IEEE Transactions on Games最新文献

{"title":"Physics-Based Novel Task Generation Through Disrupting and Constructing Causal Interactions","authors":"Chathura Gamage;Matthew Stephenson;Jochen Renz","doi":"10.1109/TG.2024.3385569","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TG.2024.3385569","url":null,"abstract":"In response to the growing demand for AI systems that can operate the physical world, there has been an increasing interest in enhancing their physical reasoning capabilities. Equally crucial is the ability to handle unseen novel situations, as such situations frequently arise in real-world environments. To facilitate the development of AI systems with those abilities, researchers have developed testbeds with specialized tasks to evaluate agents' adaptation to novelty in physical environments. In this article, we propose a method for generating physics-based tasks with incorporated novelties to assess agents' novelty adaptation capabilities. The tasks are defined as causal sequences of physical interactions between objects, and novelties are strategically introduced to disrupt existing causal relationships and construct new ones. This approach ensures that agents must adapt to the effects of novelties to perform those tasks, enabling confident measurement of their novelty adaptation capabilities using task performance. Moreover, our methodology eliminates the need for manual task creation, unlike existing novelty-centric testbeds. The proposed method is demonstrated and evaluated using 12 physical scenarios in the <italic>Angry Birds</i> domain. The evaluated metrics include generation time, physical stability, intended solvability, intended unsolvability, and accidental solvability of the tasks, and they yielded favourable results compared with the literature.","PeriodicalId":55977,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Games","volume":"17 1","pages":"102-114"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140587801","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Measuring, Characterizing, and Analyzing the Free Web Games Ecosystem","authors":"Hina Qayyum;Muhammad Ikram;Mohamed Ali Kaafar;Gareth Tyson","doi":"10.1109/TG.2024.3383838","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TG.2024.3383838","url":null,"abstract":"Web games, that are directly playable within web browsers, have recently garnered substantial popularity, particularly among younger demographics. The absence of a paywall for these games has raised concerns regarding the potential privacy-compromising monetization strategies. Comprehensive investigations have been carried out into domains, such as paid online games, multiplayer online video games, mobile gaming, and their associated privacy and security concerns, but a significant gap persists in the characterization and examination of freely accessible web games. To address these voids, our research conducts an exhaustive analysis of the web games ecosystem. We rigorously scrutinize 22 distinct web game websites with the goal of understanding player experience and addressing privacy concerns. Our methodology involves simulating player interactions across approximately 100 000 individual web games to extract insights into player behavior and privacy risks. The outcomes of our work demonstrate substantial insights into the popularity, ownership, geolocation, and game environment, including metadata diversity. It also reveals the privacy risks faced by users on these websites, encompassing various aspects, such as the presence of questionable third-party advertisements designed for revenue generation, sporadic instances of objectionable content, and the persistence of tracking mechanisms, such as persistent cookies. Most of all, there is also a discouraging absence of transparent privacy policy statements, a website's privacy policy statement is a legal document to protect users' rights. Also, this deficiency of clear policy information hinders users' capacity to make informed decisions about opting out and understanding the potential consequences. In short, the insights from our study highlight substantial concerns regarding prevalent privacy practices within the domain of free web game websites. Moreover, we contribute our dataset and code, which contain metadata collected from approximately 100 K web games originating from the 22 websites examined in our investigation, thereby we provide a valuable resource for further research and analysis of this less investigated genre of websites.","PeriodicalId":55977,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Games","volume":"17 1","pages":"88-101"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140587628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Multimodal Measurement of Cognitive Load in a Video Game Context: A Comparative Study Between Subjective and Objective Metrics","authors":"Emma J. Pretty;Renan Guarese;Chloe A. Dziego;Haytham M. Fayek;Fabio Zambetta","doi":"10.1109/TG.2024.3406723","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TG.2024.3406723","url":null,"abstract":"Understanding the interaction between cognitive load and features of video game play is important for the accurate measurement and application of this psychological construct in both research and industry scenarios to enhance the player experience. A challenge within this domain is the use of measurements developed in different areas in video games without first validating or testing the reliability of these tools. We present a holistic evaluation of methods used to measure cognitive load during naturalistic gameplay of a commercially available sandbox game. This study measures electroencephalography, electromyography, heart rate, heart rate variability, electrodermal activity, and eye blink rate from players during a building task in \u0000<italic>Minecraft</i>\u0000 whilst being assisted by a virtual companion. Various models reveal that a number of physiological measures can be used as a proxy of subjective cognitive load measurement, providing further insight into the player experience during gameplay. Our analysis also reveals some discriminant validity of the subjective measurement used. These results can help inform the choice of sensor in evaluating video game features, or when needing to accurately measure cognitive load for an adaptive situation or high-risk scenario.","PeriodicalId":55977,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Games","volume":"16 4","pages":"854-867"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141194633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Playtesting Box Art: Player Perceptions and Expectations","authors":"Hamna Aslam;Pavel Tishkin;Eleonora Ilina;Joseph Alexander Brown","doi":"10.1109/TG.2024.3380253","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TG.2024.3380253","url":null,"abstract":"An essential component of the game is the box it comes in. Although it seems, such as a small object, it is the first door to the world it encapsulates in itself. Box makes an impression, and perceptions are associated with it. This article investigates board game's box art and related perceptions. A disappointing box art results in the game being left unpurchased on the store shelves. This is not the only consequence. An undesirable impression from the box art remains with the player, although they enjoy the game. While the games have the potential to convey intended benefits, the box is the only chance for game designers to evoke buyers' attention, if