Authors:
Matthew Stephenson, Dennis J. N. J. Soemers, Eric Piette, Cameron Browne

Venue:
Computer Games (CG), 2022

Topics:
board games, game distance, Ludii, game concepts, similarity measures

Links: PDF · Springer · arXiv

This paper proposes a general approach for measuring distances between board games in the Ludii general game system.

The approach relies on a previously defined set of general board game concepts, using them as numerical representations of games and comparing alternative similarity and distance measures.

The results highlight that different measures, such as cosine and Euclidean distance, can capture different notions of similarity, illustrating the subjective nature of measuring distance between games.

This work extends the use of general board game concepts by applying them to the problem of comparing games at scale.

Measuring distance between games is important for several applications, including recommendation, transfer learning, benchmarking, and game reconstruction.

The paper also reinforces the role of Ludii as a platform not only for playing and modelling games, but also for analysing them computationally as structured cultural and strategic artefacts.

Stephenson, M., Soemers, D. J. N. J., Piette, E., Browne, C. (2022). Measuring Board Game Distance. In Computer Games (CG).

@inproceedings{stephenson2022distance,
  author    = {Stephenson, Matthew and Soemers, Dennis J. N. J. and Piette, Eric and Browne, Cameron},
  title     = {Measuring Board Game Distance},
  booktitle = {Computer Games (CG)},
  year      = {2022},
  url       = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.03913}
}