The Expressive Intelligence Studio is a research group at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...

, established to conduct research in the field of

game design Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game for entertainment or for educational, exercise, or experimental purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions, in ...

technology.Popular gaming program making UC Santa Cruz one of the elite
/ref> The studio is currently being run by Michael Mateas and

Noah Wardrip-Fruin Noah Wardrip-Fruin is a professor in the Computational Media department of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is an advisor for the Expressive Intelligence Studio. He is an alumnus of the Literary Arts MFA program and Special Graduate S ...

, who work closely with the students in their research.People , Expressive Intelligence Studio
/ref>

History

When 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. According to Noah Wardrip-Fruin, a major benefit for establishing the Expressive Intelligence Studio at UCSC is its proximity to

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

, where many game companies are located. In 2011, UCSC was listed 7th on

Princeton Review The Princeton Review is an education services company providing tutoring, test preparation and admission resources for students. It was founded in 1981. and since that time has worked with over 400 million students. Services are delivered by 4,0 ...

's list of top graduate game design programs.

Research

Most of the research done by the Expressive Intelligence Studio is done through major research projects, and focuses primarily on

video game AI In video games, artificial intelligence (AI) is used to generate responsive, adaptive or intelligent behaviors primarily in non-player characters (NPCs) similar to human-like intelligence. Artificial intelligence has been an integral part of vid ...

.Expressive Intelligence Studio
/ref> 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 Interactive storytelling (also known as interactive drama) is a form of digital entertainment in which the storyline is not predetermined. The author creates the setting, characters, and situation which the narrative must address, but the user (a ...

. 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 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

, and

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part of ...

. According to Mateas, however, the program at the

Expressive Intelligence Studio strikes a balance between technology and design. 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 The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of the independent video game industry. Originally founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, ...

Example EISbot

The EISbot software (short for Expressive Intelligence Studio Bot) is an example for a human-level

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

which can play

Starcraft ''StarCraft'' is a military science fiction media franchise created by Chris Metzen and James Phinney and owned by Blizzard Entertainment. The series, set in the beginning of the 26th century, centers on a galactic struggle for dominance am ...

. 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 Agent architecture in computer science is a blueprint for software agents and intelligent control systems, depicting the arrangement of components. The architectures implemented by intelligent agents are referred to as cognitive architectures.

, 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), which is an

action language In computer science, an action language is a language for specifying state transition systems, and is commonly used to create formal models of the effects of actions on the world. Action languages are commonly used in the artificial intelligence ...

similar to STRIPS. The behaviors are planned with so called managers who are responsible for subgoals like production, income, tactics and scouting behavior.

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links

Expressive Intelligence Studio Blog at UC Santa Cruz
University of California, Santa Cruz Video game organizations Video game studies Game artificial intelligence

History

Research

Example EISbot

See also

References

External links