ARTICLE https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19244-4 OPEN Navigating the landscape of multiplayer games ✉ Shayegan Omidshafiei 1,4 , Karl Tuyls1,4, Wojciech M. Czarnecki2, Francisco C. Santos3, Mark Rowland2, Jerome Connor2, Daniel Hennes 1, Paul Muller1, Julien Pérolat1, Bart De Vylder1, Audrunas Gruslys2 & Rémi Munos1 Multiplayer games have long been used as testbeds in artificial intelligence research, aptly referred to as the Drosophila of artificial intelligence. Traditionally, researchers have focused on using well-known games to build strong agents. This progress, however, can be better 1234567890():,; informed by characterizing games and their topological landscape. Tackling this latter question can facilitate understanding of agents and help determine what game an agent should target next as part of its training. Here, we show how network measures applied to response graphs of large-scale games enable the creation of a landscape of games, quanti- fying relationships between games of varying sizes and characteristics. We illustrate our findings in domains ranging from canonical games to complex empirical games capturing the performance of trained agents pitted against one another. Our results culminate in a demonstration leveraging this information to generate new and interesting games, including mixtures of empirical games synthesized from real world games. 1 DeepMind, Paris, France. 2 DeepMind, London, UK. 3 INESC-ID and Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal. 4These authors ✉ contributed equally: Shayegan Omidshafiei, Karl Tuyls. email: somidshafi
[email protected] NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | (2020) 11:5603 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19244-4 | www.nature.com/naturecommunications 1 ARTICLE NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19244-4 ames have played a prominent role as platforms for the games.