A General Game Playing System is one that can accept a formal description of a game
and play the game effectively without human intervention. Unlike specialized game
players, such as Deep Blue, GGP systems cannot rely on algorithms designed in advance
for specific games. GGP expertise depends on intelligence on the part of the game
player and not just intelligence on the part of the programmer of the game player.
For this reason, GGP is a good area in which to develop and demonstrate General AI
techniques (such as knowledge representation, reasoning, learning, and rational
behavior). This course is a hands-on introduction to GGP and, by extension, Artificial
Intelligence. Theoretical background is presupposed, but the main value of the course
derives from the students´ work in using this theory to create GGP systems to compete
with each other.
(cf. http://games.stanford.edu/)