A Multiagent Semantics for the Game Description Language

The Game Description Language (GDL) has been developed for the purpose of formalizing game rules. It serves as the input language for general game players, which are systems that learn to play previously unknown games without human intervention. In this paper, we show how GDL descriptions can be intepreted as multiagent domains and, conversely, how a large class of multiagent environments can be specified in GDL. The resulting specifications are declarative, compact, and easy to understand and maintain. At the same time they can be fully automatically understood and used by autonomous agents who intend to participate in these environments. Our main result is a formal characterization of the class of multiagent domains that serve as formal semantics for—and can be described in—the Game Description Language.