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We initiate the study of structured Stackelberg games, a novel form of strategic interaction between a leader and a follower where contextual information can be predictive of the follower's (unknown) type. Motivated by applications such as…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Maria-Florina Balcan , Kiriaki Fragkia , Keegan Harris

We adopt the distribution and expectation of guessing times in game Wordle as metrics to predict the difficulty of words and explore their influence factors. In order to predictthe difficulty distribution, we use Monte Carlo to simulate the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-05-08 Beibei Liu , Yuanfang Zhang , Shiyu Zhang

Cooperative games provide a framework to study cooperation among self-interested agents. They offer a number of solution concepts describing how the outcome of the cooperation should be shared among the players. Unfortunately, computational…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-11-28 Ayumi Igarashi , Rani Izsak , Edith Elkind

Achieving optimal balance in games is essential to their success, yet reliant on extensive manual work and playtesting. To facilitate this process, the Procedural Content Generation via Reinforcement Learning (PCGRL) framework has recently…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2024-09-10 Florian Rupp , Alessandro Puddu , Christian Becker-Asano , Kai Eckert

The rapid pace of recent research in AI has been driven in part by the presence of fast and challenging simulation environments. These environments often take the form of games; with tasks ranging from simple board games, to competitive…

This paper focuses on procedurally generating rules and communicating them to players to adjust the difficulty. This is part of a larger project to collect and adapt games in educational games for young children using a digital puzzle game…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-03-20 Thomas Volden , Djordje Grbic , Paolo Burelli

In recent years, the pen and paper RPG market has experienced significant growth. As a result, companies are increasingly exploring the integration of AI technologies to enhance player experience and gain a competitive edge. One of the key…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-04 Jolanta Śliwa

This paper presents a data-driven statistical framework to quantify the role of skill in games, addressing the long-standing question of whether success in a game is predominantly driven by skill or chance. We analyze player level data from…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-05-28 Tathagata Banerjee , Anushka De , Subhamoy Maitra , Diganta Mukherjee

Probabilistic program analysis aims to quantify the probability that a given program satisfies a required property. It has many potential applications, from program understanding and debugging to computing program reliability, compiler…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2017-09-08 Aleksandar S. Dimovski

Games like Super Mario Maker 2 (SMM2) lower the barrier for casual users to become level designers. In this paper, we set out to analyze a vast amount of data about SMM2 user-written levels, in order to understand what factors affect a…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-07-30 Carlo A. Furia , Andrea Mocci

This work investigates the reasoning and planning capabilities of foundation models and their scalability in complex, dynamic environments. We introduce PuzzlePlex, a benchmark designed to assess these capabilities through a diverse set of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-09 Yitao Long , Yuru Jiang , Hongjun Liu , Yilun Zhao , Jingchen Sun , Yiqiu Shen , Chen Zhao , Arman Cohan , Dennis Shasha

Player modelling is the field of study associated with understanding players. One pursuit in this field is affect prediction: the ability to predict how a game will make a player feel. We present novel improvements to affect prediction by…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2022-12-08 Natalie Bombardieri , Matthew Guzdial

A sliding puzzle is a combination puzzle where a player slide pieces along certain routes on a board to reach a certain end-configuration. In this paper, we propose a novel measurement of complexity of massive sliding puzzles with…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2020-12-16 Ruo Ando , Yoshiyasu Takefuji

Gameplay research about experiential phenomena is a challenging undertaking, given the variety of experiences that gamers encounter when playing and which currently do not have a formal taxonomy, such as flow, immersion, boredom, and fun.…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2010-04-05 Lennart E. Nacke , Craig A. Lindley

Measuring GUI task difficulty is crucial for user behavior analysis and agent capability evaluation. Yet, existing benchmarks typically quantify difficulty based on motor actions (e.g., step counts), overlooking the cognitive demands…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-11-13 Yiwen Yin , Zhian Hu , Xiaoxi Xu , Chun Yu , Xintong Wu , Wenyu Fan , Yuanchun Shi

In recent years, Procedural Level Generation via Machine Learning (PLGML) techniques have been applied to generate game levels with machine learning. These approaches rely on human-annotated representations of game levels. Creating…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-08 Mrunal Jadhav , Matthew Guzdial

The balancing process for game levels in competitive two-player contexts involves a lot of manual work and testing, particularly for non-symmetrical game levels. In this work, we frame game balancing as a procedural content generation task…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Florian Rupp , Manuel Eberhardinger , Kai Eckert

The ability for an educational game designer to understand their audience's play styles and resulting experience is an essential tool for improving their game's design. As a game is subjected to large-scale player testing, the designers…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2022-10-19 Luke Swanson , David Gagnon , Jennifer Scianna , John McCloskey , Nicholas Spevacek , Stefan Slater , Erik Harpstead

In this article, we present a new machine learning model by imitation based on the linguistic description of complex phenomena. The idea consists of, first, capturing the behaviour of human players by creating a computational perception…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-08 Clemente Rubio-Manzano , Tomas Lermanda , CLaudia Martinez , Alejandra Segura , Christian Vidal

Game-based learning (GBL) is widely adopted in mathematics education. It enhances learners' engagement and critical thinking throughout the mathematics learning process. However, enabling players to learn intrinsically through mathematical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-30 Jie Gao , Adam K. Dubé