Teaching and Learning with LUDII

LUDII is an upcoming digital system that aims to provide a generic implementation for describing a large assortment of traditional games across many different cultures and time periods. This system provides a great opportunity to educate people about game design principles and AI techniques. One example could be as an interactive tool for exercises in lectures, where students must identify suitable rule sets for a game given only a description of the board and pieces. These rules must present a game that is balanced, strategically deep and easy to learn for new players. The LUDII system will also allow for a greater understanding of the lineage of these traditional games and the mathematical concepts that they embody. Analyzing similar design principles between games over a long period of history allows us to model and understand the transmission of ideas across time, place and culture. Using this historical data to construct family trees that demonstrate the phylogenetic relations between games allows us to identify missing links between games that have not yet been discovered, as well as feasible game reconstructions from incomplete information (e.g. Senet).