Michael Cook

Rabii Younès, Cook Michael

A game's theme is an important part of its design -- it conveys narrative information, rhetorical messages, helps the player intuit strategies, aids in tutorialisation and more. Thematic elements of games are notoriously difficult for AI systems to understand and manipulate, however, and often rely on large amounts of hand-written interpretations and knowledge. In this paper we present a technique which connects game embeddings, a recent method for modelling game dynamics from log data, and word embeddings, which models semantic information about language. We explain two different approaches for using game embeddings in this way, and show evidence that game embeddings enhance the linguistic translations of game concepts from one theme to another, opening up exciting new possibilities for reasoning about the thematic elements of games in the future.

Younès Rabii, Michael Cook

Although procedural generation is popular among game developers, academic research on the topic has primarily focused on new applications, with some research into empirical analysis. In this paper we relate theoretical work in information theory to the generation of content for games. We prove that there is a relationship between the Kolomogorov complexity of the most complex artifact a generator can produce, and the size of that generator's possibility space. In doing so, we identify the limiting relationship between the knowledge encoded in a generator, the density of its output space, and the intricacy of the artifacts it produces. We relate our result to the experience of expert procedural generator designers, and illustrate it with some examples.

Michael Cook

Automated game design is a rapidly growing area of research, yet many aspects of game design lie largely unexamined still, as most systems focus on two-dimensional games with clear objectives and goal-oriented gameplay. This paper describes several attempts to build an automated game designer for 3D games more focused on space, atmosphere and experience. We describe our attempts to build these systems, why they failed, and what steps and future work we believe would be useful for future attempts by others.

Matthew Guzdial, Devi Acharya, Max Kreminski et al.

Tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) and procedural content generators can both be understood as systems of rules for producing content. In this paper, we argue that TTRPG design can usefully be viewed as procedural content generator design. We present several case studies linking key concepts from PCG research -- including possibility spaces, expressive range analysis, and generative pipelines -- to key concepts in TTRPG design. We then discuss the implications of these relationships and suggest directions for future work uniting research in TTRPGs and PCG.

Michael Cook

As we develop more assistive and automated game design systems, the question of how these systems should be integrated into game development workflows, and how much adaptation may be required, becomes increasingly important. In this paper we explore the impact of software engineering decisions on the ability of an automated game design system to understand a game's codebase, generate new game code, and evaluate its work. We argue that a new approach to software engineering may be required in order for game developers to fully benefit from automated game designers.

Michael Cook

Procedural generation is used across game design to achieve a wide variety of ends, and has led to the creation of several game subgenres by injecting variance, surprise or unpredictability into otherwise static designs. Information games are a type of mystery game in which the player is tasked with gathering knowledge and developing an understanding of an event or system. Their reliance on player knowledge leaves them vulnerable to spoilers and hard to replay. In this paper we introduce the notion of generative forensics games, a subgenre of information games that challenge the player to understand the output of a generative system. We introduce information games, show how generative forensics develops the idea, report on two prototype games we created, and evaluate our work on generative forensics so far from a player and a designer perspective.

Swen E. Gaudl, Mark J. Nelson, Simon Colton et al.

With the growing integration of smartphones into our daily lives, and their increased ease of use, mobile games have become highly popular across all demographics. People listen to music, play games or read the news while in transit or bridging gap times. While mobile gaming is gaining popularity, mobile expression of creativity is still in its early stages. We present here a new type of mobile app -- fluidic games -- and illustrate our iterative approach to their design. This new type of app seamlessly integrates exploration of the design space into the actual user experience of playing the game, and aims to enrich the user experience. To better illustrate the game domain and our approach, we discuss one specific fluidic game, which is available as a commercial product. We also briefly discuss open challenges such as player support and how generative techniques can aid the exploration of the game space further.

Michael Cook

ANGELINA is an automated game design system which has previously been built as a single software block which designs games from start to finish. In this paper we outline a roadmap for the development of a new version of ANGELINA, designed to iterate on games in different ways to produce a continuous creative process that will improve the quality of its work, but more importantly improve the perception of the software as being an independently creative piece of software. We provide an initial report of the system's structure here as well as results from the first working module of the system.

Michael Cook, Mirjam Eladhari, Andy Nealen et al.

People enjoy encounters with generative software, but rarely are they encouraged to interact with, understand or engage with it. In this paper we define the term 'PCG-based game', and explain how this concept follows on from the idea of an AI-based game. We look at existing examples of games which foreground their AI, put forward a methodology for designing PCG-based games, describe some example case study designs for PCG-based games, and describe lessons learned during this process of sketching and developing ideas.