[pbmserv] Game design survey: Call for interest

[Cameron Browne <cameronb@optusnet.com.au>]

Hi,

This is an invitation to participate in a survey for a PhD project on the
automatic design and evaluation of board games. The survey simply
involves downloading a game-playing program (450kb Windows executable)
then playing some games against the computer and indicating which ones
you prefer.

The survey will be run in a couple of weeks (details below). If you are
interested in participating, please reply to this mail.

Regards,
Cameron Browne

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Project
 
This PhD project investigates whether new abstract board games may be
generated by computer, and whether these new games may be automatically
measured for quality. New games are created by evolving the rules of
known games using genetic algorithm techniques. Game quality is then
estimated using a number of statistical measurements during self-play.
 
The aim of this survey is to determine which of these evolved games human
players deem to be the most successful, in order to determine which
statistical measurements are the best indicators of game quality.
 
The Survey
 
This survey takes the form of a single Windows executable ?Ludi? (approx
450kb) which is a generic game-playing program pre-loaded with a database
of evolved games. Your task is to play some of these games against the
computer opponent and indicate which you prefer.
 
Each time you run Ludi, a pair of previously unseen games will be
randomly selected from the database. You will be shown the rules for
these two games and asked to do the following:
    1)  Play each of the two games (to completion)
against 
           the computer
opponent. 
    2)  Indicate which of the two games you
prefer.
    3)  Submit your result for this pair.
 
Pressing the ?Submit? button will send an email containing your result
directly to me at
cameronb@optusnet.com.au.
Ludi will try to send the email via your mail program (if not running
then Ludi will try to launch it) so your mail program may notify you that
third party software is attempting to mail out. This is perfectly safe,
and I?m happy to provide the Ludi source code that does this upon
request. Results will remain confidential.
 
It?s expected that each game will take around 10-15 minutes to evaluate.
After comparing a pair of games, you may then load another two randomly
chosen games and repeat the process as often as you like ? the more
results we get the better. We would greatly appreciate all results being
submitted within one week of receiving the survey.
 
Please note that Ludi is a generic game-player designed to play a wide
range of games at beginner level rather than any specific game at expert
level. It is expected that you will beat Ludi at most games after a
couple of attempts, but in doing so will get a feeling for those
games.
 
Please also note that the evolved games will be of variable quality; some
will be bad and some will (hopefully) be good. Identifying bad games is
just as important as identifying good ones as we are primarily interested
in discovering those factors that indicate game quality.
 
Questions
 
Before downloading Ludi you will be asked a few questions, such as:
- Are you at least 18 years of age?
- How many years have you been playing board games?
- How often do you play board games?
 
You will not have to answer any of these questions except for the first
one, which is required by QUT university policy for all surveys
undertaken under its name.

Attachment: survey-call-1.zip
Description: Zip archive