Go with the flow: reinforcement learning in turn-based battle video games

Game flow represents a state where the player is neither frustrated nor bored. In turn-based battle video games it can be achieved by Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA), whose research has begun rising over the last decade. This paper introduces an idea for incorporating DDA through the use of Reinforcement Learning (RL) to agents of turn-based battle video games. We design and implement an RL agent that shows, in a simple environment, the idea of how a game could achieve balance through adequate choices in actions depending on the player's level of skill. For achieving this purpose, we incorporated the design and implementation of state-action-reward-state-action (SARSA) algorithm to the agent of our implemented game. In addition, we added tracking of the on-going games and depending on the frequency of the player's repeated wins or losses, the rewards of the RL agent are modified. This modification of the rewards has an impact on the RL agent's actions, which involves an increase/decrease of the difficulty of the battle game. The evaluation performed shows that the idea of the paper is demonstrated, since players face personalized challenges that we believe are in range of game flow

Motivación y estimación del tiempo en el uso de herramientas internet informacionales y dialógicas

Se analiza la relación existente entre el grado de interés o motivación y estimación del tiempo (aspectos psicológicos) en la realización de tareas informacionales y dialógicas (aspectos comunicacionales) mediadas por internet en adolescentes chilenos. Se empleó una muestra estratificada de 120 estudiantes de 7 liceos de Chile con una media de edad de 15 años. Todos los participantes debían realizar de forma sucesiva dos tareas por internet: una primera tarea de comunicación vertical (búsqueda de información con el empleo del Google) y una segunda tarea de comunicación horizontal (diálogo por mensajería). Para cada una de las tareas se medía el tiempo percibido y el grado de interés. Los resultados muestran un interés significativamente mayor y un tiempo estimado significativamente menor en la tarea de comunicación horizontal. Desde aquí se pueden proyectar usos informacionales y educativos de interne

Use of auditory event-related potentials to measure immersion during a computer game

The degree of engagement in a computer game is determined by sensory immersion (i.e. effects of display technology) and challenge immersion (i.e. effects of task demand). Twenty participants played a computer game under two display conditions (a large TV vs. head-mounted display) with three levels of cognitive challenge (easy/hard/impossible). Immersion was defined as selective attention to external (non-game related) auditory stimuli and measured implicitly as event-related potentials (ERPs) to an auditory oddball task. The Immersive Experience Questionnaire (IEQ) was used to capture subjective indicators of immersion. The type of display had no significant influence on ERPs or responses to the IEQ. However, subjective immersion was significantly enhanced by the experience of hard and impossible demand. The amplitude of late component ERPs to oddball stimuli were significantly reduced when demand increased from easy to hard/impossible levels. We conclude that ERPs to irrelevant stimuli represent a valid method of operationalising immersion

Complexity Theory for a New Managerial Paradigm: A Research Framework

In this work, we supply a theoretical framework of how organizations can embed complexity management and sustainable development into their policies and actions. The proposed framework may lead to a new management paradigm, attempting to link the main concepts of complexity theory, change management, knowledge management, sustainable development, and cybernetics. We highlight how the processes of organizational change have occurred as a result of the move to adapt to the changes in the various global and international business environments and how this transformation has led to the shift toward the present innovation economy. We also point how organizational change needs to deal with sustainability, so that the change may be consistent with present needs, without compromising the future

Evaluation of Musical Creativity and Musical Metacreation Systems

The field of computational creativity, including musical metacreation, strives to develop artificial systems that are capable of demonstrating creative behavior or producing creative artefacts. But the claim of creativity is often assessed, subjectively only on the part of the researcher and not objectively at all. This article provides theoretical motivation for more systematic evaluation of musical metacreation and computationally creative systems and presents an overview of current methods used to assess human and machine creativity that may be adapted for this purpose. In order to highlight the need for a varied set of evaluation tools, a distinction is drawn among three types of creative systems: those that are purely generative, those that contain internal or external feedback, and those that are capable of reflection and self-reflection. To address the evaluation of each of these aspects, concrete examples of methods and techniques are suggested to help researchers (1) evaluate their systems' creative process and generated artefacts, and test their impact on the perceptual, cognitive, and affective states of the audience, and (2) build mechanisms for reflection into the creative system, including models of human perception and cognition, to endow creative systems with internal evaluative mechanisms to drive self-reflective processes. The first type of evaluation can be considered external to the creative system and may be employed by the researcher to both better understand the efficacy of their system and its impact and to incorporate feedback into the system. Here we take the stance that understanding human creativity can lend insight to computational approaches, and knowledge of how humans perceive creative systems and their output can be incorporated into artificial agents as feedback to provide a sense of how a creation will impact the audience. The second type centers around internal evaluation, in which the system is able to reason about its own behavior and generated output. We argue that creative behavior cannot occur without feedback and reflection by the creative/metacreative system itself. More rigorous empirical testing will allow computational and metacreative systems to become more creative by definition and can be used to demonstrate the impact and novelty of particular approaches

Crypto-Minding: Post-industrial Data-Activism

// Stoletje obsedene industrializacije nam je širom zemeljske oble zapustilo obilico poceni energije, zemljišč in infrastrukture. Naraščajoči val »kripto-podjetnikov« spreminja odpisane industrijske prostore v objekte za »kripto rudarjenje«, neskončne algoritme poganjajo fosilna goriva in pri tem ustvarjajo vprašljivo vrednost. Razstava prikaže različne računalniške tehnike za sodelovanje in skrb v prizadeti skupnosti ter okolici elektrarne Greenidge Bitcoin Mining na jezeru Seneca v zvezni državi New York, ZDA. Predstavljene bodo umetniško-aktivistične intervencije v javno mnenje in taktike protinadzora, ter problematika toplotnega onesnaževanja voda. Gre za preizpraševanje proizvodnje javno dostopnega znanja in soustvarjanje računalniško podprtih orodjarn za radikalno družbeno organiziranje in politično komunikacijo. / Ob otvoritvi razstave postrežemo s pašteto soške postrvi spodnjega toka. // Tradicionalne, rodovne in današnje dežele ljudstva Gayogohó:nǫˀ iz konfederacije Haudenosaunee [ZDA] // Avtorji: Marina Zafiris Owen Marshall Steve Jackson Joseph Ferdinando Christopher Csikszentmihalyi Emma Chase Jordan Aceto // Zahvala Čuvaju jezera Seneca in Centru za trajnost Cornell AtkinsonA century of manic industrialization has left us with ample cheap energy, real estate, and infrastructure around the world. A growing wave of “crypto-entrepreneurs” have been converting decommissioned industrial spaces into “crypto mining” facilities, burning carbon-based fuels to solve endless algorithms and create dubious value. This showcase highlights various computational techniques to engage with and address community concerns surrounding the externalized impacts of the Greenidge Bitcoin Mining power plant on Seneca Lake in New York state. Through specific interventions into questions regarding public sentiment, counter-surveillance, and thermal water pollution. This is about exploring not only the production of public knowledge but also how to co-create computer-assisted repertoires of contention for radical social organizing and political communication. / Downstream Soča trout pate to be served at the exhibition opening. Traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of the Gayogohó:nǫˀ Nation, of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy [USA] Authors: Marina Zafiris Owen Marshall Steve Jackson Joseph Ferdinando Christopher Csikszentmihalyi Emma Chase Jordan Aceto With thanks to Seneca Lake Guardian & the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainabilit