Dear Digital Game Industry Professional:
Greetings from San Francisco State University!
As you know, the digital game industry is engaged in an exciting discussion regarding the future of
game design and what supportive technologies might be needed. In a May, 2004 article in Game
Developer Magazine on “The Next 10 Years of Game Development”, several industry figures forecast
the invention of run-time technologies to support a trend toward greater complexity of plot and game
play.
I and my collaborator, Jean-Pierre Langlois of the Mathematics Department, SFSU, have received a
grant from the Digital Society program at the National Science Foundation to pursue the concept
validation phase of a research project on Bargaining in Computer Games.
The project will simultaneously address the feasibility and the application potential of a
bargaining engine that might operate like today’s dynamics engines, providing specialized
functionality to game designers and developers.
Jean-Pierre is developing an interactive application that will demonstrate basic functionality of the
bargaining simulation mathematical model. My role is to research the application potential of a
bargaining engine to game development.
This involves:
1) Identifying existing games that demonstrate bargaining at any level or which might be
naturally extended to include bargaining and learning about how it is conceptualized and coded in
typical game development practice
2) Obtaining feedback from industry professionals on the future potential a bargaining engine
might have for game design
I would GREATLY appreciate your responding to the survey questions below.
Please feel free to critique/correct the questions, add any additional issues you think relevant, and
point out where difficulties would lie. Please email me if you have any questions about the survey or
our project. If you would rather use an MS Word version of the survey, that can be downloaded at our
project Web site at: http://online.sfsu.edu/~bargain.
Early this summer, we will be publishing the results of the survey and the prototype software
application on our project Web site at: http://online.sfsu.edu/~bargain and will notify you when that
happens.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND GENEROUS ATTENTION TO OUR QUERY.
Jane Veeder
Professor of Digital Media Design, San Francisco State
jveeder@sfsu.edu, studio 650/578-9540, cell 650/208-9631
Department of Design & Industry, San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132
3/14/05
1
Bargaining in Computer Games
Interdisciplinary Research Project at San Francisco State
University
Jane Veeder - jveeder@sfsu.edu - Spring 2005
INDUSTRY SURVEY
BACKGROUND
What is Game Theory?
Game Theory is the general science of strategy with several competing actors and has applications in
international relations, economics, warfare, business, politics, and everyday negotiations like buying a
home. Concerns include competition vs cooperation, information about other actors, issue linkages,
threats, costs, etc. Based on actual cases of negotiation – purchasing a home, personal injury
lawsuits, international treaty negotiations, etc. – game theorists have developed generalized
mathematics that model the complex web of actors and parameters.
What is Bargaining?
Bargaining is a subject of Game Theory and concerns a specific class of games where a pie is to be
divided between at least two players. The “pie” could be territory, treasure, points, peace, safety,
skills, etc. Parameters include information about your opponent(s) as well as expectations, offers
accepted and rejected, priorities, utility (what you’d be happy with), time-related costs of bargaining
(e.g. health running out), selective discounting of factors such as the future, threats, concessions,
anxiety, risk aversion, greed, fairness, pay-offs and penalties.
What is a Bargaining Engine or Middleware?
A bargaining engine or bargaining middleware would provide for “intelligent bargaining” by managing
profiles for each bargaining player and non-player character and using those parameters to simulate
human bargaining. In the case of non-player characters, including opponents, the bargaining engine
would drive their actions directly. Human players might earn bargaining skills or advisors driven by
the bargaining engine in addition to the opportunity to develop “wetware” bargaining skills.
YOUR NAME:
YOUR TITLE:
YOUR AFFILIATION:
YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS:
SURVEY QUESTIONS
Note: We are interested in information about all forms of digital game design including console,
computer, and online. Whenever appropriate, please provide examples, existing or hypothetical.
1. What is the state of bargaining in today’s games?
A classic example is Diplomacy where 7 players operate as 20th century European powers,
competing, forming alliances, etc. Civilization has a simple form of bargaining: although you can
barter resources and knowledge within the narrative structure and respond to ultimatums, the back
and forth interaction typical of true bargaining is missing. Role playing games offer many
opportunities for bargaining with non-player characters but typically these are simple, one-turn
requests and responses.
2
Question: What are other examples of bargaining (however primitive) in digital games?
Question: If you have included bargaining of any sort in one of your game designs, please briefly
summarize how those transactions were conceptualized and coded?
2. Simulated, “intelligent bargaining” could profile and represent the psychology and
environment of the human player and of non-player characters. These profiles would be used
in the bargaining simulation.
This profile would contain values for how impatient or greedy the player/NPC is, what costs are being
accrued during bargaining, how various decision factors are linked, what threats have been made,
what are the highest priorities and what factors are being discounted, how time factors into the
bargaining, what trade-offs might the player/NPC accept, etc.
Question: Would such profiling and standardization of active parameters support more complex
personalities for players and/or non-player characters? If so how would that be valuable to game
designers?
Question: Would such active profiles (and a means to manage them) support more realistic and
complex interactions?
Question: In your experience, what existing means are currently used to manage such profiles?
Question: Will the existing means for managing such profiles support increased complexity of
gameplay and plot?
