Six free games to give you a chance

Great fun does not always have to be expensive. Free games, so-called free-to-play games, have a lot to offer today. Here you will find six video games, which you should look at.

From shooter to sports game: The selection of free playable games is huge today. With some video players, these free-to-play games (F2P) do not enjoy a good reputation, but this is inappropriate. In terms of quality, the games are in no way inferior to their pay competitors. Here is a selection of games you should look at.

"Paladin"

On the PC already some time ago appeared, "Paladins" is also recently available for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 free of charge. In the shooter, players slip into the role of a hero with special abilities and compete against each other in five-team teams. At best, the group consists of a co-ordinated team: the one can heal, the others share damage, again others run away opponents and so on. The whole thing is similar to the Blizzard-Kracher "Overwatch", but also has independent ideas to offer.

"Hearthstone"

Blizzard: One of the most popular and best F2P games is "Hearthstone". The online collectible is easy to learn but difficult to master. Players duel themselves and, alternately, do everything in their power to bring their opponent's life points to zero. The cards represent, among other things, spells and creatures with which the opponent can be attacked. Available is the game for PC and Mac as well as for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

"League of Legends"

No less popular is "League of Legends". Around 100 million gamers are expected to play the MOBA title monthly by the end of 2016, according to an article from the US gaming website "Polygon". The Multiplayer Online Battle Arena is a subgenre of the real-time strategy games. Teams from five players try to penetrate the base of the opposing team on the PC and attack a central point, the Nexus. If this is successfully destroyed, the game is won. A similar well-known representative of the genre is "Dota 2".

"3on3 Freestyle"

Also sports games like the arcadige "3on3 Freestyle" is free. The streetball game, exclusively for PS4, sets with a wink at a brightly colored graphic style and funny characters, all of which have different talents and abilities to offer. As the name implies, the game is played in three teams. Gamers can either compete online against other players or enjoy themselves in the good old couch coop.

"Pirates of the Caribbean: Tides of War"

Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Salazar's Revenge has also recently been released for "Pirates of the Caribbean: Tides of War" for iOS and Android smartphones. In the strategy game, players build ships and buildings, train their units, and plunge into sea battles to gain control over the world's oceans. They meet known characters from the films - including Captain Jack Sparrow, Will Turner and Captain Barbossa.

"Warframe"

Anyone who likes something more action-packed and likes to play with friends, could be "Warframe" something. The co-op shooter for PC, PS4 and Xbox One takes players into a distant future, where they stand as futuristic warriors opposing opponents. You can earn, buy, build, and equip numerous weapons, armor, upgrades, to survive the dangerous missions of the third person shooter.

Computer game may help kids choose healthy food

Worried that your children are addicted to unhealthy foods? Take heart -- a simple brain-training game could help them choose healthy snacks instead of chocolates and sweets, a study has showed.

The game involves reacting to images of healthy food by pressing a button, and doing nothing if unhealthy foods are shown.

The findings showed that children who played the seven-minute game made healthier choices when asked to pick foods afterwards.

"The sight of foods like chocolate can activate reward centres in the brain at the same time as reducing activity in self-control areas," said lead researcher Lucy Porter from the University of Exeter in Britain.

"Our training encourages people to make a new association -- when they see unhealthy food, they stop," Porter added.

For the study, detailed in the journal Appetite, the team conducted two experiments, and in total more than 200 school children aged 4-11 were shown images of healthy and unhealthy foods.

Alongside each image, a cartoon face was displayed -- happy for healthy food, sad for unhealthy food.

Children had to hit the space-bar when they saw a happy face and do nothing if they saw a sad face.

Afterwards, they played a shopping game where they had to choose a limited number of food items in one minute.

Further, age did not affect whether the game worked or not, meaning that children as young as four as well as adults can benefit from playing.

"It's encouraging to see that this simple computer game has the potential to improve food choices in young children as well as in adults," added Natalia Lawrence from the University of Exeter.

Best Selling Computer Game of All Time Teaches…

Economics, Entrepreneurship, and Cooperation?

As part of our homeschooling curriculum, our kids spend an enormous amount of time designing complex circuits and structures using a state-of-the-art computer program. They also spend a lot of time communicating with others and finding online resources that can help them when they need to solve a problem.

Doesn't that sound better than "our kids play Minecraft a lot?"

