Where a Configuration Loses: Heterogeneity across Released Atari Tasks

Authors

  • Alexander Mason Author
  • Robert Bailey Author
  • Michael Rogers Author

Abstract

An average improvement leaves open the question of where a system becomes worse. In the released BBF comparison examined here, 49 of 55 game-level contrasts favor the main configuration, five favor the file without resets, and one is zero. The median transformed contrast is 0.205, less than half its mean of 0.466. Losses are relatively small on the chosen scale, while the strongest positive contrast reaches 2.878. These descriptive findings motivate reporting the distribution of task outcomes when evaluating interactive rendering. They do not establish an improvement in any renderer or isolate the causal effect of a component.

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Published

2026-09-09

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Vol. 2 (2026): Archive issue of 2026-09-09

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Articles

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Copyright (c) 2026 Alexander Mason, Robert Bailey, Michael Rogers

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.