3. Intelligent, i.e. simulated, bargaining might offer game designers new capabilities.
We tentatively project a potential for a bargaining engine in role playing games, especially in relation
to giving interaction with non-player characters more depth and challenge, giving MMOG’s more
complexity and subtlety in economic transactions, and in educational games in relation to social and
economic interactions. Training games might use bargaining to support more complex scenarios
where negotiation is a critical part of decision making. At an international level, bargaining is used as
an alternative to violence. So, it seems at least possible that games where simple violence is not
readily accessible or carries a penalty that “intelligent bargaining” as an alternative could offer a new,
rich dimension of difficulty and challenge.
Question: If bargaining interactions could provide alternatives to game violence – a very simple or
crude interaction – what new types of gameplay challenge and difficulty could be designed that are
not now technically possible?
Question: Could “intelligent bargaining” provide a valuable mechanism for agreeing on roles,
common goals, and strategies that underlie cooperative behavior in multiplayer games or is the type
of verbal communication used today totally adequate?
Question: If you work in the area of training, simulation, or educational games, where do you see a
potential application for intelligent, simulated bargaining or negotiation?
3
Question: Of the skills needed to succeed in strategy games, do any map to real world skills? If so,
please identify game title(s) and skill(s) where this is the case.
Question: Interacting with accurate simulations does not always equate with fun and usually what
are billed as simulations have been “dumbed down” and biased to make for better gameplay. Do you
agree with this statement? Please give examples of games to support your view.
Question: Skill in bargaining involves reading your opponent’s personality, costs, and goals and
gauging the size and timing of offers to maximize one’s share of the disputed pie. Can you visualize a
game scenario where learning to bargain effectively for something would be fun? Please describe
briefly.
4. Game designs and genres. Each game genre has its own structure, types of challenge and fun.
Bargaining would be more suitable to some than others.
Question: What existing game genres would be LEAST suited to use “intelligent bargaining”?
Question: What existing game genres would be MOST suited for extensions involving bargaining
with computer generated opponents, non-player characters, or other players? Why?
Question: With simulated, “intelligent bargaining” capabilities available to game AI via a bargaining
engine, what new game designs and/or genres might be developed?
5. The simulation of true human bargaining as a middleware capability cannot simply be
grafted onto existing game content, structure, or mechanics but would present challenges in
representation, user interface design, and interaction.
Question: How might the bargaining profile of a non-player character be represented to the player in
the user interface, graphic depiction, or behavior of the character?
Question: How might bargaining transactions be supported by game mechanics (i.e. the nuts and
bolts of game interaction and strategy)?
Question: Where do you think (and why) bargaining would be MOST valuable – with computer
generated opponents, with non-player characters, or with other human players?
Question: We have projected that simulated advisors might be one way to represent bargaining
skills, their acquisition, and deployment. What do you think of this idea? What specific digital games
do you know of where players acquire skilled allies whose abilities then benefit the player? Please
identify game title and ally.
Question: If bargaining, simply put, is dividing a pie, then the “pie” must be represented. What
contemporary games feature contested “pies” that might lend themselves to bargaining transactions?
6. Industry figures project the development of new technologies to structure narrative and
provide new kinds of user experiences through simulations of various kinds.
4
Question: Bargaining models share formal methods with typical game AI approaches such as
pathfinding and finite state machines. What key challenges would game developers face interfacing
bargaining middleware with other methods of game AI?
Question: Full use of a technology is often interdependent with the development of other
technologies (e.g. online 3D games, graphics accelerator cards, and broadband). What other new
middleware technologies or game AI inventions might be needed to allow a bargaining engine to
achieve its full potential?
7. Bargaining Software Application
My research partner, Jean-Pierre Langlois, is developing a software application to prototype a basic
model of “intelligent bargaining”.
Question: Would you be interested in testing this application via internet download?
8. For a sequel to this project, we are hoping to develop an interactive prototype of actual
gameplay involving bargaining.
Question: What would such a bargaining gameplay prototype need to demonstrate to be credible?
How concrete vs abstract must it be? What level of GUI must it have?
9. Please add any additional points or issues you think we should be addressing.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND GENEROUS ATTENTION TO OUR QUERY.
Jane Veeder, Professor of Digital Media Design, San Francisco State, jveeder@sfsu.edu
Principal Investigators
Jean-Pierre Langlois is a game theorist with expertise in the areas involved in this project. He has
worked in several applications of Game Theory such as deterrence theory, the design of international
agreements, and more recently on bargaining behavior. His work appears in top academic journals
such as World Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Mathematical Economics,
International Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. In addition he is the designer of
GamePlan, one the main Game Theory software tools available for research and education.
GamePlan has been reviewed in the Economic Journal (February 2000). He received grants from the
US Department of Defense in the early 1990s for the development of DSA, a precursor to GamePlan.
http://online.sfsu.edu/~langlois/
Jane Veeder teaches interactive digital media at the San Francisco State University Department of
Design and Industry. Her professional experience includes stints in industry for graphics language and
application development, graphical user interface design, and creative management in the videogame
industry. A member of the pioneering Chicago computer graphics community in the early 1980's, she
has produced internationally exhibited animated and interactive computer art works. A longtime
SIGGRAPH contributor, she chaired two SIGGRAPH 1995 panels on the videogame industry and
served on the SIGGRAPH 2003 Web Graphics subcommittee. http://online.sfsu.edu/~jkveeder and
http://online.sfsu.edu/~jkv4edu
5
6