# General Board Game Concepts

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.01078 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.01078/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 77 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Jul 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Transfer Learning in Deep Reinforcement Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.07888/) (2020)
- [Opportunities and Challenges in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11371/) (2020)
- [Ludii -- The Ludemic General Game System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05013/) (2019)
- [Modern Techniques for Ancient Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10066/) (2020)
- [General Game Heuristic Prediction Based on Ludeme Descriptions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.12846/) (2021)
- [A Continuous Information Gain Measure to Find the Most Discriminatory Problems for AI Benchmarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02904/) (2018)
- [Transfer of Fully Convolutional Policy-Value Networks Between Games and Game Variants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12375/) (2021)
- [Leveling the Playing Field -- Fairness in AI Versus Human Game Benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07008/) (2019)
- [Strategic Features for General Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.00843/) (2021)
- [Ludii Game Logic Guide](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.02120/) (2021)
- [Ludii and XCSP: Playing and Solving Logic Puzzles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.00245/) (2019)
- [Ludii as a Competition Platform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.00246/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [GAVEL: Generating Games Via Evolution and Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09388/) (2024)
- [Grammar-based Game Description Generation using Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17404/) (2024)
- [Measuring Board Game Distance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.03913/) (2023)
- [Spatial State-Action Features for General Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.06401/) (2022)
- [Towards a Characterisation of Monte-Carlo Tree Search Performance in Different Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09242/) (2024)
- [Grammar and Gameplay-aligned RL for Game Description Generation with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15783/) (2025)
- [Best Agent Identification for General Game Playing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00451/) (2025)
- [A Research Agenda for Usability and Generalisation in Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16970/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Many games often share common ideas or aspects between them, such as their rules, controls, or playing area. However, in the context of General Game Playing (GGP) for board games, this area remains under-explored. We propose to formalise the notion of "game concept", inspired by terms generally used by game players and designers. Through the Ludii General Game System, we describe concepts for several levels of abstraction, such as the game itself, the moves played, or the states reached. This new GGP feature associated with the ludeme representation of games opens many new lines of research. The creation of a hyper-agent selector, the transfer of AI learning between games, or explaining AI techniques using game terms, can all be facilitated by the use of game concepts. Other applications which can benefit from game concepts are also discussed, such as the generation of plausible reconstructed rules for incomplete ancient games, or the implementation of a board game recommender system.