Simulation is important because of the way that it works at a fundamental level. Simulation consists of:

1. A mapping between things that are outside the simulation to things that are inside the simulation, a representation. The representation converts things in the world to tokens or symbols in the simulation itself.
2. A set of rules that defines the relationship and interactions between the tokens, a model. Models are interpretations of how things work.
3. An actual execution and application of the simulation, where the state changes from some set of initial conditions to some later conditions after a period of time. That is the run of the simulation.

Among these is the gap. The gap is a property that emerges from simulation, that is a consequence of its definition. A simulation is dependent on both rules and representation. Without rules, the run of a simulation is nothing more than an arbitrary sequence of states. Without representation, a simulation is just a mathematical entity in abstraction, disconnected from reality. However, simulations can take advantage of one more than the other and still be called simulations. This means that there must be some sort of negotiation between what is handled by the model and what is handled by the representation. The disconnect and distance between these is the simulation gap.

The magic of simulation occurs when the model and representation work synergetically to produce something that seems to work beyond both. Ultimately, the simulation here is something experienced. Simulation authors must therefore use the gap to creative and expressive advantage. Many games are successful because of their care in choosing what to simulate versus what to represent.

Closely related to this is the immersive fallacy. The nut of the immersive fallacy is the idea that a game can be made better by expanding player’s agency in the game world. The line drawn between in this idea is between player agency and simulation. I guess that would be defined as the agency gap. Generally I have been concerned with the simulation gap, but the agency gap is very significant due to its construction of believability through participation. The simulation gap is significant because its construction of believability through mechanics.

We had a longtime friend of ours come by and visit today, which went respectably well. He has graduated from his arduous job at the pizza place and is now intending to take up snowboarding (or something). Said friend is also been a lifelong gamer and was one of the shadow agents whose operations led me to discover gaming. Having spent extensive time in the “académie”, I’ve also gotten to know the Ludologists, the Narrativists, and now, Miashara. It feels like the stars have been aligned to make something really awesome happen. Unfortunately, it may take some time for that to amount to anything, so I grilled him about gaming and where he sees the relation of stories and systems. (more…)

Okay, so here comes an idea that I have been working through a great deal recently: “Everything is a system.” That’s not too unusual of a claim. I am sure that there are many sources who would support such a proposition. Using that umbrella, though, we can focus in on a specific subset of everything: narrative. By narrative I’m thinking more or less of traditional style narratives, ones that can be read in a more or less traditional manner. Tristram Shandy or Finnegan’s Wake may not fall under that limitation of narrative, but the vast majority of literature does. Okay, so the idea is this: narratives are systematic, they contain elements such as value systems, character motives, and external events. These are recorded and the result is a narrative. That is a more specific claim. It would require a little more defense, but it is a little more interesting. (more…)

Warning, long rambly post up ahead: I Have been thinking a fair bit on where the research directions could go, and here is a run through of a couple of ideas which are in my head at the moment.

There are a couple of things to consider in terms of research or technical goals to accomplish.

Research goals are intended to answer a broad research question, and understand a larger picture by looking at various examples, and maybe developing a theory or process or method for doing something. The method in this case would be one for adaptation of certain types of narrative forms.

Adaptation is an extremely broad subject, and so it would be important to narrow the field down significantly. From the perspective of advancing the medium of games, we can look at narratives that are not traditionally adapted into games and enumerate those: dramas, comedy, social narratives, romances, etc. Even still, this is very broad, and we could do with something that is finer. Maybe not by limiting ourselves to a genre, but by limiting ourselves to a type of story or type of framing of a problem.

So, looking into a method for adapting certain kinds of social dramas is very potent. However, the examples would necessarily be very limited. They might be various, but they would need to be small in scale. Questions arise over how the method or approach would be technically shaped. I could see it as a software library, but a library would need to be focused in its scope.

A larger perspective look at the project would leverage knowledge from the Statics project, and exploring how people use models, and build and run simulations to understand things (physical things, social things, any abstract concepts). That would be a supercedent of the adaptation problem.

Still, it would also be possible to look deeper and more specifically, and try to accomplish some technical goals, say, “Build a Pride and Prejudice game,” but this is dangerous. While it would be important, innovative, and necessarily new, it’s dangerous in the sense that developing a method for this specific setting would not necessarily be generalizable and would introduce very challenging specific technical details that might not fit nicely with other components.

