{"type":"post","id":"epoch-will-release-1-000-gameplay-videos-and-a6ce53","slug":"epoch-will-release-1-000-gameplay-videos-and-a6ce53","title":"Epoch will release 1,000+ gameplay videos and extend the harness to more games.","description":"Thesis: A visual game benchmark measures an agent system, not just the model, because success depends on perception, action selection, and persistence across a long task.","retrieval_nugget":"Thesis: A visual game benchmark measures an agent system, not just the model, because success depends on perception, action selection, and persistence across a long task.","published_at":"2026-10-15","updated_at":"2026-10-15","record_date":"2026-10-15","date_kind":"published_at","topics":["evals","agents","agent-harness"],"source_urls":["https://epoch.ai/publications/ai-systems-are-improving-rapidly-at-slay-the-spire-and-its-sequel"],"schema_version":"newruntime-agent-readable-v0.2","stable_id":"post:epoch-will-release-1-000-gameplay-videos-and-a6ce53","status":"published","visuals":[],"editorial_provenance":{"schema_version":"newruntime-editorial-copy-v1","content_status":"source_grounded_final","final_copy_sha256":"sha256:73d106b892af3ab9a20c5bc3cde8c39b63a9f861ca7369054ebab61f75af3351","reviewed_at":"2026-10-15T04:04:59.203Z","source_evidence_count":1,"verified_claim_count":3,"site_analysis_schema_version":"newruntime-site-analysis-v1","site_object_kind":"field_note","observed_fact_count":3,"implication_count":2,"watch_condition_count":1,"related_record_count":0},"analysis":{"schema_version":"newruntime-site-analysis-v1","object_kind":"field_note","thesis":"A visual game benchmark measures an agent system, not just the model, because success depends on perception, action selection, and persistence across a long task.","observed_facts":[{"text":"Epoch AI's SpireClimb evaluates models in Slay the Spire 1 and Slay the Spire 2 using a single-agent visual computer-use harness.","source_urls":["https://epoch.ai/publications/ai-systems-are-improving-rapidly-at-slay-the-spire-and-its-sequel"]},{"text":"The report says frontier systems exceed 90% win rates on the original game's base difficulty, while GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol reach 17% and 20% respectively on the original's maximum difficulty.","source_urls":["https://epoch.ai/publications/ai-systems-are-improving-rapidly-at-slay-the-spire-and-its-sequel"]},{"text":"Epoch says it plans to release more than 1,000 gameplay videos and extend the harness to more games.","source_urls":["https://epoch.ai/publications/ai-systems-are-improving-rapidly-at-slay-the-spire-and-its-sequel"]}],"mechanism":"The benchmark couples model reasoning to screen interpretation and computer-use actions over a sequence of turns. Performance therefore reflects the complete harnessed system and its ability to sustain decisions, rather than an isolated answer or game-knowledge test.","why_now":"Epoch's six-month comparison indicates that this task has shifted from near-inability to high success at the base setting, making evaluation of more difficult settings and system behavior newly consequential.","implications":["A visual game benchmark measures an agent system, not just the model, because success depends on perception, action selection, and persistence across a long task.","The next useful step is to compare traces and failure modes, not treat a single win rate as a general measure of autonomy."],"evidence_boundary":"The findings are specific to the tested games, selected models, difficulty settings, attempt protocol, and Epoch's harness; they do not establish general computer-use competence or explain the causal source of the gains.","watch_conditions":["Whether Epoch's planned gameplay videos expose repeatable failure modes and whether the harness extension produces comparable results on other games."],"related_records":[],"new_branch_reason":"No prior New Runtime record is supplied for this specific SpireClimb report; this opens a distinct record about visual gameplay benchmarking and its evidence trail."},"editor":{"role":"editor","name":"Andrey Reshetnikov","profile":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.md","profile_json":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.json","same_as":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/reshetnikov1/","https://t.me/lapetuse"]},"routes":{"html":"https://newruntime.com/posts/epoch-will-release-1-000-gameplay-videos-and-a6ce53/","markdown":"https://newruntime.com/posts/epoch-will-release-1-000-gameplay-videos-and-a6ce53.md","json":"https://newruntime.com/posts/epoch-will-release-1-000-gameplay-videos-and-a6ce53.json"},"related_patterns":["ai-engineering-evaluations-are-splitting-into-task-specific"],"next_reads":[{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/evals/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/evals/","title":"Evals","reason":"Explore the evals topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/evals.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/evals.json"},{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/agents/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agents/","title":"Agents","reason":"Explore the agents topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agents.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agents.json"},{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/agent-harness/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agent-harness/","title":"Agent Harness","reason":"Explore the agent-harness topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agent-harness.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agent-harness.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/posts/","url":"https://newruntime.com/posts/","title":"Field Notes","reason":"Open the latest editorial analysis.","media_type":"text/html","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/posts.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/source-ledger.json","url":"https://newruntime.com/source-ledger.json","title":"Source Ledger","reason":"Inspect the public source evidence graph.","media_type":"application/json"}]}