General Board Game Concepts

TL;DR

This paper introduces the formalization of 'game concepts' within the Ludii system to enhance general game playing, enabling new research avenues like AI transfer, game explanation, and rule reconstruction.

Contribution

It formalizes the notion of game concepts at multiple abstraction levels and integrates them into the Ludii system, opening new research and application possibilities.

Findings

Formalization of game concepts across different abstraction levels

Implementation within the Ludii system for practical applications

Potential to facilitate AI transfer, rule reconstruction, and game recommendation

Abstract

Many games often share common ideas or aspects between them, such as their rules, controls, or playing area. However, in the context of General Game Playing (GGP) for board games, this area remains under-explored. We propose to formalise the notion of "game concept", inspired by terms generally used by game players and designers. Through the Ludii General Game System, we describe concepts for several levels of abstraction, such as the game itself, the moves played, or the states reached. This new GGP feature associated with the ludeme representation of games opens many new lines of research. The creation of a hyper-agent selector, the transfer of AI learning between games, or explaining AI techniques using game terms, can all be facilitated by the use of game concepts. Other applications which can benefit from game concepts are also discussed, such as the generation of plausible reconstructed rules for incomplete ancient games, or the implementation of a board game recommender system.