mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

LM Fight Arena: Benchmarking Large Multimodal Models via Game Competition

arXiv 2510.08928 ↗First posted 10 Oct 2025cs.AIcited by 5

On the map: Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models → Embodied and 3D vision-language models

Abstract (arXiv)

Existing benchmarks for large multimodal models (LMMs) often fail to capture their performance in real-time, adversarial environments. We introduce LM Fight Arena (Large Model Fight Arena), a novel framework that evaluates LMMs by pitting them against each other in the classic fighting game Mortal Kombat II, a task requiring rapid visual understanding and tactical, sequential decision-making. In a controlled tournament, we test six leading open- and closed-source models, where each agent operates controlling the same character to ensure a fair comparison. The models are prompted to interpret game frames and state data to select their next actions. Unlike static evaluations, LM Fight Arena provides a fully automated, reproducible, and objective assessment of an LMM's strategic reasoning capabilities in a dynamic setting. This work introduces a challenging and engaging benchmark that bridges the gap between AI evaluation and interactive entertainment.

Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Embodied and 3D vision-language models, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models. Builds on 14 of its 30 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Oct 2025.

Builds on

14 of 30 references.

References · 14

  1. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
  2. 2014Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Contextcited by 17,498
  3. 2023Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arenacited by 8,393
  4. 2023Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 7,792
  5. 2023BLIP-2: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training with Frozen Image Encoders and Large Language Modelscited by 6,069
  6. 2022Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learningcited by 4,337
  7. 2024Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolutioncited by 4,151
  8. 2023InternVL: Scaling up Vision Foundation Models and Aligning for Generic Visual-Linguistic Taskscited by 2,534
  9. 2016Making the V in VQA Matter: Elevating the Role of Image Understanding in Visual Question Answeringcited by 2,498
  10. 2023MMBench: Is Your Multi-modal Model an All-around Player?cited by 2,105
  11. 2023MMMU: A Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Expert AGIcited by 2,044
  12. 2023MME: A Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 1,624
2 more
  1. 2019Dota 2 with Large Scale Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,084
  2. 2024AndroidWorld: A Dynamic Benchmarking Environment for Autonomous Agentscited by 450

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 3.

5 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025GVGAI-LLM: Evaluating Large Language Model Agents with Infinite Games
  2. 2025Orak: A Foundational Benchmark for Training and Evaluating LLM Agents on Diverse Video Games
  3. 2025CombatVLA: An Efficient Vision-Language-Action Model for Combat Tasks in 3D Action Role-Playing Games
  4. 2025V-MAGE: A Game Evaluation Framework for Assessing Vision-Centric Capabilities in Multimodal Large Language Models
  5. 2026Beyond the Current Observation: Evaluating Multimodal Large Language Models in Controllable Non-Markov Games
  6. 2024Atari-GPT: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models as Low-Level Policies in Atari Games
  7. 2024BALROG: Benchmarking Agentic LLM and VLM Reasoning On Games
  8. 2026TowerMind: A Tower Defence Game Learning Environment and Benchmark for LLM as Agents