Research Publications

Étienne de Flacourt's Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar is renowned for its detailed descriptions of Madagascar's flora, fauna, and local culture. The posthumously published second edition (1661) includes the earliest known record of a four-row mancala game, accompanied by a drawing and a detailed explanation using local terminology. These rules, resembling the modern game of Bao (known as Katra-be in Madagascar), suggest a long history of four-row mancala games, despite a lack of archaeological evidence. As governor of a French trading post in Fort Dauphin, de Flacourt's work endures, offering a glimpse into 17th-century Madagascar.

Games, as a subject of study, span diverse disciplines, often in isolation. In computer science and mathematics, games stand as testbeds for pioneering methodologies, shaping state-of-the-art techniques in economics, engineering, and AI. Simultaneously, archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists explore the motivations underlying human play, dissecting its social implications on both individual and societal levels. Games have not only been instrumental in pedagogical development but are gaining recognition as integral components of humanity's intangible cultural heritage. However, this recognition is tinged with a poignant realization: much of the world's game heritage has been lost, overshadowed by colonialism, imperialism, and commercialization. Against this backdrop, the paper introduces the GameTable Network, an EU-funded COST Action overcoming disciplinary divides. The network's research integrates AI techniques, archaeology, and gaming research, into a cohesive framework. In doing so, the network aspires to rekindle the essence of games not only as mere entertainment but also as repositories of cultural richness and historical narratives. The aim is not only to uncover the mysteries of the past but to acknowledge and rectify the gaps hindering a holistic understanding of games. Our objectives span from reconstructing historical games to advancing AI methodologies, from fostering educational programs to embracing community involvement in digital initiatives. Key challenges include innovative approaches for studying, reconstructing, and preserving heritage games, reconstructing missing rules in incomplete games, simulating play at a human level, applying AI to study historical games, developing novel methods to identify unrecognized games measuring their evolution across space and time, developing pedagogical tools, and leveraging GameAI in a culturally diverse way, all crucially contributing to the study of heritage games. Through this interdisciplinary lens, our aspiration is to enrich scholarly dialogue within the Eastern Mediterranean, Europe and beyond, advancing our collective understanding of the historical and cultural dimensions embedded in games through AI-driven research.

The inaugural in-person meeting for the "GameTable" COST Action’s Working Group 1(WG1) on Search, Planning, Learning,and Explainability took place at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) on January 31st,2024. The primary aims of this meeting were to facilitate talks and discussions on, and connect researchers interested in, three core research goals: (1) human-like game-playing AI, (2) imperfect-information games within a general game playing context, and (3) explainable search and reinforcement learning in games. This report provides a summary of the discussions and talks that took place during the meeting.

Games with imperfect information represent a major challenge for General Game Playing (GGP) agents. To address this, we propose to extend Ludii, a state-of-the-art GGP system, by improving the game description to include hidden information, adopting a formalism and modelling closer to reinforcement learning, and adapting the search algorithms to make better use of the game description. These improvements will make it possible to simulate and analyse a wide range of games with imperfect information.

The GameTable COST Action kickoff, focusing on “Computational Techniques for Tabletop Games Heritage,” took place at Leiden University in the Pieter de la Court Building from January 29th to 30th, 2024. This event aimed to convene researchers from diverse backgrounds involved in the Action, offering an opportunity to present an overview of the key research areas, share concrete case studies, and facilitate discussions and idea exchanges across fields that may not typically intersect, thereby enhancing the organization of the Action. This report provides a summary of the organization and discussions of the event, and future plans for GameTable.