A rat was suspended in a harness on top, where it could move the ball with its feet, which sensors translated into movement in the game world and mirrored it onto a curved computer monitor in front of the gaming rodents.”Īs the rat moved about on the ball, it would also then, in turn, run about in the halls and corridors of Doom II. How did Tóth teach rats to play Doom II you ask? Well, as he explains in his blog, he forged his own personal setup out of odds and ends for the sum of less than $2,000 that consisted of “ a large polystyrene ball that could be rolled in any direction via ball bearings. Tóth decided to teach rats to play 1994’s Doom II in order to better understand brain computer interfaces, and now, in an article for Futurism, he thinks it may be beneficial to take the rats onto Twitch for some livestreaming.

So, while former Feinstein Institutes neuroengineer Viktor Tóth didn’t have as flippant a reason to try as I suggested, last year he fulfilled that dream for some lucky rats in the name of science. Photocopiers, pregnancy tests, fridges, and balls of yarn have managed to run id Software’s classic shooter over the years (though I may have made one of those up), but what about the one who is playing Doom? Why does it always have to be us humans enjoying a good old rip and tear through hell on Earth or Mars? Surely even a rodent must dream of being Doom Guy? We live in a world where all sorts of things can play some form of the eternally badass FPS grandaddy known as Doom. Will we see State of Decay 2 join its predecessor on Steam in the future? Perhaps as we creep closer to May 22, we’ll get our answer. And while Undead Labs has yet to acknowledge the “incident”, Microsoft has in the past allowed games that were Windows Store exclusives to hit Steam, although not at the same time as the initial release.

Obviously, this flies in the face of the game’s exclusivity on the Windows Store. Make sure Steam is running, you are logged in, no other instances are running, then restart the game.” While the session has been removed from Undead Labs’ stream library, someone was kind enough to snag a screenshot of the message. Things were looking good until an error message appeared, stating “Login Failed. Or so we thought.Īt PAX East, Undead Labs showed off State of Decay 2 in a live demo on Twitch. And like other Xbox Play Anywhere titles, the PC version of the game will be available on the Windows Store exclusively. Undead Labs’ State of Decay 2 is set for release May 22nd for Xbox One and PC.

State of decay 2 on steam