Publications

2024

Elliot Meyerson, Mark J. Nelson, Herbie Bradley, Adam Gaier, Arash Moradi, Amy K. Hoover, Joel Lehman
Language model crossover: Variation through few-shot prompting
ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization

Arash Moradi Karkaj, Mark J. Nelson, Ioannis Koutis, Amy K. Hoover
Prompt Wrangling: On replication and generalization in large language models for PCG levels
Workshop on Procedural Content Generation

Mike Treanor, Ben Samuel, Mark J. Nelson
Prototyping Slice of Life: Social physics with symbolically grounded LLM-based generative dialogue
International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

2023

Sherol Chen, Carter Morgan, David Olsen, Ethan Manilow, Kenric Allado-McDowell, Mark J. Nelson, Qiuyi (Richard) Zhang, Senjuti Dutta, Kory Mathewson, Piotr W. Mirowski
Towards an authorial leverage evaluation framework for expressive benefits of deep generative models in story writing
Workshop on Intelligent and Interactive Writing Assistants

2022

Shi Johnson-Bey, Mark J. Nelson, Michael Mateas
Exploring the design space of social physics engines in games
International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling

Shi Johnson-Bey, Mark J. Nelson, Michael Mateas
Neighborly: A sandbox for simulation-based emergent narrative
IEEE Conference on Games

2021

Mark J. Nelson
Estimates for the branching factors of Atari games
IEEE Conference on Games

2020

Mark J. Nelson, Amy K. Hoover
Notes on using Google Colaboratory in AI education
Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

2019

Mike Treanor, Mark J. Nelson
Order-fulfillment games: An analysis of games about serving customers
International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

Joan Casas-Roma, Mark J. Nelson, Joan Arnedo-Moreno, Swen E. Gaudl, Rob Saunders
Towards simulated morality systems: Role-playing games as artificial societies
International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence

Antonios Liapis, Georgios N. Yannakakis, Mark J. Nelson, Mike Preuss, Rafael Bidarra
Orchestrating game generation
IEEE Transactions on Games

2018

Mark J. Nelson, Swen E. Gaudl, Simon Colton, Sebastian Deterding
Curious users of casual creators
FDG Workshop: Curiosity in Games

Simon Colton, Mark J. Nelson, Edward J. Powley, Swen E. Gaudl, Rob Saunders, Blanca Pérez Ferrer, Peter Ivey, Michael Cook
A parameter-space design methodology for casual creators
International Conference on Computational Creativity

Anna Huang, Sherol Chen, Mark J. Nelson, Douglas Eck
Towards mixed-initiative generation of multi-channel sequential structure
International Conference on Learning Representations: Workshop Track

Swen E. Gaudl, Mark J. Nelson, Simon Colton, Rob Saunders, Edward J. Powley, Blanca Pérez Ferrer, Peter Ivey, Michael Cook
Rapid game jams with fluidic games: A user study & design methodology
Entertainment Computing

2017

David Olsen, Mark J. Nelson
The narrative logic of Rube Goldberg machines
International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling

Mark J. Nelson, Swen E. Gaudl, Simon Colton, Rob Saunders, Edward J. Powley, Peter Ivey, Blanca Pérez Ferrer, Michael Cook
Design methods for democratising mobile game design
CHI Play Workshop: Critical Reflections on Participation in Game Development

Mark J. Nelson, Swen E. Gaudl, Simon Colton, Edward J. Powley, Blanca Pérez Ferrer, Rob Saunders, Peter Ivey, Michael Cook
Fluidic games in cultural contexts
International Conference on Computational Creativity

Mark J. Nelson, Simon Colton, Edward J. Powley, Swen E. Gaudl, Peter Ivey, Rob Saunders, Blanca Pérez Ferrer, Michael Cook
Mixed-initiative approaches to on-device mobile game design
CHI Workshop: Mixed-Initiative Creative Interfaces

Swen E. Gaudl, Mark J. Nelson, Simon Colton, Rob Saunders, Edward J. Powley, Peter Ivey, Blanca Pérez Ferrer, Michael Cook
Exploring novel game spaces with fluidic games
AISB Symposium

2016

Noor Shaker, Julian Togelius, Mark J. Nelson
Procedural Content Generation in Games: A Textbook and an Overview of Current Research
Springer

Mark J. Nelson
Investigating vanilla MCTS scaling on the GVG-AI game corpus
IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games

Edward J. Powley, Simon Colton, Swen E. Gaudl, Rob Saunders, Mark J. Nelson
Semi-automated level design via auto-playtesting for handheld casual game creation
IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games

Mark J. Nelson
The Tapper videogame patent as a series of close readings
International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG

Simon Colton, Mark J. Nelson, Rob Saunders, Edward J. Powley, Swen E. Gaudl, Michael Cook
Towards a computational reading of emergence in experimental game design
ICCC Computational Creativity and Games Workshop

Edward J. Powley, Swen E. Gaudl, Simon Colton, Mark J. Nelson, Rob Saunders, Michael Cook
Automated tweaking of levels for casual creation of mobile games
ICCC Computational Creativity and Games Workshop

Mark J. Nelson
Lavorare è giocare: Breve storia di un'idea in bilico tra capitalismo e comunismo
Oltre il gioco: Critica della ludicizzazione urbana

