mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Learning to Speak and Act in a Fantasy Text Adventure Game

arXiv 1903.03094 ↗First posted 7 Mar 2019cs.CL cs.AIcited by 122

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Cited by 21 in LLM agents and tool use, but placed by its own abstract, which didn’t fit.

Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce a large scale crowdsourced text adventure game as a research platform for studying grounded dialogue. In it, agents can perceive, emote, and act whilst conducting dialogue with other agents. Models and humans can both act as characters within the game. We describe the results of training state-of-the-art generative and retrieval models in this setting. We show that in addition to using past dialogue, these models are able to effectively use the state of the underlying world to condition their predictions. In particular, we show that grounding on the details of the local environment, including location descriptions, and the objects (and their affordances) and characters (and their previous actions) present within it allows better predictions of agent behavior and dialogue. We analyze the ingredients necessary for successful grounding in this setting, and how each of these factors relate to agents that can talk and act successfully.

Key facts. Cited by 122 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 7 Mar 2019.

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Citing papers per year: 2019: 1; 2020: 0; 2021: 20; 2022: 27; 2023: 27; 2024: 27; 2025: 13; 2026: 7.

122 papers.

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  1. 2023AgentBench: Evaluating LLMs as Agentscited by 1,211
  2. 2023SOTOPIA: Interactive Evaluation for Social Intelligence in Language Agentscited by 350
  3. 2021Beyond Goldfish Memory: Long-Term Open-Domain Conversationcited by 266
  4. 2022OPT-IML: Scaling Language Model Instruction Meta Learning through the Lens of Generalizationcited by 235
  5. 2022BlenderBot 3: a deployed conversational agent that continually learns to responsibly engagecited by 197
  6. 2021RedditBias: A Real-World Resource for Bias Evaluation and Debiasing of Conversational Language Modelscited by 149
  7. 2021Recent Advances in Deep Learning Based Dialogue Systems: A Systematic Surveycited by 130
  8. 2022Language Models that Seek for Knowledge: Modular Search & Generation for Dialogue and Prompt Completioncited by 102
  9. 2019Help, Anna! Visual Navigation with Natural Multimodal Assistance via Retrospective Curiosity-Encouraging Imitation Learningcited by 100
  10. 2024Large Language Models and Games: A Survey and Roadmapcited by 91
  11. 2022Evaluating Human-Language Model Interactioncited by 90
  12. 2023MindAgent: Emergent Gaming Interactioncited by 87
38 more
  1. 2025Lifelong Learning of Large Language Model based Agents: A Roadmapcited by 78
  2. 2023Humanoid Agents: Platform for Simulating Human-like Generative Agentscited by 73
  3. 2023Multi-Party Chat: Conversational Agents in Group Settings with Humans and Modelscited by 53
  4. 2021Beyond Fair Pay: Ethical Implications of NLP Crowdsourcingcited by 52
  5. 2023BiasAsker: Measuring the Bias in Conversational AI Systemcited by 52
  6. 2024Can Language Models Serve as Text-Based World Simulators?cited by 50
  7. 2022Improving Intrinsic Exploration with Language Abstractionscited by 49
  8. 2024Werewolf Arena: A Case Study in LLM Evaluation via Social Deductioncited by 42
  9. 2021Wordcraft: a Human-AI Collaborative Editor for Story Writingcited by 41
  10. 2022Dungeons and Dragons as a Dialog Challenge for Artificial Intelligencecited by 35
  11. 2022On Transforming Reinforcement Learning by Transformer: The Development Trajectorycited by 35
  12. 2024IBSEN: Director-Actor Agent Collaboration for Controllable and Interactive Drama Script Generationcited by 35
  13. 2024Bootstrapping LLM-based Task-Oriented Dialogue Agents via Self-Talkcited by 34
  14. 2021Not All Memories are Created Equal: Learning to Forget by Expiringcited by 32
  15. 2021Reason first, then respond: Modular Generation for Knowledge-infused Dialoguecited by 32
  16. 2022Why So Toxic? Measuring and Triggering Toxic Behavior in Open-Domain Chatbotscited by 31
  17. 2021Call for Customized Conversation: Customized Conversation Grounding Persona and Knowledgecited by 30
  18. 2023CHBias: Bias Evaluation and Mitigation of Chinese Conversational Language Modelscited by 25
  19. 2023MPCHAT: Towards Multimodal Persona-Grounded Conversationcited by 24
  20. 2023LARP: Language-Agent Role Play for Open-World Gamescited by 24
  21. 2024Security of AI Agentscited by 24
  22. 2022Interactive Grounded Language Understanding in a Collaborative Environment: IGLU 2021cited by 23
  23. 2021Am I Me or You? State-of-the-Art Dialogue Models Cannot Maintain an Identitycited by 22
  24. 2022I Cast Detect Thoughts: Learning to Converse and Guide with Intents and Theory-of-Mind in Dungeons and Dragonscited by 22
  25. 2023ByteSized32: A Corpus and Challenge Task for Generating Task-Specific World Models Expressed as Text Gamescited by 22
  26. 2024TimeChara: Evaluating Point-in-Time Character Hallucination of Role-Playing Large Language Modelscited by 21
  27. 2023HandMeThat: Human-Robot Communication in Physical and Social Environmentscited by 19
  28. 2025debug-gym: A Text-Based Environment for Interactive Debuggingcited by 19
  29. 2024Word2World: Generating Stories and Worlds through Large Language Modelscited by 18
  30. 2021A Systematic Survey of Text Worlds as Embodied Natural Language Environmentscited by 17
  31. 2022TVShowGuess: Character Comprehension in Stories as Speaker Guessingcited by 17
  32. 2024Player-Driven Emergence in LLM-Driven Game Narrativecited by 16
  33. 2021NeurIPS 2021 Competition IGLU: Interactive Grounded Language Understanding in a Collaborative Environmentcited by 15
  34. 2021Towards Socially Intelligent Agents with Mental State Transition and Human Utilitycited by 14
  35. 2021A Survey of Text Games for Reinforcement Learning informed by Natural Languagecited by 14
  36. 2022MBTI Personality Prediction for Fictional Characters Using Movie Scriptscited by 14
  37. 2023Games for Artificial Intelligence Research: A Review and Perspectivescited by 14
  38. 2021Telling Stories through Multi-User Dialogue by Modeling Character Relationscited by 13

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