” Tóth explains, “the rats don’t really like to attack stuff. They run away from things in the wild. That’d be the dynamic with 3D Pac-Man. You’d have to look back to see if there’s a ghost behind you.
Initially, Tóth had planned to teach the rats that to shoot, they needed to bite a tube, but he quickly discovered that he had more success teaching the three rats to do a rearing motion instead. It’s more complicated, and Tóth believes the rats show more enjoyment when the task is more challenging.
“Of course, this setup isn’t realistic yet because the rat has to turn around, and it’s just very difficult for the rat. That’s why these Doom-like first-person shooter games just make more sense.
“It’s just easy and fun to have the rats run and shoot.”
People on Twitter were quick to comment on the project.
@junerossaert said, “I don’t use Twitch at all and [yet] I would watch so many hours of this you have no idea”
@loveDBZ55 said, “I will literally sub to the rat every month I do not care. I hope it finds whatever other science projects the scientists want to do. I hope the rat lives a hella good life with good food and all the games it wants to”
@BrainwashedZ said, “not gonna lie, I would seriously love this”
@TranshumanBlues said, “don’t encourage this. When the rats can beat Sunlust, we’re all doomed”
@Mr_Metro_ said, ”I hope this happens, it would be the only Twitch streamer I’d watch”
@Wolfman98002015 said, “this may be the only reason I get Twitch”
@Noxcivis said, “SUBBING INSTANTLY!”
However, there was also some criticism about the project.
@RandiHEilertsen started the conversation with, “hate to dunk on a literal rodent, but I was expecting that rat to be better at Doom”
And then @Thumblesteen chimed in to defend the rat, “the rat is actually nailing it, the prototype is set up so that it has limited controls based on forward movement and interaction. It’s the Engineers who need to pick up the slack and add some bidirectional controls.”
Perhaps in the future we’ll see some advancements to the project, while keeping it fun for the rats, but for now, let’s just be amazed that a rat is playing a video game!
Check out Victor Tóth’s blogpost detailing the experiment. (Well worth a read!)
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