Digital Card Game Research Articles

Chaos Cards: Creating Novel Digital Card Games through Grammatical Content Generation and Meta-Based Card Evaluation

We present a novel framework to procedurally generate executable cards for Hearthstone-like digital card games, along with an approach for evaluating card strengths using an evolved match environment. Here we introduce Chaos Cards, a digital card game in the style of Hearthstone, but designed to support the procedural generation of cards, including their diverse effects, via a grammatical model. To understand the potential performance of procedurally generated cards in actual games, we integrate a simulation-based approach to evaluate card strengths, and train a neural network model for fast card strength prediction. Because the strength of a card is most meaningful when considered in the context of the pool of competitive decks (know as the meta) it plays in and against, we propose an evolutionary evaluation approach which simultaneously evaluates card strength and refines the environment in which cards are tested. We showcase some example cards generated by our framework, along with their strength evaluations. Additionally, we conduct tests between evaluations from meta game environments and random game environments to show the importance of the environment in evaluating card strengths. Lastly, we show our neural network is able to learn the strength of important cards in a meta environments with largely positive correlation.

Rango Cards, a digital game designed to promote a healthy diet: a randomized study protocol

BackgroundSeveral food and nutrition education actions have been described in the literature, with emphasis on the recommended use of innovative methods when addressing a young audience. Digital games are an attractive, dynamic, and motivating resource for teaching and learning practices, and adolescents form the group that readily accepts and adopts new technologies. Adapting dietary and nutritional guidelines to change dietary behavior is a challenge, and game-based learning has several benefits that can be used in this sense. Thus, this study aims to outline a nutritional intervention for school-aged adolescents from the Federal District, Brazil, whose object is a digital card game aimed at promoting healthy dietary practices.MethodsIn this randomized study with intervention and control groups, we propose a nutritional intervention for adolescents studying in Federal District private schools. The intervention group will be introduced to Rango Cards, a digital game specifically developed for this study. The purpose of the game is to present the concept of an adequate and healthy diet using simple information in a playful context. This game features cards for foods/meals, characters, and healthy habits. The players’ choices may lead them to winning or losing. Theme selection and phase order were designed to provide a learning experience. The control group will not receive any material during the study. Both groups will complete questionnaires before and after the intervention. The game is expected to improve food knowledge and self-efficacy in the adoption of healthy practices, thus contributing to appropriate dietary consumption.DiscussionThe game was designed as a food and nutrition education tool based on Brazilian dietary guidelines. We believe that Rango Cards will provide a comprehensive experience on the topic, improving the students’ autonomy, motivation, and pleasure of learning.Trial registrationRBR-72zvxv June 29, 2018; Retrospectively registered.

HoningStone: Building Creative Combos With Honing Theory for a Digital Card Game

In recent years, online digital games have left behind the status of entertainment sources to become also professional electronic sports. Worldwide championships offer prizes up to millions of dollars for the best competitors and/or teams among different game categories such as digital collectible card games (DCCG), multiplayer online battle arena, etc. Hearthstone, by Blizzard Entertainment, is a DCCG that has an increasing number of players up to the millions. In this game, individual players compete in one-versus-one matches in alternating turns, until a player is defeated. The greatest challenge in this game is to build a deck of cards and a strategy to combine these cards in order to be competitive against other players without a priori knowledge about their decks and strategies. This is a daunting task that requires deep knowledge of each existing card and great amount of creativity to surprise adversaries in this very adaptive environment. This paper presents a computational system, called HoningStone, that automatically generates creative card combos based on the honing theory of creativity. Our experimental results show that HoningStone can generate combos that are more creative than a greedy randomized algorithm driven by a creativity metric.