An example of a technical solution is Facade,  which is very successful at being something new, but has posed many problems in attempts to extend the character behavior language, ABL, to other projects and domains.

Clearly, there is a degree of freedom here, there’s no real unique solution. We can do something very theoretical with limited technical accomplishments, or something very technical with limited theoretical accomplishments. It seems like a compromise is necessary here, but the question becomes what is optimal, and where does it fit in this larger picture?

Okay, the Reading Lists are being updated, I have change some research plan notes that are there, as well as introducing a new tag-based system that should help me keep track of things. The actual lists themselves are being updated, I am attempting to prune off as much stuff as I am sure I don’t need to replace these with material that is arguably more relevant.

Geez. I think it was Celia who reccomended that I put Erving Goffman on my reading list. I can hardly imagine anything more appropriate. I’ve finished notes on the first essay of Interaction Ritual, which is highly relevant to constructing a theory of social interaction. Goffman describes the unit of “face” (as in the sense of losing or having face) as a type of value in social interaction. Having face is a good thing, and tends to imply assertiveness and confidence. Losing face is embarrassing and drops one down a bit on the grand social order.

However, due to this simple value system, lots of emergent patterns appear in the deployment of face in social systems. Once can sacrifice face as to let another save face for themselves. The loss of face tends to form social rituals that are highly dramatized in nature. What is neat about this is that it is:

1) a universal pattern of social behavior (according to Goffman, of course), and
2) this behavior is symbolic at a level that could easily lend itself to simulation.
I am interested in a couple of things now: Are there any contemporary people who are followers or who critique Goffman and his practice of Symbolic Interaction? Is there anyone who has taken these principles in the direction of AI? If anyone knows, by golly email me, otherwise I’ll find out through good solid research.

Interesting findings will be posted. Cheers!

I ultimately figured it was around time I wrote another post in order to keep things looking up to shape around here. The research section is growing, gradually coming to reflect my gradual progress on reading lists. More content and writing will be showing up there soonish

Just wanted to put that up so any readers will know I’m not dead.

Well, for those of you who have been following the exciting progress, I posted my current reading lists for my research. It’s all very exciting and hopefully things will come together soon. I hope to use this space to post notes on readings, which may be helpful for not just myself but for anyone who is interested in this sort of thing. We shall see how things turn out.

Cheers!

Research Plan:
The general goal of this research is to investigate the simulation of social agents. The goal in this simulation is to create a sort of microworld inhabited by virtual characters whose behavior is in between the complexity of the Sims and Facade. From the perspective of artifacts, this is important because Facade’s complexity makes it difficult to author multiple characters and scenarios. The complexity of the Sims does not account for deeper social behavior, most all of the work is done on an interpretive level. Furthermore, a category of social simulations opens an entire potential genre of games that has been nearly untouched. This category could address themed social environments based on settings defined in existing literature, though social simulation is by no means limited to that. Many settings taken from literary context have strongly defined genre archetypes and these can be used to author schemas that define the structure of character behavior. By placing players in such an environment and giving them thematically relevant verbs for engaging with this world, it would be possible to create a revolutionary new genre of games.

Committee:
Celia Pearce
Ian Bogost
Janet Murray

Disclaimer:
This reading list is not yet organized and polished. It contains all of the sources I plan on using for this research, but the organization is loose, and the labelling is somewhat inconsistent. These discrepancies will be fixed over time, and you may investigate this page to keep up to date.

Overtones:
Simulated characters,
simulation,
representation of setting, behaviors
characters in games

Undertones:
Themes, characters in literary frame
psychological representation of behavior
performative representation of behavior
context of games, who plays them, why

Thoughts:
Setting ideas: Catullus’s Rome, Regency Romantic Novel, Roaring Twenties.
Focus on Events, contextualize with settings