2015

Thorbjørn S. Nielsen, Gabriella A. B. Barros, Julian Togelius, Mark J. Nelson
Towards generating arcade game rules with VGDL
IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games

Thorbjørn S. Nielsen, Gabriella A. B. Barros, Julian Togelius, Mark J. Nelson
General video game evaluation using relative algorithm performance profiles
Conference on Applications of Evolutionary Computation

Marco Scirea, Mark J. Nelson, Julian Togelius
Moody music generator: Characterising control parameters using crowdsourcing
Conference on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design

Kristian Hjaltason, Steffen Christophersen, Julian Togelius, Mark J. Nelson
Game mechanics telling stories? An experiment
International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

2014

Julian Togelius, Mark J. Nelson, Antonios Liapis
Characteristics of generatable games
FDG Workshop: Procedural Content Generation in Games

Alessandro Canossa, Staffan Björk, Mark J. Nelson
X-COM: UFO Defense vs. XCOM: Enemy Unknown— Using gameplay design patterns to understand game remakes
International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

Steve Dahlskog, Julian Togelius, Mark J. Nelson
Linear levels through n-grams
International Academic MindTrek Conference

Marco Scirea, Yun-Gyung Cheong, Mark J. Nelson, Byung-Chull Bae
Evaluating musical foreshadowing of videogame narrative experiences
Audio Mostly Conference

2013

Rilla Khaled, Mark J. Nelson, Pippin Barr
Design metaphors for procedural content generation in games
ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Nils Iver Holtar, Mark J. Nelson, Julian Togelius
Audioverdrive: Exploring bidirectional communication between music and gameplay
International Computer Music Conference

Miika Pirtola, Yun-Gyung Cheong, Mark J. Nelson
Player perspectives to unexplained agency-related incoherence
International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling

Andrew Borg Cardona, Julian Togelius, Mark J. Nelson
Competitive coevolution in Ms. Pac-Man
IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation

2012

Mark J. Nelson
Soviet and American precursors to the gamification of work
International Academic MindTrek Conference

Isaac Dart, Mark J. Nelson
Smart terrain causality chains for adventure-game puzzle generation
IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games

Mark J. Nelson
Prototyping Kant-inspired reflexive game mechanics
FDG Workshop: Research Prototyping in Games

Robert van Leeuwen, Yun-Gyung Cheong, Mark J. Nelson
A lightweight story-comprehension approach to game dialogue
Workshop on Games and NLP

Spyridon Giannatos, Yun-Gyung Cheong, Mark J. Nelson, Georgios N. Yannakakis
Generating narrative action schemas for suspense
Workshop on Intelligent Narrative Technologies

2011

Mark J. Nelson
Game metrics without players: Strategies for understanding game artifacts
AIIDE Workshop: AI in the Game-Design Process

Spyridon Giannatos, Mark J. Nelson, Yun-Gyung Cheong, Georgios N. Yannakakis
Suggesting new plot elements for an interactive story
Workshop on Intelligent Narrative Technologies

2010

Adam M. Smith, Mark J. Nelson, Michael Mateas
Ludocore: A logical game engine for modeling videogames
IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games

2009

Mark J. Nelson, Michael Mateas
A requirements analysis for videogame design support tools
International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

Adam M. Smith, Mark J. Nelson, Michael Mateas
Computational support for play testing game sketches
Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference

Adam M. Smith, Mark J. Nelson, Michael Mateas
Prototyping games with BIPED
Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference

Sherol Chen, Mark J. Nelson, Michael Mateas
Evaluating the authorial leverage of drama management
Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference

2008

Mark J. Nelson, Michael Mateas
An interactive game-design assistant
International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces

Mark J. Nelson, Michael Mateas
Another look at search-based drama management
AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence

Mark J. Nelson, Michael Mateas
Recombinable game mechanics for automated design support
Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference

2007

Mark J. Nelson, Michael Mateas
Towards automated game design
AI*IA 2007: Artificial Intelligence and Human-Oriented Computing

Sooraj Bhat, David L. Roberts, Mark J. Nelson, Charles L. Isbell, Michael Mateas
A globally optimal algorithm for TTD-MDPs
International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems

2006

Mark J. Nelson, Michael Mateas, David L. Roberts, Charles L. Isbell
Declarative optimization-based drama management in interactive fiction
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications

Mark J. Nelson, David L. Roberts, Charles L. Isbell, Michael Mateas
Reinforcement learning for declarative optimization-based drama management
International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems

David L. Roberts, Mark J. Nelson, Charles L. Isbell, Michael Mateas, Michael L. Littman
Targeting specific distributions of trajectories in MDPs
AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence

Mark J. Nelson, Calvin Ashmore, Michael Mateas
Authoring an interactive narrative with declarative optimization-based drama management
Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference

2005

Mark J. Nelson, Michael Mateas
Search-based drama management in the interactive fiction Anchorhead
Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference

2004

Belinda Thom, Mark J. Nelson
An in-depth analysis of real-time MIDI performance
International Computer Music Conference

Mark J. Nelson, Belinda Thom
A survey of real-time MIDI performance
Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression


Mark J. Nelson