By: Nick Gambino
If you’ve ever used the internet you’ve almost definitely had to pass a CAPTCHA test to verify that you are in fact human. With bots running wild, it’s an important safeguard against DoS attacks and other assaults on websites.
These human verification tests are usually pretty simple, if not annoying (can we get some higher res pictures of these traffic lights please?). But now there’s a new fun version of the CAPTCHA test that requires you to play a video game to gain entry to the site.
The video game in question is the classic first-person shooter DOOM. You’ll play the 16-bit game and once you’ve killed three monsters, you’ll be able to move on into the site. Apparently bots can’t play the game effectively…yet.
The game test was designed and built by the CEO of Vercel, Guillermo Rauch, using their very own AI site builder. Don’t let the fact that it’s a simple human verifier test fool you. They didn’t make it easy. In fact, that’s probably why they ratcheted up the difficulty – so that bots couldn’t quickly game it.
Rauch designed it to be played at the Nightmare level with increased speed. This was the hardest version of what was already a pretty hard-to-beat game.
Anybody who grew up playing retro video games like DOOM (they weren’t retro at the time) knows that games back then were super difficult. They didn’t care that a bunch of kids were raging trying to beat it. Three lives and you’re out. You just spent 7 hours, no breaks, and died on your last life just before the end? Tough, kid. Start from the beginning.
Now, clearly this is not a time efficient CAPTCHA test. Nobody is going to go shoot up some virtual monsters everytime they want to access important websites. The DOOM CAPTCHA is merely a flex by Vercel to show what they’re capable of.
Still, it’s a lot of fun and you’re probably interested in trying it. You can play the game without the stress of accessing a website here.