Minecraft is the best-selling computer game of all time, and since its launch way back in May of 2009, it has been fascinating to see how "Minecraft culture" has evolved. It has unleashed a host of YouTube entrepreneurs who review mods and make tutorial videos explaining their creations. Companies make online courses that teach people how to write Minecraft mods using Java. Minecraft is so open and so easy to customize that it isn't a stretch to say the only limit is the player's imagination. We're still working on building out our kids' channels, Elevator Zombie and Cupcakes and Meat Patties. One of the lessons they're going to learn, I think, is that this is an open market with no barriers to entry and, therefore, not a market in which they will be able to earn economic profits. But we'll get to that hard lesson eventually.

Like all parents we're working to help our kids navigate the online space and avoid getting too attached to gaming at the expense of other things, but it doesn't really bother us that much that they play games like Minecraft and Roblox at every opportunity. It has been fun to watch them develop design and problem-solving skills, but—perhaps surprisingly—it has been an excellent opportunity for them to develop their social skills.

Minecraft servers and Roblox games have different, constantly-evolving norms and a robust marketplace for rules. The kids get to learn how to endure various slights and griefs, to be sure, but they also learn how to cooperate with strangers by playing team games on Minecraft servers or by trying to earn more in-game currency by helping someone harvest wood in Roblox Lumber Tycoon 2.

They also teach great lessons about entrepreneurship. If you don't like a game, you can design your own. If you want to cater to a specific community or subgroup, it's easy. There are, for example, Minecraft servers created specifically for children on the autism spectrum who might want to play the game with others but without running the risk of being raided or killed or otherwise abused.

I've been especially surprised at just how big Minecraft has become online and beyond. One of the best things about Minecraft is that it is practically infinitely customizable, and the internet is filled with mods one can download, install, and enjoy. Once again, norms are evolving to govern the use (and sometimes abuse) of mods and modders, and reputation-based mechanisms help people know which sites they can trust and which sites they can't when it comes to mod downloads.

There are people—DanTDM and Stampy Longnose, for example—who make very comfortable livings running YouTube channels consisting almost solely of videos of them playing Minecraft, Roblox, or some other game. They are legitimate celebrities. A year or so ago, a company started making a line of "Tube Heroes" toys based on famous YouTube Minecraft players, and you can see videos of Minecraft and other gaming conventions at which thousands of people are there to see DanTDM play and at which people line up for his autograph. There are also people who earn their living making games and items for Roblox, which has an in-game currency called "Robux" that can be purchased with real dollars and then spent on game passes, special items and upgrades, and so on.

Games like Minecraft and Roblox give virtually unlimited play to the imagination, and they provide decentralized platforms on which people can build, divide, or conquer—or simply find a community of gamers with similar interests. The internet brings out the worst in us, but games like Minecraft and Roblox show how it can also bring out our best.

With the Spring semester over and the summer finally upon us, I'll be looking forward to checking out "Liberty Minecraft," a new project created and maintained by a Learn Liberty viewer named Nathan, which uses a highly customized Minecraft server that reshapes the game's interactive multiplayer world into an immersive tool for teaching players about private property and free enterprise.

Computer wins 2nd game against Chinese go champion

WUZHEN, China (AP) — A computer beat China's top player of go, one of the last games machines have yet to master, for a second time Thursday in a competition authorities limited the Chinese public's ability to see.

Ke Jie lost despite playing what Google's AlphaGo indicated was the best game any opponent has played against it, said Demis Hassabis, founder of the company that developed the program.

AlphaGo defeated Ke, a 19-year-old prodigy, in their first game Tuesday during a forum organized by Google on artificial intelligence in Wuzhen, a town west of Shanghai. They play a final game Saturday.

AlphaGo previously defeated European and South Korean champions, surprising players who had expected it to be at least a decade before computers could master the game.

Internet users outside China could watch this week's games live but Chinese censors blocked most mainland web users from seeing the Google site carrying the feed. None of China's dozens of video sites carried the live broadcasts but a recording of Tuesday's game was available the following night on one popular site, Youku.com.

State media reports on the games have been brief, possibly reflecting Beijing's antipathy toward Google, which closed its China-based search engine in 2010 following a dispute over censorship and computer hacking. Google says 60 million people in China watched online when AlphaGo played South Korea's go champion in March 2016.

The official response to the match, a major event for the worlds of go and artificial intelligence, reflects the conflict between the ruling Communist Party's technology ambitions and its insistence on controlling what its public can see, hear and read.

The government encourages internet use for business and education but tries to block access to material considered subversive.

The possible reason for suppressing coverage while allowing Google to organize the event was unclear. Censorship orders to Chinese media are officially secret and government officials refuse to confirm whether online material is blocked.