Media Theory and Related Theoretical Contexts

1. Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics. London: Routledge, 2001.
2. Evans, Jessica and Stuart Hall. Visual Culture: The Reader. London: Sage Publicatons, 1999.
3. Montfort, Nick and Noah Waldrip-Fruin. The New Media Reader. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.
4. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies (selections from this and other works). New York: Noonday Press, 1973.
5. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. New York: Semiotext, 1983.
6. Baudrillard, Jean. System of Objects. New York: Verso, 1993.
7. Bowker, G and S.L. Star. Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
8. Deluze, Giles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
9. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge, 1993.
10. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. New York: Pantheon, 1977.
11. Foucault, Michel. Archeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon, 1972.
12. Goffman, Erving. Interaction Ritual. New York: Anchor Books, 1967.
13. Goffman, Erving. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books, 1959.
14. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995.
15. Shannon, Claude and Warren Weaver. Information Theory. Illinois: University of Illinois, 1963.
16. Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldrine, 1966.
17. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.
18. Marx, Karl. Engels, Friedrich. 1944 Manuscripts.
19. Engels, Friedrich. Origin of Family, Property, and State.
20. Adam, Alison. Artificial Knowing and the Gender Machine. London: Routledge, 1998.
21. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, Rheingold
22. Weizenbaum, Joseph. Computer Power and Human reason. New York: Freeman, 1976.
23. De Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in general Linguistics. London: Duckworth, 1974.
24. Jakobson R., Halle M., Fundamentals of Language, 1956 (or) Jakobson R., The Framework of Language, 1980
25. Ortony, Andrew. Metaphor and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
26. Vygotsky, Lev. Thought and Language. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986
27. Aristotle. Aristotle’s Poetics. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989.
28. Genette, Gerard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
29. Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. London: Routledge, 1992.
30. McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York: Perrennial, 1984.
31. Mitchell, W.T.J. On Narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981
32. Martin, Wallace. Recent Theories of Narrative. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
33. Prince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.
34. Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968.
35. Radway, Janice. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
36. Ryan, Marie-Laure. Possible Words: Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
37. Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957.
38. Adorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer. The Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Continuum, 1976.
39. Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic.
40. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. New York: MacMillan, 1958.
41. Bukatman, Scott. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.
    
42. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979.
43. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.
44. Nietzsche, Fredrich. The Birth of Tragedy.
45. Nietzsche, Fredrich. On Truth and Lying in an Extramoral Sense.
46. Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1999.
47. Diamond, Jared. Collapse.
48. Levy, Pierce. Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World of Cyberspace. Perseus Book Group, 2000.
    
49. Cartwright, Lisa and Maria Sturken. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
50. Stafford, Barbara. Visual Analog: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.
    
    

Media Traditions

1. Alexander, Christopher. The Timeless Way of Building. New York: Oxford University Presss, 1979.
2. Alexander, Christopher, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein. A Pattern Language: Towns, Building, Construction. New York: Oxford University Presss, 1977.
3. Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960.
4. Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. New York: Marlowe & Company, 1999.
5. Whyte, William Hollingsworth. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Washington, D.C.: Conservation Foundation, 1980.
6. Butler, Octavia. Xenogenesis. New York: Warner Books, 1987.
7. Gibson, William. Neuromancer New York: Ace Books, 1994.
8. Stephenson, Neil. The Diamond Age. New York: Bantam, 2000.
9. Sartre, Jean-Paul. No Exit.
10. Camus, Albert. The Stranger.
11. Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1875.
12. Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing.
13. Gone With the Wind.
14. Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. New York: Grove Press, 1968.
15. Catullus. Collected Poetry.
16. Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice.
17. Choderlos de Laclos, Pierre. Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
18. Groundhog Day. Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin. Columbia Pictures, 1993.
19. Run Lola Run. Tom Tykwer. Sony Pictures, 1998.
20. Short Cuts. Robert Altman and Frank Barhydt. New Line Cinema, 1993.
21. Altman, Rick. Film/Genre. London: BFI Publishing, 1999.
22. Bordwell, David. Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
23. Bordwell, David and Kristen Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. New York: Knopf, 1986.
24. Kolker, Robert. A Cinema of Lonliness: Penn Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
25. Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. Hampshire: Macmillan, 1989.
26. Bolter, J. David. Writing Space: the Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1991.
27. Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. 1949.
28. Bringhurst, Robert and Warren Chappell. A Short History of the Printed Word. New York: Knopf, 1970.
29. Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in early modern Europe. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
30. Gaur, Albertine. A History of Writing. London: British Library, 1992.
31. Goody, Jack. Representations and Contradictions: Ambivalence towards Images, Theatre, Fiction, Relics and Sexuality. Oxford; Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1997.
32. Lord, A.B.. Singer of Tales. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.
33. Sampson, Geoffrey. Writing Systems: A Linguistic Introduction. London: Hutchinson, 1985.
34. Polti, Georges. Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations.
35. Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London & New York: Verso.
    
36. Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World (1932)
37. Skinner, BF. Walden Two.
38. Kumar, K. Utopia and Anti-utopia in Modern Times. 1987
39. Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backward 2000-1887.
40. Bois, Yve Alain and Rosalind Krauss. Formless: A User’s Guide. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1996.
41. Foster, Hal. The Return of the Real: the Avant-Garde at the End of the Century. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.
42. Auslander, Philip. From Acting to Performance: Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism. London; New York: Routledge, 1997.
43. Caillois, Roger. Man, Play, and Games. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961
44. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens; a Study of the Play-Element in Culture. London: Routledge, 1980.
45. Sutton-Smith, Brian. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
46. Winnicott, D.W.. Playing and Reality. London: Travistock Publications, 1971
47. Allen, Robert. Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
48. Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Viking, 1985.
49. Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books, 1975.
50. Svendsen, Lars. A Philosophy of Boredom.

Digital Media Forms and Technologies

1. Arseth, Espen. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
2. Brown, John Seely and Paul Duguid. The Social Life of Information. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000.
3. Cassell, Justine and Henry Jenkins. From Barbie to Mortal Combat. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998.
4. Laurel, Brenda. Computers as Theater. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1993.
5. Lebling, P. David. “Zork: A Computerized Fantasy Simulation Game.” IEEE Computer. 12 Apr-79 <http://mud.co.uk/richard/zork.html>
6. Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.
7. Norman, Donald. The Psychology of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books, 1988.
8. Norman, Donald. The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products can Fail, the Personal Computer is so Complex, and Information Appliances are the Solution. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998. (NOTE: “Being Analog”)
9. Papert, Seymour. Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
10. Starr, Paul. “Seductions of Sim: Policy as a Simulation Game.” The American Prospect. 17 Spring, 1994. 19-29 <http://www.prospect.org/print/V5/17/starr-p.html>
11. Turing, Alan. Computing Machinery and Intelligence. 1950
12. Turkle, Sherry. The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.
13. Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
14. Druckery, Timothy. Ars Electronica: Facing the Future. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
15. Moser, Mary Anne. Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.
16. Wilson, Stephen. Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science and Technology. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002.
17. Ryan, Marie-Laure. Possible Words: Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
18. Mateas, Michael. Terminal Time. 2000.
19. Mateas, Michael. Dissertation, CMU CS 2002
20. Mateas, Michael and Andrew Stern. Façade. 2002.
21. Crawford, Chris. Erasmatron.
22. Bates, Joseph et al. Oz Group. CMU.
23. Conway, James. Game of Life. 1995.
24. Prophet, Jane and Gordon Shelly. TechnoSphere. 1995.
25. Wright, Will. The Sims. 2000. Sims 2, expansion packs
26. Sim City
27. Sid Meier’s Civilization
28. Stern, Andrew. Dogz, Catz, Babyz.
29. Weizenbaum, Joseph. Eliza. 1966.
30. Animal Crossing: Nintendo
31. Jenkins, Henry; Weise, Matthew; others (?). Revolution! (Neverwinter Mod)
32. Joyce, Michael. afternoon. Eastgate Systems, 1985.
33. Bruckman, Amy. works.
34. Foner, Lenny. Entertaining Agents. 1997.
35. Morningstar, C. and R. Farmer. “The Lessons of Lucasfilm’s Habitat”. Benedikt. 1992.
36. Narrative Intelligence, Mateas/Sengers
37. Pause & Effect, Meadows
38. Play Between Worlds, Taylor
39. Shared Fantasy, Fine
40. Synthetic Worlds, Castronova
41. Story and Discourse, Chatman
42. Story Logic, Herman
43. Murray, Janet. Hamlet on the Holodeck.
44. Bogost, Ian. Unit Operations
45. Juul, Jesper. Half Real
46. Turner, Scott. The Creative Process
47. Wardrip-Fruin, Noah; Harrigan, Pat. First Person (collection)
48. Wardrip-Fruin, Noah; Harrigan, Pat. Second Person (collection)
49. Wolf, Mark. The Video Game Theory Reader (Collection)
50. Montfort, Nick. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction.

