Changing the Game: Measuring Mesopotamian Games With AI-Simulated Play
(2025) 31st EAA Annual Meeting — Location: Belgrade (2.September.2025)
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- Authors
- Abstract
- We examine how the shift from the Royal Game of Ur to the “game of twenty squares” altered play experience. Using Irving Finkel’s rules—grounded in a 177 BCE Seleucid tablet and ethnographic analogies—we run AI self-play on both boards to quantify gameplay differences. Metrics include game length (turns), first-player advantage, and “drama” (turn-by-turn win-probability swings). We relate these results to the games’ changing geography and chronology, suggesting that the board’s geometric redesign produced systematically different dynamics and may reflect evolving gameplay preferences in the ancient Near East.
- Affiliations
Citations
Walter Crist, & Piette, E. (2025). Changing the Game: Measuring Mesopotamian Games With AI-Simulated Play. 31st EAA Annual Meeting, Belgrade. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/258515