the game has not been advertised by other means. It is significant to understand how players associate with box art, their perceptions, and their desirability. This article has investigated box art design for its desirability, the first impression it conveys, and perception of it. We present a series of questions that help test the box art of board games. The questions are broken down into categories to investigate different aspects of the box art. The participants have also drawn the box art for a particular game setting that informs about their preferred design.","PeriodicalId":55977,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Games","volume":"17 1","pages":"242-248"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140587360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Procedural Generation of Rollercoasters","authors":"Jonathan Campbell;Clark Verbrugge","doi":"10.1109/TG.2024.3404001","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TG.2024.3404001","url":null,"abstract":"The \u0000<italic>RollerCoaster Tycoon</i>\u0000 video game involves creating rollercoaster tracks that optimize for various game metrics while also being constrained by the need to ensure a feasible structure in terms of physical and spatial bounds. Creating these procedurally is, thus, a challenge. In this work, we explore multiple approaches to rollercoaster track generation through the use of Markov chains and various deep learning methods. We show that we can achieve relatively good tracks in terms of the game's measurement of success and that reinforcement learning allows for more control of the generated tracks and for different rider experiences. A focus on multiple measures allows our work to extend to other track properties drawn from real-world research. This article extends a previous publication by adding a new reward function for our reinforcement learning agent as well as further analyses of the generated tracks, including a metric measuring rider excitement over time, a revised novelty metric, and an analysis of controllability.","PeriodicalId":55977,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Games","volume":"16 4","pages":"882-891"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141151859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"PyTAG: Tabletop Games for Multiagent Reinforcement Learning","authors":"Martin Balla;George E. M. Long;James Goodman;Raluca D. Gaina;Diego Perez-Liebana","doi":"10.1109/TG.2024.3404133","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TG.2024.3404133","url":null,"abstract":"Modern Tabletop Games present various interesting challenges for multiagent reinforcement learning. In this article, we introduce PyTAG, a new framework that supports interacting with a large collection of games implemented in the Tabletop Games framework. In this work, we highlight the challenges tabletop games provide, from a game-playing agent perspective, along with the opportunities they provide for future research. In addition, we highlight the technical challenges that involve training reinforcement learning agents on these games. To explore the multiagent setting provided by PyTAG, we train the popular proximal policy optimization reinforcement learning algorithm using self-play on a subset of games and evaluate the trained policies against some simple agents and Monte Carlo tree search implemented in the Tabletop Games framework.","PeriodicalId":55977,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Games","volume":"16 4","pages":"993-1002"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141151673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Understanding Fear Responses and Coping Mechanisms in VR Horror Gaming: Insights From Semistructured Interviews","authors":"He Zhang;Xinyang Li;Xinyi Fu;Christine Qiu;Jiyuan Zhang;John M. Carroll","doi":"10.1109/TG.2024.3403768","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TG.2024.3403768","url":null,"abstract":"Virtual reality (VR) has the capacity to offer unparalleled immersive experiences, particularly in the domain of horror gaming. However, creating both practical and enjoyable VR applications necessitates a nuanced understanding of user emotions and behaviors. To fill this gap, we conducted semistructured interviews with 25 participants who engaged in VR horror games, specifically exploring their emotional responses to fear-inducing stimuli and their coping strategies. The results revealed the motivations behind users' behaviors in response to different types of fear, highlighting the need to understand and manage negative emotions in VR environments, and provides insights into user needs and design methodologies in VR horror games.","PeriodicalId":55977,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Games","volume":"16 4","pages":"868-881"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141151902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Proof Number-Based Monte Carlo Tree Search","authors":"Jakub Kowalski;Elliot Doe;Mark H. M. Winands;Daniel Górski;Dennis J. N. J. Soemers","doi":"10.1109/TG.2024.3403750","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TG.2024.3403750","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we proposes a new game-search algorithm, PN-Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS), which combines MCTS and proof-number search (PNS). These two algorithms have been successfully applied for decision making in a range of domains. We define three areas where the additional knowledge provided by the proof and disproof numbers gathered in MCTS trees might be used: final move selection, solving subtrees, and the UCB1 selection mechanism. We test all possible combinations on different time settings, playing against vanilla Upper Confidence bounds applied to Trees on several games: <italic>Lines of Action</i> (7 × 7 and 8 × 8 board sizes), <italic>MiniShogi</i>, <italic>Knightthrough</i>, and <italic>Awari</i>. Furthermore, we extend this new algorithm to properly address games with draws, like <italic>Awari</i>, by adding an additional layer of PNS on top of the MCTS tree. The experiments show that PN-MCTS is able to outperform MCTS in all tested game domains, achieving win rates up to 96.2% for <italic>Lines of Action</i>.","PeriodicalId":55977,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Games","volume":"17 1","pages":"148-157"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141151639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Information","authors":"","doi":"10.1109/TG.2024.3369431","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TG.2024.3369431","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55977,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Games","volume":"16 1","pages":"C3-C3"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10474547","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140168874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Call for Papers—IEEE Transactions on Games Special Issue on Gaming Applications for Cultural Heritage","authors":"","doi":"10.1109/TG.2024.3368728","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TG.2024.3368728","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55977,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Games","volume":"16 1","pages":"247-248"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10474551","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140161266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}