Additional

1. Wolfram, Stephen. “Cellular Automata as Models of Complexity,” Nature 311 (October 1984), 419
2. Wolfram, Stephen. “A New Kind of Science” (Champaign, Ill.: Wolfram Media, 2002)
3. Friedman. Ted. “Semiotics of Sim City,” First Monday, 4 (April 1999) <http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_4/friedman/>
4. Pearce (? referenced from Unit Operations), “Sims, Battle Bots, Cellular Automata, God, and Go.”
5. Frasca, Gonzalo. “Simulation 101: Simulation versus Representation,” <http://www.ludology.org/articles/sim1/simulation101.html>
6. Frasca, Gonzalo. “Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology,” in Game Theory Reader
7. Turkle, Sherry. “Seeing through Computers,” American Prospect 8, no 31 (March 1997)
8. Clarke, Andy. Being There
9. Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling
10. Chris Crawford on Game Design
11. Brooks, Rodney. “Intelligence Without Reason”
12. Ortony, A. (1991). Value and emotion. In W. Kessen, A. Ortony, & F. Craik (Eds.) Memories, thoughts, and emotions: Essays in honor of George Mandler. Hillsdale, NJ : Erlbaum.
13. Ortony, A. (2003). On making believable emotional agents believable. In R. Trappl, P. Petta & S. Payr (Eds.), Emotions in humans and artifacts. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.
14. Ortony, Andrew; Clore, Gerald; Collins, Allan. The Cognitive Structure of Emotion.
15. Johnstone, Keith. Impro: Visualization and the Theatre.
16. Fussell, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System.
17. Jackson, Steve. GURPS Basic Set (3rd Edition). [character building]
18. Chomsky, Noam. Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar. 1966.
19. Ball, Phillip. The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature. 2001.
20. Dice Games Properly Explained, Knizia
21. Dungeons and Dreamers, King/Borland
22. Finite and Infinite Games, Carse
23. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Csikszentmihalyi
24. Fundamentals of Game Design, Adams/Rollings
25. The Games We Played: The Golden Age of Board and Table Games, Hofer
26. Gender Inclusive Game Design, Ray
27. Jakob von Uexkull. A Stroll through the Worlds of Animals and Men: A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds. 1934.
28. Maslow, Abraham: A theory of Human Motivation. 1943.
29. Bassnett, Susan. Translation Studies
30. Venuti, Lawrence. The Translation Studies Reader
31. Pearl, Judea. Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference.
32. Davenport, Glorianna. “Desire vs. Destiny: the question of payoff in narrative”
33. Sims, Karl. “Evolving Virtual Creatures” 1994.
34. Freud, Sigmund. Interpretation of Dreams
35. Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, 1930)
36. Jung, Carl. Man and His Symbols.
37. Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1949.
38. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism and Human Emotions. 1957.
39. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. 1943.
40. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception (or, alternately) The Structure of Behavior.
41. Jaspers, Karl. Philosophy of Existence. 1971.
42. Lukacs, Georg. “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat”. 1971.
43. Churchland, Paul. The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain. 1996.
44. Sun, Ron. Cognition and Multi-Agent Interaction: From Cognitive Modelling to Social Simulation. 2005.
45. Gluck, Kevin A.; Pew, Richard W. Modelling Human Behavior With Integrated Cognitive Architectures: Comparison, Evaluation. 2005.
46. Epstein, Joshua. Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modelling
47. Wasserman, Stanley; Faust, Katherine; Iacobucci, Dawn. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications
48. Resnik, Mitchel. Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds
49. Miller, John; Page, Scott. Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life.
50. Epstein, Joshua; Axtell, Robert. Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up.

Other Potentially Useful:

Papers @ http://www.ict.usc.edu/
Marsella, Stacy <- emotional agents etc
CYC project – GOFAI symbolic database
Muramatsu & Ackerman CSCW papers (Computer Supported Cooperative Work)
Nancy Nercessian: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/aimosaic/faculty/nersessian/ (philosophy, computing)
http://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/06C/References.htm ?

I have revised the GP code posted previously so that entities can now plant trees. It’s not a lot better than before, but it is still a step in the right direction. A tree will drop some quantity of food after it is planted, but it takes a significant number of turns for it to do so. Furthermore, they are expensive in terms of energy cost to plant. Thus, entities can balance between not planting and saving energy, and planting which will consume energy, but lead to better health in the long term.

After a few minutes of milling about, the entities should reach a stable pattern of planting trees and then looping around to consume the food that the trees drop. If you look at the entity code, you’ll see that Command.2 (the plant tree command) tends to wind up inside of a conditional. This is more or less the behavior I was hoping for, so hooray.

Now it’s just a question of what they can do next.