Team Fortress 2’s Mann vs Machine mode will soon receive a “much-needed update”, developers Valve have announced in a whimsical blog post. Both the blog post and the venerable bot-fighting mode itself are a throwback to a kinder age, before genAI started eating everybody’s lunch together with imagery, sounds and written descriptions of everybody eating their lunch.
Ahhhh. Remember when bots were just scalable opponents in first-person shooters. Remember when Steam didn’t own quite as much of the landscape of digital distribution. Remember when Valve could still approximately portray themselves as a bunch of scrappy-doogle weirdos. Remember when Valve were still more game developer than businessfolk. Anyway, the update in question will release on 27th August, and they’re calling on players to submit maps and missions in advance, to unknown end. It’s not clear what the update does, but the community appear set to play a starring role.
A bloggening like this must be answered in kind, so let’s all take a Tardis to 2012, when Craig Pearson (RPS in peace) sampled Mann vs Machine for the first time. “Valve have taught AI soldiers to rocket jump and the AI Spies to disguise and back stab, but if you’re ever fooled by one you should probably take the Turing test,” he quips. Oh Craig. If only you knew what fresh hells were in the offing.
