Applying Cellular Automata and DEVS Methodologies to Digital Games: A Survey

Cellular automata were designed by John von Neumann in the 1940s, as a mathematical abstraction for modeling self-replicating algorithms. Since then, cellular automata have been widely studied theoretically and evolved into multiple variants. In the 1970s, Bernard P. Zeigler proposed a formalism rooted on systems theory principles, named DEVS (discrete-event systems specifications), which paved the way for component-based modeling and simulation and related methodologies. The purpose of this article is to survey how cellular automata and its variant, called cell-DEVS, may be used to implement computer simulations that can be used as digital serious games. The authors illustrate that implementation through some of the practical applications of such cellular automata. They show various serious game applications using real case studies: first, a simple bouncing ball and pinball game, a particle collision model, another on gossip propagation, and an application on human behavior at a metro station.Then, they show an application to social simulation using a voters game, a theoretical application (a model called Daisy World, which is derived from Gaia theory), and applications to physical phenomena such as a sandpile formation model or, finally, a three-dimensional model of a “virtual clay” that changes its shape when it is subject to pressure effects.