Artificial Intelligence Methodologies for Games

Luís Paulo Reis (DEI/FEUP and LIACC, Portugal)
Pedro Mariano (Universidade de Lisboa and IEETA, Portugal)
Pedro Miguel Moreira (IPVC, Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão, Portugal)
Carlos Martinho (DEI/IST and GAIPS - INESC-ID, Portugal)

THEMATIC TRACK DESCRIPTION

Video games have proven to be a privileged domain for the study of artificial intelligence. A motivational factor is that video games are fun to play and captivating to observe. More interestingly though, they provide increasingly rich and interesting dynamic environments that recreate and model many problems of the real world. As the creatures and entities that inhabit such environments and the environments themselves elicit increasingly higher expectations as a result of the increasingly realistic visual technology used to build them, there is a strong need for methodologies to support the creation of behaviour able to match such expectations and maintain a coherent whole. To that end, methodologies from artificial intelligence are increasingly impacting video game development, while themselves adapting to the constraints of the new medium. Certainly real-time performance is an issue, but other issues such as creating believable and purposely imperfect behaviour to make opponents, individually or as a group, more interesting to interact with are as relevant for the game industry as devising optimal strategies. Artificial intelligence should be able to understand and adapt to the player and know how and when to loose believably, to maintain an optimum gaming experience. Finally, artificial intelligence in video games is not constrained to the fabric of video games themselves. Nowadays, artificial intelligence assists designers and developers alike in the very process of video game design and development, from the inception to the final result, from the supporting story to the simulation of user playthroughs for playtesting. In the quickly evolving medium of digital entertainment, artificial intelligence is taking an increasingly important role.

The First Thematic Track on AI Methodologies for Games AI4Games2011 is targeted to both academic researchers and practitioners that use/develop Artificial Intelligent methodologies and techniques for games. From an academic perspective, games are an excellent test bed for many AI research fields. Puzzles, classical games and board games are excellent test beds for search algorithms and learning methodologies. Social games and multi-player games are very good test beds for multi-agent systems, negotiation algorithms, emotional modelling, user/player modelling. Strategy games and action games are very good for testing real time decision making, path finding, planning and strategic/tactical reasoning. On the practical side, the game industry is now a multi-billion dollar industry whose main challenges are focused on the creation of richer player experiences. Beyond the audio-visual issues and interaction technologies, player experiences are fundamentally enriched by increasing the believability of the narrative and of the artificial characters, i.e. providing the artificial characters with behavior consistent with their personality. This latter goal is fundamentally attained by using AI methodologies and techniques.

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IMPORTANT DATES

- Paper submission: May 10

- Abstract submission: May 10

- Full Paper submission: May 17

- Acceptance notification: June 10

- Camera-ready papers: July 1

- Conference dates: October 10-13

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PAPER SUBMISSION

Authors are invited to submit original research contributions or experience reports in English. Scientific or technical articles describing state-of-the-art techniques, algorithms, systems, environments, problems or applications relevant to the area of Artificial Intelligence for Games may be submitted. Researchers and practitioners are also invited to present demonstrations of: research systems and frameworks in the context of existing games; adoption of AI methodologies and/or algorithms in the context of extensions to existing games; new games or game prototypes with advances made possible by AI.

Papers should not exceed fifteen (15) pages in length and must be formatted according to the information for LNCS authors. Papers must be submitted in PDF (Adobe's Portable Document Format) format and will not be accepted in any other format. Papers that exceed 15 pages or do not follow the LNCS guidelines risk being rejected automatically without a review. At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the conference. More information about the Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) are available on the Springer LNCS Web site.

http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0

Research paper submissions must follow the guidelines specified above. Authors must remove their names from the submitted papers, and should take reasonable care not to indirectly disclose their identity.

Demonstrations should be submitted by means of an extended abstract up to 4 pages. This abstract should include a link to demonstration materials (executable, video recordings, screenshots and/or other relevant media) and a detailed description of the demonstration. These materials are for review purposes only.

Three program committee members will be assigned to review each paper. Acceptance will be based on the paper's significance, technical quality, clarity, relevance and originality. Accepted papers, must be presented at the conference by one of the authors. Accepted papers will be scheduled for presentation, which requires that at least one of the authors should register at the Conference. Accepted demonstrations will take place live at a special session. All accepted papers will be published in the Conference Proceedings.

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TOPICS OF INTEREST

- AI games competitions

- AI in classical games and board games

- Computer chess

- Emotional modelling

- General game players

- Interactive storytelling

- Learning and adaptation in games

- Multi-player games

- Natural language for games

- Natural user interfaces

- Negotiation methodologies for games

- Path finding/movement algorithms

- Planning for games

- Poker playing bots

- Puzzle solving

- Real-time decision making

- Representation issues in games

- Search algorithms

- Serious games

- Social games

- Strategic/tactical games

- User/Player modelling

- Virtual characters and autonomous agents

- Virtual, augmented and alternate realities

- Voice recognition and text to speech.

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ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Luis Paulo Reis (Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto)

Pedro Mariano (University of Lisbon)

Pedro Miguel Moreira (Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo)

Carlos Martinho (Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon)

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PROGRAM COMMITTEE

A. Augusto de Sousa (University of Porto)

Alexander Nareyek (National University of Singapore)

Ana Paiva (Instituto Superior Técnico)

António Coelho (University of Porto)

Carlos Linares López (Univ. Carlos III)

Carlos Martinho (Instituto Superior Técnico)

Filipe Pina (Seed Studios)

Giorgios Yannakakis (IT Univ.Copenhagen)

Guilherme Raimundo (Instituto Superior Técnico)

Jeff Orkin (MIT)

João Pedro Neto (University of Lisbon)

Julian Togelius (IT Univ. Copenhagen)

Kostas Karpouzis (Nat. Technical Univ. Athens)

Luis Paulo Reis (University of Porto)

Luis Seabra Lopes (University of Aveiro)

Luiz Moniz (University of Lisbon)

Marc Cavazza (University of Teesside)

Marco Vala (Instituto Superior Técnico)

Michael Thielscher (Univ. New South Wales)

Nelson Zagalo (University of Minho)

Nuno Lau (University of Aveiro)

Pedro G. Calero (Univ. Complutense de Madrid)

Pedro Mariano (University of Lisbon)

Pedro Miguel Moreira (Inst. Pol. V.Castelo)

Pedro Santos (Instituto Superior Técnico)

Rui Rodrigues (University of Porto)

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