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Making a Better Game: The History of Cluster

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Advances in Computer Games (ACG 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 12516))

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Abstract

The authors present a case study of the initial inspiration and design process that led to successfully optimized versions of the game “Cluster”. Various aspects of game design are examined in the context of human and computer assisted playtesting.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Personal communications with Shoptaugh in 2009.

  2. 2.

    http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/DefiningtheAbstract.shtml.

  3. 3.

    Understandably, due to a desire to prevent the proliferation of endless variations of Cluster, Shoptaugh requested that Cluster Designer not be made publically available.

  4. 4.

    http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/46261/cluster-axiom-computer-game-pcs

  5. 5.

    http://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi?do=show;id=1760

  6. 6.

    Cluster-58 will be commercially marketed in late 2016.

  7. 7.

    See http://www.chess.com/groups/forumview/history-of-chess-rules

References

  1. Sackson, S.: A Gamut of Games. Pantheon Books, New York (1982). [1st Pub. 1969, Random House, New York]. ISBN 0-394-71115-7

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  2. Hom, V., Marks, J.: Automatic design of balanced board games. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE), pp. 25–30 (2007)

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  3. Browne, C., Maire, F.: Evolutionary game design. IEEE Trans. Comput. Intell. AI Games 2(1), 1–16 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Shoptaugh, P.: Cluster game. U.S. Patent 3,834,708, filed February 23, 1973, and issued September 10, 1974 (1973)

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  5. Schmidt, G.: The axiom general purpose game playing system. IEEE Trans. Comput. Intell. AI Games 6(4), 332–342 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Cameron Browne for his helpful suggestions.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rockwell Automation, Mayfield Heights, OH, USA

    Gregory Schmidt

  2. Shoptaugh Games, Oakland, CA, USA

    Philip Shoptaugh

Authors
  1. Gregory Schmidt
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  2. Philip Shoptaugh
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Philip Shoptaugh .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Université Paris-Dauphine, Paris, France

    Tristan Cazenave

  2. Leiden University, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Jaap van den Herik

  3. The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Abdallah Saffidine

  4. National Chiao-Tung University, Hsin-Chu, Taiwan

    I-Chen Wu

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Schmidt, G., Shoptaugh, P. (2020). Making a Better Game: The History of Cluster. In: Cazenave, T., van den Herik, J., Saffidine, A., Wu, IC. (eds) Advances in Computer Games. ACG 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12516. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65883-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65883-0_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-65882-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-65883-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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