As generative AI increasingly outperforms students in producing academic writing, a critical question arises: how can we preserve the motivation, creativity, and intellectual growth of novice researchers in an age of automated academic achievement? This paper introduces GAMER PAT (GAme MastER, Paper Authoring Tutor), a prompt-engineered AI chatbot that reframes research paper writing as a serious game. Through role-playing mechanics, users interact with a co-author NPC and anonymous reviewer NPCs, turning feedback into "missions" and advancing through a narrative-driven writing process. Our study reports on 26+ gameplay chat logs, including both autoethnography and use by graduate students under supervision. Using qualitative log analysis with SCAT (Steps for Coding and Theorization), we identified an emergent four-phase scaffolding pattern: (1) question posing, (2) meta-perspective, (3) structuring, and (4) recursive reflection. These results suggest that GAMER PAT supports not only the structural development of research writing but also reflective and motivational aspects. We present this work as a descriptive account of concept and process, not a causal evaluation. We also include a speculative outlook envisioning how humans may continue to cultivate curiosity and agency alongside AI-driven research. This arXiv version thus provides both a descriptive report of design and usage, and a forward-looking provocation for future empirical studies.

Role-playing games (RPG) are games in which players interact with one another to create narratives. The role of players in the RPG is largely based on the interaction between players and their characters. This emerging form of shared narrative, primarily oral, is receiving increasing attention. In particular, many authors investigated the use of an LLM as an actor in the game. In this paper, we aim to discover to what extent the language of Large Language Models (LLMs) exhibit oral or written features when asked to generate an RPG session without human interference. We will conduct a linguistic analysis of the lexical and syntactic features of the generated texts and compare the results with analyses of conversations, transcripts of human RPG sessions, and books. We found that LLMs exhibit a pattern that is distinct from all other text categories, including oral conversations, human RPG sessions and books. Our analysis has shown how training influences the way LLMs express themselves and provides important indications of the narrative capabilities of these tools.

This paper presents a game master AI for single-player role-playing games. The AI is designed to deliver interactive text-based narratives and experiences typically associated with multiplayer tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons. We report on the design process and the series of experiments to improve the functionality and experience design, resulting in two functional versions of the system. While v1 of our system uses simplified prompt engineering, v2 leverages a multi-agent architecture and the ReAct framework to include reasoning and action. A comparative evaluation demonstrates that v2 as an agentic system maintains play while significantly improving modularity and game experience, including immersion and curiosity. Our findings contribute to the evolution of AI-driven interactive fiction, highlighting new avenues for enhancing solo role-playing experiences.

It has been shown that social institutions impact human motivations to produce different behaviours, such as amount of working or specialisation in labor. With advancement in artificial intelligence (AI), specifically large language models (LLMs), now it is possible to perform in-silico simulations to test various hypotheses around this topic. Here, I simulate two somewhat similar worlds using multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) framework of the AI-Economist and generative agent-based model (GABM) framework of the Concordia. In the extended versions of the AI-Economist and Concordia, the agents are able to build houses, trade houses, and trade house building skill. Moreover, along the individualistic-collectivists axis, there are a set of three governing systems: Full-Libertarian, Semi-Libertarian/Utilitarian, and Full-Utilitarian. Additionally, in the extended AI-Economist, the Semi-Libertarian/Utilitarian system is further divided to a set of three governing institutions along the discriminative axis: Inclusive, Arbitrary, and Extractive. Building on these, I am able to show that among governing systems and institutions of the extended AI-Economist, under the Semi-Libertarian/Utilitarian and Inclusive government, the ratios of building houses to trading houses and trading house building skill are higher than the rest. Furthermore, I am able to show that in the extended Concordia when the central government care about equality in the society, the Full-Utilitarian system generates agents building more houses and trading more house building skill. In contrast, these economic activities are higher under the Full-Libertarian system when the central government cares about productivity in the society. Overall, the focus of this paper is to compare and contrast two advanced techniques of AI, MARL and GABM, to simulate a similar social phenomena with limitations.

Developing a consistent and reliable AI game master for text-based games is a challenging task due to the limitations of large language models (LLMs) and the complexity of the game master's role. This paper presents a novel approach to enhance AI game masters by leveraging function calling in the context of the table-top role-playing game "Jim Henson's Labyrinth: The Adventure Game." Our methodology involves integrating game-specific controls through functions, which we show improves the narrative quality and state update consistency of the AI game master. The experimental results, based on human evaluations and unit tests, demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in enhancing gameplay experience and maintaining coherence with the game state. This work contributes to the advancement of game AI and interactive storytelling, offering insights into the design of more engaging and consistent AI-driven game masters.

Recent years have seen an explosive increase in research on large language models (LLMs), and accompanying public engagement on the topic. While starting as a niche area within natural language processing, LLMs have shown remarkable potential across a broad range of applications and domains, including games. This paper surveys the current state of the art across the various applications of LLMs in and for games, and identifies the different roles LLMs can take within a game. Importantly, we discuss underexplored areas and promising directions for future uses of LLMs in games and we reconcile the potential and limitations of LLMs within the games domain. As the first comprehensive survey and roadmap at the intersection of LLMs and games, we are hopeful that this paper will serve as the basis for groundbreaking research and innovation in this exciting new field.

Since the release of ChatGPT, we've seen a lot of disturbance in almost every field of our life and business. We've heard that ChatGPT can be a junior specialist killer (it passed the interview for Google's L3 entry-level software engineering position) and that it can replace the search engines we are used to (actually, the author personally sometimes suggests asking ChatGPT instead of googling). Tech enthusiasts across the globe are looking forward to putting their hands on the new Bing based on Prometheus AI (an improved version of ChatGPT). We even have heard fears about such models becoming sentient and causing certain trouble. Is at least something from the abstract above actual and possible?

Live Action Role-Playing (LARP) games and similar experiences are becoming a popular game genre. Here, we discuss how artificial intelligence techniques, particularly those commonly used in AI for Games, could be applied to LARP. We discuss the specific properties of LARP that make it a surprisingly suitable application field, and provide a brief overview of some existing approaches. We then outline several directions where utilizing AI seems beneficial, by both making LARPs easier to organize, and by enhancing the player experience with elements not possible without AI.

He is going to use science! And actually will explain everything. A severe portion of mathematics awaits you, visualized with a ton of Python code. You're probably wondering what quantum computing has to do with D&D. Well, our Machine Learning Engineer Maciej Adamiak is on a mission to popularise quantum computing.

The world of tabletop gaming was once the preserve of nervous teenage boys holed up in dark basements and bedrooms. But as shows like Stranger Things tap into the rose-tinted nostalgia of afternoons spent playing Dungeons & Dragons, could it be that the geeks have inherited more than Middle Earth? In a craft beer bar lit with bare bulbs, a cluster of tattooed and bearded punters gather. On first glance this branch of BrewDog in Nottingham might seem like your typical hipster hangout, but one thing gives it a slightly different air: numerous hand-drawn maps, some character sheets, and voluminous bags of 20-sided dice. It's the bar's monthly tabletop gaming night - and regulars love it. "I think the escapism is the best bit," says 27-year-old gamer Hannah Yeates.