ECAI'08 Workshop
on
Artificial Intelligence in Games

News

February, 19 2008: First Call For Papers issued
March, 30 2008: Jonathan Schaeffer will give an invited talk
April, 2 2008: Second Call For Papers issued
April, 4 2008: The notification date has been moved to May, 27
April, 29 2008: The submission deadline has been extended to May, 4th
June, 4 2008: An author of the workshop has sent us this link for those still looking for accommodation
June, 5 2008: Here you are the ECAI'08 flyer
June, 30 2008: The workshop program is available!

Workshop Description

The Workshop on AI in Games AIG-08 is targeted to both academic researchers and practitioners that actively try to use new technologies in game development. The event continues previous efforts to bridge the gap between the two communities.

From an academic perspective, games are an excellent testbed for many AI fields. Puzzles and board games are typical applications of areas such as heuristic search and learning. Video games contain a large diversity of domains for both single-agent and multi-agent problems. They may or may not include features such as uncertainty, dynamic environments, and hidden information. New ideas in fields such as planning, search and learning can be developed and tested using a game environment as a testbed.

On the practical side, games are a booming, multi-billion dollar industry. Recent years have seen an increasing focus on making the inhabitants of a game world smarter. The quality of a game is directly impacted by character skills such as navigating on a map, acting according to a meaningful plan, and learning from previous experience, which need to be implemented using AI algorithms.

Topics

• AI in classical games
• AI in commercial computer games
• Representational issues: modeling games
• Game AI design: tools and methodologies
• Competitions
• Planning
• Interactive narrative
• Emotional modeling
• Path planning
• Affective systems, dialogue planning
• Learning and adaptation in games
• Opponent modeling in both classical games and video games
• Real-time decision making
• Execution management in real-time games
• Space and time inference in video games

Paper Submission

We ask authors to submit technical papers in PDF format. Papers should be formatted in accordance with the ECAI style template and may be at most 5 pages long, including figures and bibliography. Visit http://www.ece.upatras.gr/ecai2008/substyles.htm for formatting instructions. Please submit papers via email to submissions-aig2008 in domain lab.inf.uc3m.es

Please note that all submitted papers will be carefully peer-reviewed by multiple reviewers, and that low-quality or off-topic papers will not be accepted. Since the reviewing is not a double blind process, authors are welcome to include their names in their original versions. Also note that all workshop participants must register for the main ECAI-08 conference. For each accepted paper, at least one author is required to register by the early registration date and to present the paper at the workshop. Proof of registration fees payment should be provided together with the camera-ready version of the paper.

Workshop authors will maintain the copyrights of their papers (thus, following the workshop, they will be allowed to publish their work to another conference or journal). All that is required is that the workshop authors sign a permission allowing the local organizers to include their paper in the workshop's proceedings.

The journal of the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence has shown interest in the workshop and will publish a special issue on the subject with the best papers under the authors' permission --- i.e, authors are free to either accept or reject this possibility.

Workshop Program

9:00	Invited Talk: Computer (and Human) Perfection at Checkers Jonathan Schaeffer Abstract: In 1989 the Chinook project began with the goal of winning the human World Checkers Championship. There was an imposing obstacle to success -- the human champion, Marion Tinsley. Tinsley was as close to perfection at the game as was humanly possible. To be better than Tinsley meant that the computer had to be perfect. In effect, one had to solve checkers. Little did we know that our quest would take 18 years to complete. What started out as a research project quickly became a personal quest and an emotional roller coaster. In this talk, the creator of Chinook tells the story of man versus machine for supremacy at checkers. About the speaker: Jonathan Schaeffer is a professor of Computing Science at the University of Alberta. He is a Canada Research Chair and an iCORE Chair. His research interests are in artificial intelligence and parallel/distributed computing. He is best known for his work on computer games. He is the creator of the checkers program Chinook, the first program to win a human world championship in any game. He is a co-founder of BioTools (bioinformatics software and the popular Poker Academy) and Chenomx (medical diagnostic software).
10:00	Coffee Break (I-5)
10:30	Talk: A Minimax Tutor for Learning to Play a Board Game Dimitris Kalles and Panagiotis Kanellopoulos
11:00	Talk: Agents Making Moral Decisions Jaspreet Shaheed and Jim Cunningham
11:30	Talk: Connecting PDDL-based off-the-shelf planners to an arcade game Olivier Bartheye and Éric Jacopin
12:00	Talk: Using Abstraction in Two-Player Games Mehdi Samadi, Jonathan Schaeffer, Fatemeh Torabi Asr, Majid Samar and Zohreh Azimifar
12:30	Lunch
14:00	Talk: Bayesian Iteration: Online Learning in Timed Zero-Sum Games with Unknown Enemy Hirotaka Moriguchi, Fuyuki Ishikawa and Shinichi Honiden
14:30	Talk: A Heuristic for Scrabble based in Probability Alejandro González Romero, Francisco González Acuña, Arturo Ramírez Flores, Amador Roldán Aguilar, Rene Alquézar and Enric Hernández
15:00	Talk: Framework for Evaluating Believability of Non-player Characters in Games Tero Hinkkanen, Jaakko Kurhila and Tomi A. Pasanen
15:30	Coffee Break (I-5)
16:00	Talk: LPI: Approximating Shortest Paths using Landmarks Kevin Grant and David Mould
16:30	Talk: Modelling a RTS Planning Domain with Cost Conversion and Rewards Vidal Alcázar, Daniel Borrajo and Carlos Linares López
17:00	Talk: Towards Engaging MDPs Olana Missura, Kristian Kersting and Thomas Gärtner

Important Dates

Organizers

Adi Botea NICTA, Canberra Research Lab and the Australian National University 8001 Locked Bag Canberra ACT 2601 adi.botea in domain nicta.com.au +612 6267 6310 (office nr)

Carlos Linares López Department of Computing Science, 2.2.B09 University Carlos III of Madrid Avenida de la Universidad, 30 28911 - Leganés (Madrid) Spain carlos.linares in domain uc3m.es +34 91 624 91 12 (office nr)

Program Committee

Yngvi Bjornsson, Reykjavik University Adi Botea, NICTA and Australian National University
Stefan Edelkamp, Dortmund University
Ian Frank, Future University, Hakodate, Japan
Pedro Antonio González Calero, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Jaap van den Herik, Maastricht University
Andreas Junghanns, QTronic GmbH
Akihiro Kishimoto, Future University, Hakodate, Japan
Peter Kissmann, Dortmund University
Carlos Linares López, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Héctor Muñoz-Ávila, Lehigh University
Alexander Nareyek, National University of Singapore
Dana Nau, University of Maryland
Jeff Orkin, MIT
Scott Sanner, NICTA and Australian National University