IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games (T-CIAIG)

Special Issue: Computational Aesthetics in Games

Special issue editors:
Cameron Browne, Georgios N. Yannakakis and Simon Colton

Deadline for submissions: October 28, 2011

AI research seeks to optimise the performance of artificial agents in their given domains, and in the area of games this does not mean simply making stronger opponents. We do not increase the player’s enjoyment of a game by beating them as quickly as possible, but by matching them at their level of expertise to engage them and provide an entertaining experience. While such aesthetic considerations are more difficult to quantify and measure than playing strength, they are becoming increasingly important as more consumer content becomes digitally created and tested.

Computational aesthetics in games covers a range of aspects from visual presentation and the elegance of the underlying mechanics, to less tangible aspects such as player engagement and enjoyment; a good game will provide a rich player experience and afford sensual, visceral and/or intellectual stimulation. We are seeing the emergence of game telemetry as a growing research area and the development of increasingly sophisticated tools such as biostatistical indicators of user engagement, yet much work remains to be done to maximise the true entertainment potential that is now available to game and AI designers.

The purpose of this special issue is to draw together the various aspects of computational aesthetics as they relate to AI in games, and to shed light on the relationship between game aesthetics and player satisfaction. It will explore questions such as: What exactly is beauty in a game? How do we measure this and use it to best effect? How do we make AIs more entertaining? We invite high quality work on any aspect of computational aesthetics in any genre of game, electronic or physical. Papers should be of a technical nature with claims backed up by experimental results or case studies. Topics include but are not limited to:

• Modeling game aesthetics
• Notions of creativity and beauty in game design and AI behaviour
• Agent-based game aesthetics
• Self-adaptation/tailoring of aesthetic models
• Fitness (entertainment) functions for procedural content generation
• Player experience/affect and adaptive AI response
• Methods for verifying and interpreting aesthetic measurements and quality assurance
• Player biases and the perceived value of automated vs handmade content
• Game telemetry, user engagement, player immersion
• Culture-driven aesthetics modelling
• The relationship between games and art
• Other aspects of AI in game playing contexts, e.g. generative mood music
• Nonlinear game story scripting

Authors should follow normal T-CIAIG guidelines for their submissions, but clearly identify their papers for this special issue during the submission process. See http://www.ieee-cis.org/pubs/tciaig/ for author information.

Submissions should be between 8 and 12 pages long, but may exceed these limits in special cases. Extended versions of previously published conference/workshop papers are welcome, but must be accompanied by a covering letter that explains the novel and significant contribution of the extended work.

Deadline for submissions: October 28, 2011
Notification of Acceptance: December 16, 2011
Final copy due: March 9, 2012
Publication: June 2012

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