mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Cultivating Game Sense for Yourself: Making VLMs Gaming Experts

arXiv 2503.21263 ↗First posted 27 Mar 2025cs.CLcited by 1

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Abstract (arXiv)

Developing agents capable of fluid gameplay in first/third-person games without API access remains a critical challenge in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Recent efforts leverage Vision Language Models (VLMs) as direct controllers, frequently pausing the game to analyze screens and plan action through language reasoning. However, this inefficient paradigm fundamentally restricts agents to basic and non-fluent interactions: relying on isolated VLM reasoning for each action makes it impossible to handle tasks requiring high reactivity (e.g., FPS shooting) or dynamic adaptability (e.g., ACT combat). To handle this, we propose a paradigm shift in gameplay agent design: instead of directly controlling gameplay, VLM develops specialized execution modules tailored for tasks like shooting and combat. These modules handle real-time game interactions, elevating VLM to a high-level developer. Building upon this paradigm, we introduce GameSense, a gameplay agent framework where VLM develops task-specific game sense modules by observing task execution and leveraging vision tools and neural network training pipelines. These modules encapsulate action-feedback logic, ranging from direct action rules to neural network-based decisions. Experiments demonstrate that our framework is the first to achieve fluent gameplay in diverse genres, including ACT, FPS, and Flappy Bird, setting a new benchmark for game-playing agents.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 13 of its 76 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Mar 2025.

Builds on

13 of 76 references.

References · 13

  1. 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 52,096
  2. 2023Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detectioncited by 3,332
  3. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,242
  4. 2022MineDojo: Building Open-Ended Embodied Agents with Internet-Scale Knowledgecited by 478
  5. 2023Describe, Explain, Plan and Select: Interactive Planning with Large Language Models Enables Open-World Multi-Task Agentscited by 398
  6. 2019MineRL: A Large-Scale Dataset of Minecraft Demonstrationscited by 215
  7. 2024A Survey on Large Language Model-Based Game Agentscited by 112
  8. 2023Large Language Models Play StarCraft II: Benchmarks and A Chain of Summarization Approachcited by 79
  9. 2024Scaling Instructable Agents Across Many Simulated Worldscited by 71
  10. 2024RL-GPT: Integrating Reinforcement Learning and Code-as-policycited by 32
  11. 2017Deep Learning for Video Game Playingcited by 30
  12. 2024Can VLMs Play Action Role-Playing Games? Take Black Myth Wukong as a Study Casecited by 24
1 more
  1. 2022Automated Play-Testing Through RL Based Human-Like Play-Styles Generationcited by 11

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

1 paper.

Similar, not cited

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  1. 2026OmniGameArena: A Unified UE5 Benchmark for VLM Game Agents with Improvement Dynamics
  2. 2025Game-RL: Synthesizing Multimodal Verifiable Game Data to Boost VLMs' General Reasoning
  3. 2026GameWorld: Towards Standardized and Verifiable Evaluation of Multimodal Game Agents
  4. 2025Vision-Zero: Scalable VLM Self-Improvement via Strategic Gamified Self-Play
  5. 2025CombatVLA: An Efficient Vision-Language-Action Model for Combat Tasks in 3D Action Role-Playing Games
  6. 2025VS-Bench: Evaluating VLMs for Strategic Abilities in Multi-Agent Environments
  7. 2025Agents Play Thousands of 3D Video Games
  8. 2025G1: Bootstrapping Perception and Reasoning Abilities of Vision-Language Model via Reinforcement Learning