Taking Apart The NES Version of Tetris

January 28, 2014

I just came across this article which digs through the actual code of the original NES version of Tetris and then creates an AI to play it.


Dreaming Tetris

September 12, 2013

Fascinating. Dr. Robert Stickgold found that amnesiacs will dream about Tetris (aka The Tetris Effect) even though they do not remember playing the game.


Action Videogames Train Your Brain For Decision-Making

September 21, 2010

Researcher Daphne Bavelier is back with more videogame research. Once again, the study used The Sims 2, Call Of Duty 2, and Unreal Tournament.

The results of this study showed that those who played the action games made quicker decisions:

“In the problem-solving exercise, the action-game players made decisions 25 percent faster than the strategy group, while answering the same number of questions correctly.”


Games As A Killer App For AI

August 2, 2010

It has been ten years to the day since John E. Laird and Michael van Lent published their paper “Human-level AI’s Killer Application: Interactive Computer Games”. In ten years, what has and hasn’t changed?

(Direct link to PDF at Laird’s homepage)


Datamining Games

February 3, 2010

The rise of the online always-on videogame opens a new world of stat tracking. The recent changes is this area are well beyond simple high score boards or achievements/trophies. For example, consider the article “You Are Being Watched” from a recent issue of the Official Xbox Magazine. The article details the datamining that Bungie is doing for Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST, that Criterion is doing for Burnout Paradise, and Valve is doing for Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead.

All of these companies are gathering data that shows them how their games are really being played. One usage for this data is to potentially make improvements and bug fixes. In the case of Bungie, players can actually log onto bungie.net and see their own stats and own personal heat maps for the matches they have played. Valve shares some of the overall data, and has recently started adding personalized data (for Steam players only).

For the personalized data, it would be interesting to see some numbers for how many players actually review their stats and whether it has an impact on their playing.

See also:

While I’m clearing out the videogame datamining links…


StarCraft AI Competition At AIIDE 2010

February 3, 2010

Spotted on Kotaku, the AIIDE (Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment) 2010 conference will be hosting a StarCraft AI competition. Looking forward to the results.


Game Changers

January 30, 2010

The latest Wired has an interesting article Game Changers: How Videogames Trained a Generation of Athletes. It is a summary of the rise of sports videogames and how the Madden franchise in particular is now having an effective on the actual sport. It appears at this point that most new players entering the NFL have grown up playing the videogame and are bringing certain habits and play styles with them. The article briefly touches on the brain science aspects of videogames by touching on the FPS study that I have mentioned before. The article also does point out that we are not likely see trends such as this except in a few areas such as football and poker.