Recent work has shown that we can dramatically improve the performance of
computer games and simulations through declarative processing: Character AI can
be written in an imperative scripting language which is then compiled to
relational algebra and executed by a special games engine with features similar
to a main memory database system. In this paper we lay out a challenging
research agenda built on these ideas.

We discuss several research ideas for novel language features to support
atomic actions and reactive programming. We also explore challenges for
main-memory query processing in games and simulations including adaptive query
plan selection, support for parallel architectures, debugging simulation
scripts, and extensions for multi-player games and virtual worlds. We believe
that these research challenges will result in a dramatic change in the design
of game engines over the next decade.