General game playing

General Game Playing

General Game Playing (GGP) refers to the design of computer systems that can play a wide variety of games effectively without human intervention. Unlike specialized game-playing programs, such as those designed for chess or Go, general game players must be able to understand and play any game given only the rules at runtime.

Overview

General game playing is a field of artificial intelligence (AI) that focuses on creating systems capable of playing multiple games. These systems must be able to:

• Interpret game rules provided in a formal language.
• Develop strategies to play the game effectively.
• Adapt to new games without prior knowledge.

Game Description Language

A key component of GGP is the use of a formal language to describe games. The most commonly used language is the Game Description Language (GDL), which allows the specification of:

• Game rules
• Initial game state
• Legal moves
• Goal conditions

GDL is based on first-order logic and is designed to be both human-readable and machine-interpretable.

Architecture of General Game Players

General game players typically consist of several components:

• **Game Manager**: Parses the game description and manages the game state.
• **Reasoning Engine**: Uses logical reasoning to determine legal moves and predict outcomes.
• **Strategy Module**: Develops strategies using techniques such as Monte Carlo tree search or minimax algorithm.
• **Learning Component**: Adapts strategies based on past performance and opponent behavior.

Challenges in General Game Playing

GGP presents several challenges, including:

• **Complexity**: Games can vary widely in complexity, requiring flexible and efficient reasoning.
• **Unknown Opponents**: Players must adapt to different opponents with varying strategies.
• **Real-Time Decision Making**: Some games require quick decision-making under time constraints.

Applications

While primarily a research area, GGP has potential applications in:

• Automated planning
• Robotics
• Adaptive learning systems

Competitions

The AAAI General Game Playing Competition is a prominent event where researchers test their GGP systems against each other. Participants are given a set of games, and their systems must play these games without prior knowledge.

See Also

• Artificial intelligence
• Game theory
• Machine learning

References

• Love, N., Hinrichs, T., & Genesereth, M. (2008). General Game Playing: Game Description Language Specification. Stanford University.
• Pell, B. (1993). Strategy Generation and Evaluation for Meta-Game Playing. PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge.