Gaming is a hard job, but someone has to do it!

• Published in 2012
• Added on 2012-01-27

We establish some general schemes relating the computational complexity of a video game to the presence of certain common elements or mechanics, such as destroyable paths, collecting items, doors activated by switches or pressure plates, etc.. Then we apply such "metatheorems" to several video games published between 1980 and 1998, including Pac-Man, Tron, Lode Runner, Boulder Dash, Deflektor, Mindbender, Pipe Mania, Skweek, Prince of Persia, Lemmings, Doom, Puzzle Bobble 3, and Starcraft. We obtain both new results, and improvements or alternative proofs of previously known results.

Links

• http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.4995
• http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.4995v5

Other information

BibTeX entry

@article{Viglietta2012,
	key = {Viglietta2012},
	type = {article},
	title = {Gaming is a hard job, but someone has to do it!},
	author = {Viglietta, Giovanni},
	abstract = {We establish some general schemes relating the computational complexity of a video game to the presence of certain common elements or mechanics, such as destroyable paths, collecting items, doors activated by switches or pressure plates, etc.. Then we apply such "metatheorems" to several video games published between 1980 and 1998, including Pac-Man, Tron, Lode Runner, Boulder Dash, Deflektor, Mindbender, Pipe Mania, Skweek, Prince of Persia, Lemmings, Doom, Puzzle Bobble 3, and Starcraft. We obtain both new results, and improvements or alternative proofs of previously known results.},
	comment = {},
	date_added = {2012-01-27},
	date_published = {2012-01-01},
	urls = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.4995,http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.4995v5},
	collections = {Basically computer science,Games to play with friends,Computational complexity of games},
	archivePrefix = {arXiv},
	arxivId = {1201.4995},
	eprint = {1201.4995},
	keywords = {Computational Complexity,Computer Science and Game Theory},
	month = {jan},
	pages = 12,
	url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.4995 http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.4995v5},
	year = 2012,
	primaryClass = {cs.CC},
	urldate = {2012-01-27}
}