Good game

An artificial intelligence researcher at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has produced a computer program that invents highly absorbing games that can be played on a board or online.

The program, called Ludi, takes the component rules of board games like chess, draughts and tic-tac-toe, and evolves them to 'spit out' new games which it then measures for their potential to engross players. It was developed by PhD student Cameron Browne.

Browne's thesis, which one examiner predicted would 'still be cited as a seminal contribution and standard reference 50 years from now', details the development of the computer program which displays both creativity and intelligence.

Browne said: 'A high-quality game is one that people want to play again and again. Normally it takes years to know which games are going to endure and become classics, but Ludi can quickly detect if a game is likely to interest human players.'

He said Ludi represented a new direction for combinatorial games research, as the traditional focus of the field has been on producing computer players that can compete with - or even beat - the best human players, rather than on the quality of the games themselves.