Authors:
Matthew Stephenson, Eric Piette, Cameron Browne

Venue:
Board Game Studies (BGS), 2019

Topics:
LUDII, education, game design, game AI, digital humanities, phylogenetic relations between games

Links: PDF

LUDII is presented as a general digital system for describing and studying a large assortment of traditional games across many different cultures and time periods.

The paper highlights its educational value, for example as an interactive tool for teaching game design principles and AI techniques through exercises in which students must infer suitable rule sets from boards and pieces alone.

It also emphasizes how LUDII can support a better understanding of the lineage of traditional games and the mathematical concepts they embody, by helping analyse design principles, model phylogenetic relations between games, and identify plausible reconstructions from incomplete information.

This short publication focuses on the pedagogical and cultural potential of LUDII, beyond its role as a general game system for AI research.

It shows how LUDII can be used as a teaching tool for game design, rule reconstruction, and AI methods, while also contributing to historical and phylogenetic analyses of traditional games.

The paper connects educational uses of LUDII with the broader goals of the Digital Ludeme Project, especially the reconstruction and interpretation of historical games from incomplete evidence.

Stephenson, M., Piette, E., Browne, C. (2019). Teaching and Learning with LUDII. Board Game Studies (BGS).

@inproceedings{stephenson2019teaching,
  author    = {Stephenson, Matthew and Piette, Eric and Browne, Cameron},
  title     = {Teaching and Learning with LUDII},
  booktitle = {Board Game Studies (BGS)},
  year      = {2019}
}