Procedurally Generated Content: A kaleidoscopic experience

For my final project, my object analysis is the game Proteus – a walking simulator where the player simply explores an island. Like Journey, but even more unspecified, Proteus sets out no narrative or challenge for the player. I therefore find myself asking what the intentions were behind making a game like Proteus? In our class on critical making, we came across a few examples where remaking a game allows for one to think about how and why some decisions were made, the logic that informed the designing of a game. In this blog post I want to follow this line of thinking by exploring procedurally generated content (henceforth PGC), central to the graphics and audio of Proteus. I want to treat this piece ‘as if’ I were going to make a procedurally generated game and thereby conducting a theoretical analysis of PGCs which may also serve as a practical guide for designing such a game. By conducting a review of this design philosophy, I wish to arrive at an understanding of the possibilities that PGC games open up.

I begin with a rough outline of the what and the how of PGC. PGC is a method for designing game play, spaces, and worlds that are created using algorithms as opposed to being designed manually by humans. This content, be it landscapes, animals, textures or sound effects, are essentially a result of mathematics or code. The designer does have a role in defining a few parameters of the algorithm and in designing various versions of an asset – trees, animals, buildings, etc. The algorithm then applies random noise function on these various assets so as to mathematically combine them and create new ones. Thus, a few parameters can generate a wide variety of output. Put simply, PGC is when algorithms are programmed to create near infinite possibilities for anything and everything in a game world.

PGC that can produce infinite permutation, open up several possibilities that a handmade game cannot. One, it is particularly suited for the activity of discovery and exploration. Since the game world differs every time, it can be explored anew every single time. Further, in a single playthrough, the player encounters only a fraction of the world. So, as a player you won’t know how much of the world you’ve seen until you literally replay the game. Unlike handmade games, where once the world is figured out, PGCs also offer replay and novelty value. Second, procedural games are consistently challenging. In hand designed game, once the challenge is figured out, a player can strategize and improve their reflex skills to overcome the challenge in subsequent playthroughs. In PGC games however, the player simply does not know what to expect next, for an enemy hiding in a location in the first playthrough may be at another location in the second playthrough. The unexpected nature of PGCs thus prompts immediate decision making and interaction. Last, procedural games are excellent at generating gameplay places and spaces but cannot craft specific instances of gameplay which hinders their ability to design linear narratives.

So what gameplay experience does Proteus wish to create using PGC as its method, a method used by a small fraction of video games, a method that result in abstract and patchwork design? What intentions informed the architecture of the game world in Proteus? Here I can only offer my interpretation. The game definitely uses PGC to design a space conducive to exploration, an immersive environment that offers boundless new experiences. While there are no challenges and fail states in Proteus, the use of PGC in Proteus encourages the players to interact with objects which sonically react and adapt to the players movement anew so as to create momentary events of discovery and awe. Lastly, the abstract, low fidelity graphics of Proteus are vague enough to spur the imagination of the player, thereby providing a blank slate to project on. In so doing, the game uses the inability of PGC to generate a linear narrative, thereby facilitating a story experience as the player moves through the island at their own pace. Patrick in the last class mentioned that in blurring the boundary between reality and game, the player is invited in the co-constitution of reality. Proteus achieves this by designing an island that the player can interact with, much like one would on a real island with earphones on, perhaps what has lead it to be called an ‘anti-game’.