Abstract
The game ‘Mafia’ is a logic puzzle that has been a top-rated party game played worldwide. Many studies have been dedicated to determining the best character combination to keep players engaged while analyzing the overall death toll. Although it has only two-sided plays, there are multiple combinations of characters in which each character’s rules are different. This paper explores the game’s sophistication using the game refinement theory and motion in mind model while measuring the entertainment of each character’s actions. It then focuses on the dynamics of minority versus majority behaviors during the game process. Computer simulations were conducted to collect the data of each character and assess the entertainment impacts. Moreover, the energy value of each character was computed based on the motion in mind model. The results show that when the number of ‘Mafia’ and the number of ‘Sheriffs’ are equal, the sophistication of each character is maximized. In addition, the data indicates the player engagement in the following order: Mafia>Sheriff>Citizen. Thus, it can be concluded that the actions of the Mafia character are the most complicated and significantly impact the game. It is expected that the results in this study enable game designers to improve each character’s perspective and examine possible enhancements from the viewpoint of entertainment.
Highlights
The Game refinement (GR) theory is based on the game outcome uncertainty, with a logistic model constructed as a core framework
The simulation was conducted to imitate real human behaviors such as in-group cooperation and competition using a simulator engine that considers preset actions of each character adopted by AI agents
This study proposed methods to analyze the sophistication of character roles in the Mafia game using the GR theory, while expanding the analysis to its game-playing experience using the motion in mind model via the reward ratio to determine their potential energy
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The traditional game theory originated with the idea of the existence of mixed-strategy equilibria a in two-person zero-sum game [1], which has been shown as a powerful tool in many fields such as political science, sports, psychology, and economics. Few studies analyze games’ entertainment and sophistication in a mathematical way. Game refinement (GR) theory was proposed earlier by Iida et al [2] to determine different levels of the game’s sophistication. The GR theory is based on the game outcome uncertainty, with a logistic model constructed as a core framework
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