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1. Mech-Elites: Illuminating the Mechanic Space of GVG-AI

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3402942.3402954  

   Charity, Megan; Green, Michael Cerny; Khalifa, Ahmed; Togelius, Julian (September 2020, International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games)

   null (Ed.)

   This paper introduces a fully automatic method of mechanic illumination for general video game level generation. Using the Constrained MAP-Elites algorithm and the GVG-AI framework, this system generates the simplest tile based levels that contain specific sets of game mechanics and also satisfy playability constraints. We apply this method to illuminate the mechanic space for four different games in GVG-AI: Zelda, Solarfox, Plants, and RealPortals. With this system, we can generate playable levels that contain different combinations of most of the possible mechanics. These levels can later be used to populate game tutorials that teach players how to use the mechanics of the game. 

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2. Automatic Critical Mechanic Discovery Using Playtraces in Video Games

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3402942.3402955  

   Green, Michael Cerny; Khalifa, Ahmed; Barros, Gabriella A.; Machado, Tiago; Togelius, Julian (September 2020, International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games)

   null (Ed.)

   We present a new method of automatic critical mechanic discovery for video games using a combination of game description parsing and playtrace information. This method is applied to several games within the General Video Game Artificial Intelligence (GVG-AI) framework. In a user study, human-identified mechanics are compared against system-identified critical mechanics to verify alignment between humans and the system. The results of the study demonstrate that the new method is able to match humans with higher consistency than baseline. Our system is further validated by comparing MCTS agents augmented with critical mechanics and vanilla MCTS agents on 4 games from GVG-AI. Our new playtrace method shows a significant performance improvement over the baseline for all 4 tested games. The proposed method also shows either matched or improved performance over the old method, demonstrating that playtrace information is responsible for more complete critical mechanic discovery. 

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3. Using Game Design Mechanics as Metaphors to Enhance Learning of Introductory Programming Concepts

   Jemmali, C.; Kleinman, E.; Bunian, S.; Almeda, M. V.; Rowe, E.; Seif El-Nasr, M. (August 2019, Foundations of Digital Games)

   There are several educational games and tools that teach program- ming. However, very few offer a deep understanding of Computer Science concepts such as Abstraction, Modularity, Semantics, and Debugging. We present May’s Journey, an educational game that supports learning of basic programming concepts, where players solve puzzles and interact with the environment by typing in a cus- tom programming language. The game design seamlessly integrates learning goals, core mechanics, and narrative elements. We discuss how we integrate the CS concepts mentioned above using game mechanic metaphors. 

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4. Academical: A Dynamic Interactive Narrative Game for Responsible Conduct of Research Training

   https://doi.org/10.1109/CoG60054.2024.10645569  

   Johnson-Bey, Shi; Shields, Samuel; Wardrip-Fruin, Noah; Melcer, Edward (August 2024, IEEE)

   Our demo showcases a choice-based interactive narrative game created to teach responsible conduct of research and research ethics. It re-imagines the experience of a game previously published in the literature, using a content-selection system that dynamically constructs dialogue choices during play. Our goal is to provide players with more opportunities to experience agency than they would have with the original game’s hand-authored branching narrative structure. Primarily, our system implements a conversation thread-switching mechanic that allows players to fluidly enter/exit conversation topics as one would in a real-life conversation. 

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5. Content Agnostic Game Engineering: Impact of Stealth Assessment and Content Order on Player Engagement

   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89912-7_35  

   Verma, Vipin; Craig, Scotty D.; Amresh, Ashish; Bansal, Ajay (October 2021, Proceedings of the Future Technologies Conference)

   Content Agnostic Game Engineering (CAGE) architecture utilizes content agnostic mechanics to create educational games that can teach multiple contents. However, the player engagement goes down when second content is played using the same game mechanics. A content agnostic stealth assessment can aid a CAGE game in sustaining the engagement level of its players. A potentially generalizable method for this was tested using Chem-o-crypt, a CAGE game that can teach chemistry and cryptography contents. The game automatically detects frustration, flow, and boredom using the Affdex SDK from Affectiva. A randomized controlled experiment incorporating real-time game adaptation revealed that using stealth assessment can help sustain engagement in a CAGE game when playing multiple contents. 

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