Who's got game (theory)?

Many players enjoy the challenge of outwitting computer opponents in strategy games. Devising strategies to defeat a computer opponent may enhance certain cognitive skills (e.g., analysis, evaluation, planning). This thesis takes a constructionist approach to gaming, hypothesizing that players may learn more about strategic planning by building their own computer opponents and then playing them to understand how their strategic theories play out in real experiments. I have developed a graphic toolkit for designing strategy games and computer opponents. The goal is to help students learn the underlying mathematical and computer science theories used to win these games. The tools have been designed to eliminate the overhead of using conventional programming languages to build games and focus students on the pedagogical issues of designing and understanding game theory algorithms. I describe the tools as well as initial evaluations of their effectiveness with populations of teenage students. Teenagers in this study posed their own problems, in the form of games they designed, and then hypothesized about winning strategies. Of their own volition, most teenagers iterated on their strategic designs, reformulated problems and hypotheses, isolated variables, and informed next generation versions of this tool with astute suggestions.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Blankinship, Erik Jackson, 1974-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Walter Bender.

• Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33877
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33877

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33877