We consider learning to play multiplayer imperfect-information games with simultaneous moves and large state-action spaces. Previous attempts to tackle such challenging games have largely focused on model-free learning methods, often requiring hundreds of years of experience to produce competitive agents. Our approach is based on model-based planning. We tackle the problem of partial observability by first building an (oracle) planner that has access to the full state of the environment and then distilling the knowledge of the oracle to a (follower) agent which is trained to play the imperfect-information game by imitating the oracle's choices. We experimentally show that planning with naive Monte Carlo tree search does not perform very well in large combinatorial action spaces. We therefore propose planning with a fixed-depth tree search and decoupled Thompson sampling for action selection. We show that the planner is able to discover efficient playing strategies in the games of Clash Royale and Pommerman and the follower policy successfully learns to implement them by training on a few hundred battles.

Facebook makes it easy for users to play their favorite games. In fact, the company introduced more ways for users to engage with games across different platforms, such as Instant Games (lightweight games that can be played with friends on Messenger), Facebook Gameroom (a desktop app to play fun strategy games) and Facebook Live Game Streaming (allows users to broadcast their live gameplay from PC, mobile and consoles directly to Facebook). Gardenscapes - New Acres by Playrix combines simulation elements and match-3 mechanics - engaging users in a new gaming experience. Players become friends with their neighbors and invite each other to in-game social gatherings. Gardenescapes - New Acres by Playrix is Facebook's 2016 game of the year.

Even in a month of high profile releases, Super Mario Run is starting to stand out as one of the most buzzed about titles of the end of the year. Nintendo has begun a full-court press promoting the game, and I don't think I've ever seen Apple lean so hard into a specific game partnership like this. Analysts are already beginning to estimate how exactly Super Mario Run will perform for Nintendo, and predictions are rosy. Analyst firm Sensor Tower, who has done a lot of great work on Pokémon GO's numbers, predicts that Mario will make about half of what GO made in its first month. As you can see in the chart above, they're predicting a $71M initial month, a little less than half of what GO did in July when it was a worldwide phenomenon.

Tiny cartoonish characters mill around a cartoon village on a player's phone screen, building cute little armies that they let loose on enemy camps. Often, just when things are going really great for the clan, resources run out; then players have to wait a few hours while the game slowly regenerates gold and elixir, or they can spend four dollars and ninety-nine cents to buy in-game currency and keep playing right away. Since most of us are impatient, Supercell, the company that makes Clash of Clans, has done quite nicely. Those real-money-for-virtual-stuff purchases, or micro-transactions, contributed to the company's 2.3 billion dollars in sales in 2015. This week, the China-based company Tencent Holdings paid 8.6 billion dollars for a controlling stake in Supercell, and therefore a stake in our need for instant gratification.

"The Division" was the best selling digital game for consoles in March, according to a report from SuperData Research published Thursday. Ubisoft's latest entry in the "Tom Clancy" series earned 109 million in revenue to dethrone "Call of Duty: Black Ops III." On the mobile side, "Clash Royale" Supercell's latest free-to-play blockbuster, was the top grossing game for March. Ubisoft previously announced "The Division" made 330 million in sales in its first five days of release. The figure includes physical and digital sales along with PC sales.