On Thursday, AlphaGo "thought that Ke Jie played perfectly" for the first 50 moves, Hassabis said at a news conference.

"For the first roughly 100 moves, it is the closest game we have ever seen anyone play against the master version of AlphaGo," he said.

Ke said the computer made unexpected moves after playing more methodically on Tuesday.

"From the perspective of human beings, it stretched a little bit and I was surprised at some points," he said.

"I also thought that I was very close to winning the match in the middle," Ke said. "I could feel my heart thumping. But maybe because I was too excited, I did some wrong or stupid moves. I guess that's the biggest weak point of human beings."

Go players take turns putting white or black stones on a rectangular grid with 361 intersections, trying to capture territory and each other's pieces by surrounding them. The game is considered more difficult than chess for machines to master because the near-infinite number of possible positions requires intuition and flexibility.

This week's games are taking place in a hall where Chinese leaders hold the annual World Internet Conference, an event attended by global internet companies.

China has the world's biggest population of internet users, with some 730 million people online at the end of last year, according to government data.

Censors block access to social media and video-sharing websites such as Facebook and YouTube. Internet companies are required to employ teams of censors to watch social media and remove banned material.

Web surfers can get around online filters using virtual private networks, but Beijing has cracked down on use of those.

Google's AlphaGo A.I. beats world's number one in ancient game of Go

Wuzhen, China -- Computer 1, human 0. The rise of the machine was fully evident Tuesday when a Google computer beat the world's number one player of the ancient Chinese board game Go, signifying a major breakthrough in artificial intelligence.

Global champ Chinese player Ke Jie, lost his first game against Google DeepMind computer program AlphaGo in Wuzhen. With two remaining matches, Ke, 19, could still obliterate AlphaGo and take home $1.5 million in prize money, maintaining his status as the absolute best. But if he loses, that would solidify machine domination in one of the world's most complex games.

Despite defeat in the first match, "this is the greatest honor in a lifetime," Ke said of playing against AlphaGo.

Teaching computers to master Go has long been considered a holy grail for artificial intelligence scientists — there are more possible configurations of the board than there are atoms in the universe. Before this week, AlphaGo had already clocked many victories against top-ranked masters, a significant advancement that happened far sooner than experts expected.

"I've always been optimistic about how far we can go with AI," Dave Silver, lead programmer of AlphaGo at Google DeepMind, told CNBC. "But it happened faster than I think even I would have anticipated – we were able to really discover some beautiful and elegant algorithms … leading to some nice results against the world's strongest players."

This week's games between AlphaGo and Ke are being live streamed by Google online, but Chinese censors already block access to Google and its services, such as Gmail and YouTube, in the country.

Chinese state media outlets were also restricted by authorities from live broadcasting the game, and issued coverage guidelines ahead of the match, according to sources familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified on the record because they weren't authorized to speak in an official capacity.

It was unclear why, given that Go is a Chinese game, and Ke himself is Chinese, though it could be linked to the broader ban on Google in China. A Google spokesperson declined to comment.

The game, Go, originated thousands of years ago in China, and has two players taking turns placing black and white stones on a square board of 19 lines by 19 lines. The object is to take territorial control of the board by surrounding the opponent. Games can go on for hours, and playing requires immense mental stamina, intuition, and strategy.

AlphaGo was trained by studying how human experts have played in the past, Silver said. The program runs a very deep search, sometimes gaming out 50 moves into the future, and uses "this tree of possibilities to work out the best path that will lead to the best possible outcome," Silver said.

This is the kind of technology that Google DeepMind wants to apply elsewhere, to help humans figure out what present decision will lead to the best potential results.

"We're most excited about applying AI to science and medicine … using AI as a tool to improve scientific breakthroughs," Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, told CNBC. "And also to improve healthcare and maybe eventually help with finding cures for diseases or medical diagnostics."

But scary machines aren't going to replace humans entirely just yet. As it stands, computer systems can't replicate things like human emotions and imagination. And Hassabis says there's a long way to go for machines to process higher cognitive functions, like memory, planning, and abstract reasoning.

Still, the technology has come a long way since the 1990s, when software programs first got smart enough to play classic board games, like backgammon. Things peaked with a historic victory of IBM's Deep Blue computer over world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997.

Though not a serious Go player -- Hassabis made his name in his early teens as a world chess champion -- even he hasn't tried to play against AlphaGo.

"There would be no point in me playing AlphaGo," he said. "It's way too strong for me."