Elimination is a word puzzle game for browsers and mobile devices, where all levels are generated by a constrained evolutionary algorithm with no human intervention. This paper describes the design of the game and its level generation methods, and analysis of playtraces from almost a thousand users who played the game since its release. The analysis corroborates that the level generator creates a sawtooth-shaped difficulty curve, as intended. The analysis also offers insights into player behavior in this game.

Games are inherently situated within the cultures of their players. Players bring a wide range of knowledge and expectations to a game, and the more the game suggests connections to that culture, the stronger those expectations are and/or the more problematic they can be. MKULTRA is an experimental, AI-heavy game that ran afoul of those issues. It’s interesting to hear a talk about or to see demonstrated by the author, but frustrating for players who do not already understand its internals in some detail. In this paper, I will give a postmortem of the game, in the rough style of industry postmortems from venues such as Gamasutra or GDC. I will discuss the goals and design of the game, what went right, what went wrong, and what I should have done instead. In my discussions of the game’s problems, I’ll focus on the ways in which it frustrated the players’ cultural expectations, and what we can learn from them for the design of future games.

Reimagining business for the digital age is the number-one priority for many of today's top executives. We offer practical advice and examples of how to do it right. IBM Chairman Ginni Rometty issued the clarion call to an arena packed with roughly 20,000 IBM customers during her Think 2018 keynote. Incumbent companies can disrupt their own industries and you don't have to be an Uber to pull it off. Compared to her keynote at the former World of Watson conference almost 18 months ago, Rometty on this go-round was far more specific, showing concrete examples of how legacy companies are adopting next-generation technologies that changes their businesses.

There was no shortage of AI in the agenda at Strata. Beyond the headlines, there was growing evidence that the big data community is starting to get serious about real time processing.