[MUD-Dev] Procedural content (was Re: [Sweng-gamedev] Patent 4, 734, 690) (fwd)

[J C Lawrence]

<EdNote: Minor edits made per author's request>

------- Forwarded Message
From: Travis Nixon <tnixon at avalanchesoftware.com>
To: sweng-gamedev at midnightryder.com
Subject: Procedural content (was Re: [Sweng-gamedev] Patent 4,734,690)
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 16:22:38 -0700

Mike Wuetherick wrote:

> And now we have will wright torturing us with 'procedural generated
> content' - i'm expecting the flood of demands for this next ;P

I'm gonna ignore everything about patents for a minute and respond to
this one comment, because I am a strong believer that procedural content
will play a huge part in future games.  In fact, I think it's
inevitable.  Explanation follows:

The big buzz right now in the industry is that games are taking more
people more time and more money to make basically the same result, and a
huge part of that is content creation.  Big publishers are snapping up
independent development houses, and bringing development internal,
because there's a strong belief that the future of games is in bigger
teams with bigger budgets on bigger games.  Whether I subscribe to the
"bigger is better" theory, or whether I even like the idea of the whole
process isn't particularly relevant.

I think in the relatively near future (where "near" means anywhere from
5 to 25 years) you will see games make a very distinct split.  On one
side of this split there will be very focused, very highly scripted
games with very narrow scopes but with a great cinematic feel.  Those
games will continue along the "bigger is better" path with hand-made
content.  They will become more like movies, but I don't mean that in a
bad way.  I mean that in an "engineered to tell the player a specific
story, to cause them react emotionally, to entertain them in a more
active, interactive way, but one that is still highly scripted and
directed" sort of way.  Again, whether I believe there are actually very
many movies around anymore that actually do that is irrelevant here.  :)

Everybody else is going to be *required* to move along some path to
generated content, where most of the content is created automagically,
and only finishing touches are be added by hand.  In a roleplaying game,
for example, you'll want the ability to say "make me a city with
parameters A, B, and C, general architectural style Old World, with
50,000 people, with the general distribution parameters D and E, 500 of
which have random intertwining stories.

The days where a chair is built by hand by an artist and then placed in
a world umpteen times will come to an end eventually.  They *have* to
end.  Content creation is quickly becoming too big of a job for any
finite number of people.  No, you're not all going to be out of jobs
tomorrow. (5 to 25, remember?  And I'm purely guessing even at that)
Games will still need that human finishing touch.  But instead of
creating EVERYTHING from scratch, you'll be touching up the output of
the content generator, fixing things that it made that don't really make
sense.  There will be just as much work to be done, it will just be
different kinds of work.  Maybe the carpenter bot needs concept
furniture to work from.  Maybe the city planner bot needs direction on
the city's evolution in order to get a good mix of different areas in
the city.  Maybe the side-quest designer needs a little extra
programming for one particular area of the city, due to unique
circumstances.  By the way, don't let the RPG focus throw you off.
These things make sense for most types of games.  RPGs are just the
easiest target, and one of the most time-consuming types of games to
make right now due to the sheer volume of content that they need to
have.

I absolutely think it's inevitable that your game worlds will, in the
future, be built primarily by code.  There aren't enough artists and
designers at any company to design and create even just the hundreds of
restaurants that might occur, much less the shopping malls, business
offices, subway systems, 7-11s, and city hall.  And forget about
populating the city with thousands, or millions, of unique NPCs with
different appearances and behaviors.

Of course, that's all just background.  We still need an actual game.
And although I imagine there will still be some level of automation, you
do still need somebody directing the show, and there's still just as
much of it to direct.  That's where you and I come in.

:)

/soapbox

Unfortunately, I missed Will Wright at GDC.  I was about 3 people behind
the person they shut the doors on, and after 15 minutes or so of waiting
for them to set up monitors and audio outside (which they did not hold
the show for), I gave up and left.

Sounds like I would really have enjoyed it. :)
------- End of Forwarded Message


--
J C Lawrence
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
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