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

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

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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

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CIG 2012 Keynote September 13, 2012

Gillian Smith

gillian@ccs.neu.edu

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Graphics-Driven Game Design

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Graphics-Driven Game Design

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Graphics-Driven Game Design

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SLIDE 5

Graphics-Driven Game Design

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SLIDE 6

Graphics-Driven Game Design

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Advancing the “Fiction” of Games

  • More immersive
  • More detailed
  • More complex

Jesper Juul (2005). Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds.

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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.

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SLIDE 9

Game Innovation through Technology

World of Goo, 2008 Flower, 2009 Foursquare, 2009 Kinect Star Wars, 2012

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Technology-Driven Game Design

Tennis for Two, 1958

“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.”

Jesse Schell (2008). The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.

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AI-Driven Game Design

What are the design implications of our work?

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Asking Design Questions

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

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Asking Design Questions

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

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Asking Design Questions

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

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SLIDE 15

Computer Science ≠ Games

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Computer Science ≠ Games

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SLIDE 17

Computer Science ≠ Games

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Computer Science ≠ Games

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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.

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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.

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Procedural Content Generation

Content Design Control

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Procedural Content Generation

Content Design Control

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Procedural Content Generation

Content Design Control

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Aspects of Control

  • Type
  • Knowledge

Representation

  • Parameterized
  • Indirect
  • Direct
  • Extent
  • Indirect
  • Compositional
  • Experiential
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SLIDE 25

Aspects of Control

  • Type
  • Knowledge

Representation

  • Parameterized
  • Indirect
  • Direct
  • Extent
  • Indirect
  • Compositional
  • Experiential

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)

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Aspects of Control

  • Type
  • Knowledge

Representation

  • Parameterized
  • Indirect
  • Direct
  • Extent
  • Indirect
  • Compositional
  • Experiential

Smelik, R.M., Tutenel, T., de Kraker, K.J. and Bidarra, R. 2011. A declarative approach to procedural modeling

  • f virtual worlds. Computers & Graphics. 35, 2 (Apr. 2011), 352–363.
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Aspects of Control

  • Type
  • Knowledge

Representation

  • Parameterized
  • Indirect
  • Direct
  • Extent
  • Indirect
  • Compositional
  • Experiential
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Fun = ?

n frustratio fun * 3 . 2

3 2

  

 

 

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Fun = ?

n frustratio fun * 3 . 2

3 2

  

 

 

no!

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Experiential Control

  • Level pacing
  • Quest flow
  • Challenge progression
  • Gameplay constraints
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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.

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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.

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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

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A Mixed-Initiative Approach

Taking turns designing a level with the computer

Human Computer suggests content poses constraints

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.

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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
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Tanagra - Video

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Intelligent Assistance for Level Design

  • Removing the “blank slate”
  • Refocusing testing efforts
  • Meta level edit operations

“The Tea Party”, by boum (DeviantArt)

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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.

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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)

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The Power of PCG

Content Design Control

Designing a game that maximizes the impact of procedural content generation.

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Building Polished Experiences

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

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Kinds of PCG Use

  • Data compression
  • Replayability
  • Enabling exploration

Elite, 1984 Diablo III, 2012 Terraria, 2011

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Extent of PCG Use

non PCG-based PCG-based

Civilization IV, 2005 Robot Unicorn Attack, 2010

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Co-Design of PCG and Game

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Launchpad

  • Rhythm-based
  • Control type

Parameterized

  • Control extent

Compositional Experiential

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Endless Web

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

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Themes: Exploration and Creation

  • Players navigate physical space while

exploring generative space

  • Choices lead the player to newly generated

terrain with different generation parameters

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Guiding the Player

Goal-driven exploration of generative space

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Dividing Control over the Generator

  • Designer: experiential control
  • Pacing
  • Player: compositional and experiential control
  • Content appearance
  • Content difficulty
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Endless Web - Video

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PCG in Endless Web

Level segments

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PCG in Endless Web

Art selection

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PCG in Endless Web

Looping in music

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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.

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Shopping Around…

Content Design Control Content Design Control Content Design Control

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Launchpad’s Expressivity

1 level >75 levels

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Linearity

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Linearity

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Leniency

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Leniency

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Exploring Expressiveness

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CLOSING THOUGHTS

new research directions

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Mixed-Initiative Design

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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

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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

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SLIDE 66

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

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SLIDE 67

AI-Based Game Design

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Signposting in a Procedural World

  • Changing art style
  • Music as a “fingerprint” of generative space

configuration

  • Automatically generating signposts?
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Keeping PCG Visible to the Player

  • Player choices must be meaningful
  • Subtle reveal of PCG vs. making the PCG

system obvious

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Building Support for Art

  • Design for variable-size art assets
  • Control over level appearance as well as structure
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Analyzing Expressivity

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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
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Computer Science ≠ Games

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What is the Future of Games?

Designing new game technologies that can support mechanics as playable as combat.

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Questions

Thank you! Gillian Smith gillian@ccs.neu.edu http://www.sokath.com