Shallow decision-making analysis in General Video Game Playing

The General Video Game AI competitions have been the testing ground for several techniques for game playing, such as evolutionary computation techniques, tree search algorithms, hyper heuristic based or knowledge based algorithms. So far the metrics used to evaluate the performance of agents have been win ratio, game score and length of games. In this paper we provide a wider set of metrics and a comparison method for evaluating and comparing agents. The metrics and the comparison method give shallow introspection into the agent's decision making process and they can be applied to any agent regardless of its algorithmic nature. In this work, the metrics and the comparison method are used to measure the impact of the terms that compose a tree policy of an MCTS based agent, comparing with several baseline agents. The results clearly show how promising such general approach is and how it can be useful to understand the behaviour of an AI agent, in particular, how the comparison with baseline agents can help understanding the shape of the agent decision landscape. The presented metrics and comparison method represent a step toward to more descriptive ways of logging and analysing agent's behaviours

Skills for creativity in games design

This paper reports on an experimental study to understand further the extent to which academics may differ to practitioners in their conception of skills relevant to creativity within a specific design related subject: in this instance, Games Design. Ten academics, sampled from BA Hons games courses in the UK, participated in identifying what factors they each considered important to creativity in games design, and how, collectively, they rated particular skills, knowledge, talents and abilities relevant to creativity in games design. With the same research methodology, theoretical framework and procedures, the focus was placed on ten games design practitioners’ conceptions of skills for creativity in games design. A detailed comparison is made between the findings from both groups

Using Video Games to Develop Graduate Attributes: a Pilot Study

It may be argued that most higher education courses are not explicitly designed to teach or develop desirable soft skills such as critical thinking, communication, resourcefulness or adaptability. While such skills – often referred to as ‘graduate attributes’ – are assumed to be developed as a by-product of a university education, there is little empirical evidence to support this assumption. Furthermore, traditional didactic teaching methods do not typically require students to exhibit such skills, while prevalent assessment methods such as examinations are ill-suited to measure them. Many commercial video games, on the other hand, require players to exercise a range of very similar skills and competencies in order to progress. The pilot project described here sought to explore the use of video games to develop graduate attributes and to identify suitable instruments for measuring such elusive conceptions. A small group of undergraduate students were recruited and asked to play selected video games for two hours per week over an eight week period. A range of psychometric tests were administered at the beginning and the end of the experiment period in order to gather empirical data relating to the participants’ graduate attributes. Mean differences in the pre- and post-intervention scores associated with each measure were obtained and 95% confidence intervals calculated to provide an indication of whether results obtained might be indicative of a wider population. Participants were also asked to discuss their experience as a group following each session and to blog about it if they were so inclined. Despite the small scale of the pilot, the results were sufficiently encouraging to warrant a larger study, which is now underway. The challenges involved in obtaining empirical data on the effectiveness of a game-based intervention such as this are addressed and implications for the subsequent study are discussed

Introduction to location-based mobile learning

[About the book] The report follows on from a 2-day workshop funded by the STELLAR Network of Excellence as part of their 2009 Alpine Rendez-Vous workshop series and is edited by Elizabeth Brown with a foreword from Mike Sharples. Contributors have provided examples of innovative and exciting research projects and practical applications for mobile learning in a location-sensitive setting, including the sharing of good practice and the key findings that have resulted from this work. There is also a debate about whether location-based and contextual learning results in shallower learning strategies and a section detailing the future challenges for location-based learning

Augmenting the field experience: a student-led comparison of techniques and technologies

In this study we report on our experiences of creating and running a student fieldtrip exercise which allowed students to compare a range of approaches to the design of technologies for augmenting landscape scenes. The main study site is around Keswick in the English Lake District, Cumbria, UK, an attractive upland environment popular with tourists and walkers. The aim of the exercise for the students was to assess the effectiveness of various forms of geographic information in augmenting real landscape scenes, as mediated through a range of techniques and technologies. These techniques were: computer-generated acetate overlays showing annotated wireframe views from certain key points; a custom-designed application running on a PDA; a mediascape running on the mScape software on a GPS-enabled mobile phone; Google Earth on a tablet PC; and a head-mounted in-field Virtual Reality system. Each group of students had all five techniques available to them, and were tasked with comparing them in the context of creating a visitor guide to the area centred on the field centre. Here we summarise their findings and reflect upon some of the broader research questions emerging from the project