Participatory simulation environment gumonji/Q: A network game empowered by agents

Abstract

Network games are attracting attention as simulation platforms for social experiments because of their rich visualization performance and scalability. Our objective in this study is to develop a participatory simulation platform on a network game. Unlike non player characters (NPCs) in network games, agents in a participatory multiagent-based simulation (PMAS) should behave as real-world humans according to behavior models. We developed a novel networked participatory simulation platform called gumonji/Q by integrating scenario description language Q with the network game gumonji. This paper details the implementation of gumonji/Q. In order to connect Q and gumonji, we implement communication sub-components that realize TCP/IP communication between them, and a scenario translator to convert a request from Q into a sequence of operators. This makes it possible for the gumonji simulator to deal with human-controlled avatars and Q-controlled agents in a unified way. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.