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Eight profiles on a common schema, each marking what was checked against a source this session and what is background recollection. Three are marked unverified in full — Machinations, the play substrates, most of RBG — and say so rather than reading as evaluations. Written straight after three review rounds whose entire yield was claims outrunning what had been checked, so the confidence rule is the first thing in the README. The survey changed the plan, which is what a survey is for. Track C was described in Positioning as open ground. It is not: Browne published 57 criteria for game quality, and Ai Ai already computes designer-facing measures — drama, lead changes, branching factor, completion, duration — from played games. The track becomes adopt, credit and find the gap. The gap looks real: those measures presume a leader, and SHARED GROUND has none — Modes.csv gives its tiebreak as "Not applicable". Track B probably adopts rather than builds. OpenSpiel implements CFR, best-response and exploitability over games that are simultaneous-move, imperfect-information and co-operative, which is all four of GROUND's awkward properties. "Does ATTACK ever pay" is a best-response question, and we spent three review rounds refining a two-policy sweep for it. The first Track B task is now one question — is exploitability meaningful for a co-operative game with a shared threshold — not a build. The cost of not surveying earlier is therefore measurable, and is recorded rather than glossed. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
71 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
71 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
# Simulators — profiles of systems adjacent to clay-borg
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Persisted research, not a link dump. Each profile answers the same
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questions in the same order so the systems can be compared, and each
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carries **what we actually checked**.
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Written for [`../specs/Positioning.md`](../specs/Positioning.md) §1 and
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§4 — the field we sit in, and the three tracks. Track A (a second game)
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and Track B (game theory as the lens on dynamics) both depend on knowing
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what already exists.
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---
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## The confidence rule
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> **Every claim in a profile carries its source, and a claim from
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> background knowledge is marked `unverified`.**
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This directory was written immediately after three adversarial review
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rounds whose entire yield was claims that outran what had been checked
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([`../reviews/`](../reviews)). A profile that quietly mixes a fetched fact
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with a half-remembered one is the same failure in a new place — and here
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it would be worse, because these profiles are meant to inform whether we
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build something or adopt it.
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| marker | means |
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| **`checked`** | read from a source this session, cited at the foot of the profile |
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| **`unverified`** | from background knowledge; plausible, **not** confirmed, and must be before it decides anything |
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| **`open`** | a question we want answered and did not answer |
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## The schema
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```
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# <name>
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owner · first release · licence · language (checked/unverified)
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## What it optimises for
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## How a game is defined
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## What it can analyse
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## What it does not do
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## Relevance to clay-borg — which track, and how
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## What to steal
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## What to avoid
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## Open questions
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## Sources
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```
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## Index
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| profile | in one line | track |
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|---|---|---|
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| [`ludii.md`](ludii.md) | the closest relative: ludemes, breadth, speed | A |
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| [`gdl-ggp.md`](gdl-ggp.md) | the academic ancestor; agent generality over designer support | A |
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| [`rbg.md`](rbg.md) | regular boardgames — a speed-focused rival description language | A |
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| [`ai-ai.md`](ai-ai.md) | **the closest relative for what we want to become**: GGP with designer-facing metrics | A, C |
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| [`openspiel.md`](openspiel.md) | the game-theory workbench: CFR, exploitability, social dilemmas | B |
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| [`browne-criteria.md`](browne-criteria.md) | not a simulator — the canonical attempt to measure whether a game is *good* | C |
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| [`machinations.md`](machinations.md) | economy and feedback loops, diagrammatic | — |
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| [`play-substrates.md`](play-substrates.md) | Tabletop Simulator, boardgame.io — play without analysis | — |
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## What this survey has already changed
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**Ai Ai and Browne's criteria are the finding.** Track C was written in
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`Positioning.md` as though "assimilate knowledge about why games work"
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were open ground. It is not: **Browne published 57 criteria for game
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quality**, and Ai Ai already computes designer-facing measures — drama,
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lead changes, branching factor, completion, duration — from played games.
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That does not close Track C. It moves it from *invent* to *adopt, credit,
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and find the gap*, which is a much better position and a much smaller
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claim than the one we were about to make.
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