MIT's Premier Programming Competition

Battlecode 2023 ended on February 5th, 2023!

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Battlecode 2022 Gameplay

What is Battlecode?

In Battlecode, two teams of virtual robots roam the screen, managing resources and executing different offensive strategies against each other. Plan, code, and compete throughout the month of January for a chance at more than $20,000 in prizes!

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Want to sponsor Battlecode 2024?

Contact us at battlecode-sponsorship@mit.edu for more information! We offer multiple sponsorship tiers which can include tech talks, final tournament booths, and more.

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Who can participate?

Anyone is welcome to participate in Battlecode! However, only student teams are eligible for the tournaments and prize money. Note that non-MIT students are eligible too.

Full Eligibility Rules

Battlecode 2023: Tempest

In Battlecode: Tempest, alchemists have torn open unstable portals to a new universe filled with beautiful floating islands and time-bending tempests. But you are not alone – escapees from a second reality have fled to this world as well and seek to take it for themselves. The battle of realities has begun, and only one will survive.

The first player to conquer 75% of the sky islands wins the game. Islands are conquered by placing a reality anchor on them, and reality anchors are crafted at each faction’s headquarters. Each player begins with several headquarters which can create robots, craft anchors, and store resources.

Read these postmortems that provide a competitors’ view of the game!
2023 Postmortem by “Gone Fishin’” (2nd)
2023 Postmortem by “4 Musketeers” (3rd)
2023 Postmortem by “don’t @ me” (7th)
2023 Postmortem by “no thoughts head empty” (Newbie 2nd)

Other links:
MIT News Article, MIT News Video
Battlecode 2023 Statistics, compiled by team “camel_case”
A Guide to Battlecode, by Ivan Geffner

Final Standings

Place Team(s) Prize Amount
1st Producing Perfection $5000
2nd Gone Fishin’ $3000
3rd 4 Musketeers $1500
4th Your Anchor Is On Another Island $1000
5th The Grandiloquent Grinders, om_nom $900
7th Meteor, don’t @ me $800
9th camel_case, Mittens, DumbCollectors, what is burnout??? $700
13th Kryptonite, noBFSplz, Baby Ducks, bruh $600
Sprint I & II Winner Super Cow Powers $250 x 2
MIT Newbie 1st 21G.111 $700
MIT Newbie 2nd place no thoughts head empty $500
MIT Newbie 3rd place Surface Kickers $300
MIT Newbie 4th place UwU $200
HS 1st place dage $700
HS 2nd place amogus $500
HS 3rd place SUPERWET BattleClowns $300
HS 4th place Euler’s Broilers $200
Argus Labs Best Strategy Report 4 Musketeers $800
Regression Games Best Devlog Series cereal coders $800

Gold Sponsors

Regression Games

Regression Games is bringing the world of AI and gaming to the mainstream. We are building the games, platform, and community to making competitive gaming with AI accessible and enjoyable for everyone! Players on Regression Games will create code, artificial intelligence, and machine learning models to control characters in their favorite games. Debug strategies in real time, compete for prizes in tournaments, battle for top spots on the leaderboard, and collaborate with friends to build the best bots possible.

We are founded by a previous Battlecode Dev, and we understand the excitement of competing with AIs in games. We are passionate about competitive gaming with technology, and believe that a month out of the year is not enough time! Join us in the Battlecode off-season at regression.gg to participate in our first season and tournament. Enhance your coding and AI skills, prepare for the next year of Battlecode, and earn ultimate glory!

Interested in internships? Contact us through our website - the winners of the Regression Games award, “Best Devlog Series”, will automatically get a chance to interview for internships.

Argus Labs

Argus Labs is pioneering a game technology architecture that allows games, marketplaces, public good game infrastructures, and user-generated content/platforms to communicate and interoperate seamlessly.

Despite being internet-native, online game worlds exist in siloed systems – seemingly tucked away in the dark corners of the universe.

  • Game developers are locked into platform giants and operate at their mercy.

  • Players are restricted from creating content and platforms that directly hook into core game logic and data.

  • Games can’t communicate with each other seamlessly, eliminating a treasure trove of game design innovation and embargoing expansive inter-game economies.

We are an applied research lab with an integrated game studio. At Argus, we build games that are native to our infrastructure; this provides us with mechanical sympathy that allows us to design games that fully unlock the power and quirks of our system.

We recently raised $10 million in seed funding led by Haun Ventures ($1.5b crypto fund led by former a16z GP Katie Haun) with participation from leading angels in tech and gaming such as Elad Gil, Balaji Srinivasan, etc.

Looking for an internship or a full-time role at the intersection of distributed systems and game development? Check out argus.gg/jobs


Silver Sponsors

Hudson River Trading

Hudson River Trading brings a scientific approach to trading financial products. We have built one of the world’s most sophisticated computing environments for research and development.

At HRT we come from all sorts of backgrounds: mathematics, computer science, statistics, physics, and engineering. We’re a community of self-starters, motivated by the excitement of being at the cutting edge of automated trading. We’re friends and colleagues, whether we are sharing a meal, playing the latest board game, or writing elegant code. We embrace a culture of togetherness that extends far beyond the walls of our office.

Jane Street

Jane Street is a quantitative trading firm with offices worldwide. We hire smart, humble people who love to solve problems, build systems, and test theories. You’ll learn something new every day in our office—whether it’s connecting with a colleague to share perspectives, or participating in a talk, class, or game night. Our success is driven by our people and we never stop improving.

Spark Investment Management

We are creating a groundbreaking data science infrastructure for our next-generation hedge fund. For over a decade, our outstanding people, many of whom have PhDs, have been developing the next generation of technologies, ideas, and strategies. We have been highly successful because of both our technically superior strategies and our brilliant people. We have a close-knit group, distinguished by their interest in our shared success, half of whom are graduates from Harvard, MIT, and Cornell. We have experience with H-1B and green card sponsorship, and visa status is not a constraint.


Bronze Sponsors

Dropbox

 

QuantCo

 

The D.E. Shaw Group

 

Citadel

 

Other Sponsors

ITZ

 

Wilkens Family