Abstract This work presents game semantics of Martin-Löf type theory (MLTT) equipped with the One, the Zero, the N, Pi, Sigma and Id types. Game semantics interprets a wide range of logic and computation, even the polymorphic $\lambda$ -calculus; however, it has remained a well-known challenge in the past 25 years to achieve game semantics of dependent type theories such as MLTT, and past attempts lack directness or generality. For instance, the approach taken by Abramsky et al. interprets Sigma types indirectly by formal lists, not by games, making an interpretation of universes hopeless, and it is limited to a very specific class of dependent types. The difficulty of this challenge comes from a conflict between the extensionality of dependent types and the intensionality of game semantics. We overcome the challenge by inventing a novel variant of games, while we keep strategies unchanged, in such a way that this variant inherits the strong points of conventional game semantics. Also, our method enables an interpretation of subtyping on dependent types for the first time as game semantics. We finally give a new, game-semantic proof of the independence of Markov’s principle from MLTT. This proof illustrates an advantage of our intensional model over extensional ones such as Hyland’s effective topos.

Abstract The present work achieves a mathematical, in particularsyntax-independent, formulation ofdynamicsandintensionalityof computation in terms ofgamesandstrategies. Specifically, we givegame semanticsof a higher-order programming language that distinguishes programmes with the same value yet different algorithms (or intensionality) and thehiding operationon strategies that precisely corresponds to the (small-step) operational semantics (or dynamics) of the language. Categorically, our games and strategies give rise to acartesian closed bicategory, and our game semantics forms an instance of a bicategorical generalisation of the standard interpretation of functional programming languages in cartesian closed categories. This work is intended to be a step towards a mathematical foundation of intensional and dynamic aspects of logic and computation; it should be applicable to a wide range of logics and computations.