Gillian Smith September 13, 2012 gillian@ccs.neu.edu - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

CIG 2012 Keynote Gillian Smith September 13, 2012 gillian@ccs.neu.edu

Graphics-Driven Game Design

Graphics-Driven Game Design

Graphics-Driven Game Design

Graphics-Driven Game Design

Graphics-Driven Game Design

Advancing the “Fiction” of Games  More immersive  More detailed  More complex Jesper Juul (2005). Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds .

Advancing the “Rules” of Games?  Characters with varying combat statistics  Explore scripted world  Fight monsters, collect treasure Jesper Juul (2005). Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds .

Game Innovation through Technology Foursquare, 2009 Kinect Star Wars, 2012 World of Goo, 2008 Flower, 2009

Technology-Driven Game Design “The technology is essentially the medium in which the aesthetics take place, in which the mechanics will occur, and through which the story will be told.” Tennis for Two, 1958 Jesse Schell (2008). The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.

AI-Driven Game Design What are the design implications of our work?

Asking Design Questions How can we provide Super Mario players with more content that they enjoy?

Asking Design Questions How can we provide Super Mario players with more content that they enjoy?

Asking Design Questions What is a game that has meaningful personalization? How does that impact story? Shared player experiences?

Computer Science ≠ Games

Computer Science ≠ Games

Computer Science ≠ Games

Computer Science ≠ Games

Expressive Design Tools Systems imbued with an understanding of a game’s design that are sufficiently controllable and expressive for use in the design process .

Expressive Design Tools Systems imbued with an understanding of a game’s design that are sufficiently controllable and expressive for use in the design process .

Procedural Content Generation Design Control Content

Procedural Content Generation Design Control Content

Procedural Content Generation Design Control Content

Aspects of Control  Type  Extent  Knowledge  Indirect Representation  Compositional  Parameterized  Experiential  Indirect  Direct

Aspects of Control  Type  Extent  Knowledge  Indirect Representation  Compositional  Parameterized  Experiential  Indirect  Direct Martin, A., Lim, A., Colton, S. and Browne, C. 2010. Evolving 3d buildings for the prototype video game subversion. Proceedings of the 2010 international conference on Applications of Evolutionary Computation (Barcelona, Spain, 2010)

Aspects of Control  Type  Extent  Knowledge  Indirect Representation  Compositional  Parameterized  Experiential  Indirect  Direct Smelik, R.M., Tutenel, T., de Kraker, K.J. and Bidarra, R. 2011. A declarative approach to procedural modeling of virtual worlds. Computers & Graphics . 35, 2 (Apr. 2011), 352 – 363.

Aspects of Control  Type  Extent  Knowledge  Indirect Representation  Compositional  Parameterized  Experiential  Indirect  Direct

Fun = ?       2 3   0  fun * frustratio n 2 . 3

Fun = ?       2 3   0  fun * frustratio n 2 . 3 no!

Experiential Control  Level pacing  Quest flow  Challenge progression  Gameplay constraints

Expressive Design Tools Systems imbued with an understanding of a game’s design that are sufficiently controllable and expressive for use in the design process .

Expressive Design Tools Systems imbued with an understanding of a game’s design that are sufficiently controllable and expressive for use in the design process .

Current Level Design Tools  Can create unplayable levels  No automation  Hard to prototype  Start from a blank screen Torque 2D Level Editor N level editor

A Mixed-Initiative Approach Human poses constraints suggests content Taking turns designing a level with the computer Computer David G. Novick and Stephen Sutton (1997). What is Mixed-Initiative Interaction? Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Computational Models for Mixed Initiative Interaction.

A Mixed-Initiative Approach  Benefits of procedural content generator  Rapid variant viewing  Generate content within designer constraints  Enforce level playability  Directly model pacing of the level  Strengths of the novice human designer  Sense of aesthetics  Creative judgment  Understanding of difficulty  Know what they want when they see it

Tanagra - Video

Intelligent Assistance for Level Design  Removing the “blank slate”  Refocusing testing efforts  Meta level edit operations “The Tea Party”, by boum (DeviantArt)

Expressive Design Tools Systems imbued with an understanding of a game’s design that are sufficiently controllable and expressive for use in the design process .

PCG-Based Game Design A PCG- based game is… a game in which the underlying PCG system is so inextricably tied to the mechanics of the game, and has so greatly influenced the aesthetics of the game, that the dynamics revolve around it. Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek (2004). MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research. Proceedings of the 2004 AAAI Workshop on Challenges in Game Artificial Intelligence (San Jose, California, July 2004)

The Power of PCG Design Control Designing a game that maximizes the impact of procedural content generation. Content

Building Polished Experiences Understanding and evaluating a content generator by using it to create a new playable experience.

Kinds of PCG Use  Data compression Elite, 1984  Replayability Diablo III, 2012  Enabling exploration Terraria, 2011

Extent of PCG Use Robot Unicorn Attack, 2010 Civilization IV, 2005 non PCG-based PCG-based

Co-Design of PCG and Game

Launchpad  Rhythm-based  Control type Parameterized  Control extent Compositional Experiential

Endless Web Player explores the Dream to find and rescue six dreamers trapped in their nightmares.

Themes: Exploration and Creation  Players navigate physical space while exploring generative space  Choices lead the player to newly generated terrain with different generation parameters

Guiding the Player Goal-driven exploration of generative space

Dividing Control over the Generator  Designer: experiential control  Pacing  Player: compositional and experiential control  Content appearance  Content difficulty

Endless Web - Video

PCG in Endless Web Level segments

PCG in Endless Web Art selection

PCG in Endless Web Looping in music

Expressive Design Tools Systems imbued with an understanding of a game’s design that are sufficiently controllable and expressive for use in the design process .

Shopping Around… Design Control Design Control Design Control Content Content Content

Launchpad’s Expressivity >75 levels 1 level

Linearity

Linearity

Leniency

Leniency

Exploring Expressiveness

new research directions CLOSING THOUGHTS

Mixed-Initiative Design

Negotiating High-Level Design Goals  Awareness of additional constraints  Present different “opinions” on design  High-level understanding leads to better communication  Example : properties of a game level based on current level progression

Overriding Human Decisions  …but for a good, and well -explained, reason!  Early decisions can become less important  (Novice) designers struggle with undoing work they have already done  Example : removing a previously agreed-upon game mechanic due to a change in the story

Moving Away from Turn-Taking  Computer can work independently  Computer is no longer purely reactive, must be proactive in conversation  Both parties may interrupt each other or pause to think  Example : interrupt a designer with a new idea for a level during brainstorming

AI-Based Game Design

Signposting in a Procedural World  Changing art style  Music as a “fingerprint” of generative space configuration  Automatically generating signposts?

Keeping PCG Visible to the Player  Player choices must be meaningful  Subtle reveal of PCG vs. making the PCG system obvious

Building Support for Art  Design for variable-size art assets  Control over level appearance as well as structure

Analyzing Expressivity

Future Work  New metrics for levels  Difficulty  Suitability for artists  Models of player behavior  Comparing to different generation techniques  Online content selection  Evolving content  New visualization methods

Computer Science ≠ Games

What is the Future of Games? Designing new game technologies that can support mechanics as playable as combat.