# Emergent Communication in a Multi-Modal, Multi-Step Referential Game

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.10369 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.10369/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 29 May 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [The Five Ws of Multi-Agent Communication: Who Talks to Whom, When, What, and Why -- A Survey from MARL to Emergent Language and LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.11583/) (2026)
- [Emergence of Theory of Mind Collaboration in Multiagent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.00121/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Inspired by previous work on emergent communication in referential games, we propose a novel multi-modal, multi-step referential game, where the sender and receiver have access to distinct modalities of an object, and their information exchange is bidirectional and of arbitrary duration. The multi-modal multi-step setting allows agents to develop an internal communication significantly closer to natural language, in that they share a single set of messages, and that the length of the conversation may vary according to the difficulty of the task. We examine these properties empirically using a dataset consisting of images and textual descriptions of mammals, where the agents are tasked with identifying the correct object. Our experiments indicate that a robust and efficient communication protocol emerges, where gradual information exchange informs better predictions and higher communication bandwidth improves generalization.