The Expressive Intelligence Studio is a research group at the University of California, Santa Cruz, established to conduct research in the field of game design technology.[1] The studio is currently being run by Michael Mateas and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, who work closely with the students in their research.[2]
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| Established | 2006 |
|---|---|
Parent institution | University of California, Santa Cruz |
| Affiliation | Baskin School of Engineering |
| Advisors |
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| Location | , , |
| Subjects | |
| Website | eis |
History
editWhen Michael Mateas formed the group back in 2006, his goal was to "stretch the students into being creative." He did not want the game design program at UCSC to be "just about photo-realistic graphics." Instead he wanted to form an ambitious group of students that grabbed the attention of the gaming industry.[1] According to Noah Wardrip-Fruin, a major benefit for establishing the Expressive Intelligence Studio at UCSC is its proximity to Silicon Valley, where many game companies are located.[1] In 2011, UCSC was listed 7th on Princeton Review's list of top graduate game design programs.[3]
Research
editMost of the research done by the Expressive Intelligence Studio is done through major research projects, and focuses primarily on video game AI.[4] PhD students in the program work closely with the advisors on these projects, which have a wide range of topics. Some of these topics include automated support for game generation, automatic generation of autonomous character conversations, story management, and authoring tools for interactive storytelling.[5] This type of research in the field of game design is only being done in a small number of other institutions, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Southern California, and Georgia Institute of Technology. According to Mateas, however, the program at the University of California, Santa Cruz Expressive Intelligence Studio strikes a balance between technology and design.[1]
The studio has released several playable games based on research ideas, including Prom Week, the only university-produced finalist in the 2012 Independent Games Festival.[6]
Example EISbot
editThe EISbot software (short for Expressive Intelligence Studio Bot) is an example for a human-level artificial intelligence which can play Starcraft. It was developed in 2010 for the Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE). The AIIDE Starcraft AI Competition is about a game playing agent, who has to win against a human player. EISbot was realized as an agent architecture, which contains submodules for reactive planning, machine learning and case-based reasoning. The reactive planner is the core of EISbot and was realized with A Behavior Language (ABL),[7] which is an action language similar to STRIPS. The behaviors are planned with so called managers who are responsible for subgoals like production, income, tactics and scouting behavior.[8]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ a b c d Popular gaming program making UC Santa Cruz one of the elite
- ^ People | Expressive Intelligence Studio
- ^ "Top Game Design Press Release | Public Relations | the Princeton Review | the Princeton Review".
- ^ Expressive Intelligence Studio
- ^ "Building a StarCraft bot that plays like a pro, Feature Story from GamePro". www.gamepro.com. Archived from the original on 7 June 2011. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
- ^ "Students' Video Game Tests New Artificial-Intelligence Engine -- at the Prom". 20 January 2012.
- ^ Okun, Jared (2016). Evaluating the Improvements of StarCraft Gameplay in the ABL Agent EISBot by Implementing Dynamic Specificities through an External Component. MATEC Web of Conferences, EDP Sciences. Vol. 68. p. 18001.
- ^ Weber, Ben (2012). Integrating learning in a multi-scale agent (PhD). UC Santa Cruz.