This type of testing, which examines bots by asking users to type letters, or click on all the images of stacks, has given rise to a host of online games. It can be strangely addictive and last for hours.
Over time, Doom has popped up everywhere. Fans have modified it to fit iPods, digital cameras, ATMs, and calculators. Within Excel spreadsheets and even in the load test display.
So it is not surprising that there is a kind of CAPTCHA in which the user runs Doom to prove that he is human. The premise is simple: kill three enemies.
But it’s not as easy as it seems. Move forward, and you may be destroyed by fireball-throwing goblins. It is much better to camp in the starting position and wait for the enemies to approach. I did this, and it took me two tries to clear the test.
The game, created by programmer Mikel Camps Orteza in 2021 as a way to showcase his skills, is the simplest in a small but interesting subgenre.
CAPTCHA, that annoying kind of online quiz that screens bots by asking all users to type letters, or click on all the pictures of bicycle wheels, has spawned a host of online games, some of which are played over the course of hours.
“I’m Not a Robot” unfolds with increasing intensity over 48 levels and takes approximately two hours to finish. Less than 1% of players have succeeded. It starts with regular visual captcha tests: crosswalks, traffic lights, vegetables, etc. Suddenly, you’re playing whack-a-mole, looking up words in a grid, and looking for Waldo. There’s even a parallel parking simulation level.
By level 28, you are a day trader watching a live stock chart, trying to make $2,500. Success depends on reading trends, timing decisions, and tolerating uncertainty—skills that relate less to ordinary people than to the posturing of some lunatic on LinkedIn.
Loss gives time to reflect on what makes this such a test of being human. Is it simply the desire to perform a task for no apparent benefit? The level of stock trading, after all, does not test human traits such as observation, empathy, or creativity. It tests culturally specific digital literacy. A person who cannot read charts will fail.
What does it mean that the system is simply not designed for them?
By the time one reaches the sliding tile puzzle at level 30, the whole thing starts to feel like an exercise in masochism as well. It takes intelligence, not character, to get to the end.
To be fair, CAPTCHA games present themselves as jokes or artistic projects. The difficulty is the point. The low success rate is a feature, not a bug; A satire on the rising demands of the web.
Proving humanity becomes just another online performance. (Meanwhile, the Internet, our twisted version of the Matrix, is filled with agents trying to convince other agents of their humanity.)
Could these games also be proof of concept? Could fully automated public Turing tests to differentiate between computers and humans have users fight non-player characters to enter a site? Engage in the battle of wits. Answer to the riddle; Play the stock market?
Do these experiences point to a future where evidence of humanity becomes less about who a person is and more about what they are willing to endure?
This is not as far-fetched as it seems. With many AI-driven algorithms already outpacing humans at discrete cognitive tasks, systems may increasingly rely on cost metrics, in the form of time spent.
Humanity is actually defined, in the new CAPTCHA models, by incompetence. We click randomly, scroll erratically, and move much slower than robots.
Do we ultimately have to prove that we’re not robots by being a very special kind of human: patient, adaptable, and willing to play, no matter how long the game takes? Will this be the first task machines give us?
