Guest Editorial Special Issue on Team AI in Games

The papers in this special section focus on team artificial intelligence (AI) in games. Computer controlled players excel in a wide range of environments, from traditional board games, like chess and Go, to fast arcade environments like Super Mario Bros. and one versus one fighting. One of the topical issues of today’s research efforts aims at intelligent team behavior, relevant for a wide variety of games, including real-time strategy games, team sports, multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), and even tabletop games like Hanabi. The notion of team behavior is very rich, ranging from the ability to exhibit a clear and consistent strategy of an AI-controlled team to the capability of “melting into” a group of human-controlled teammates and supporting their coordinated actions. Consequently, design goals of an AI system can be driven by a variety of considerations, including efficiency, creativity, believability, synergism, and contribution of the AI to the overall entertainment value of the game.