Procedural generation clearly allows for each user to have a completely different experience each time they play, increasing replayability. If you've heard anything about last year's infamous release of No Man's Sky, procedural generation can have its downfalls (mostly due to the hype that surrounded it before its release). Because the worlds/objects/characters can be random in some game, it could lead to a large, exciting world to explore, or a dull string of similar maps in a row.
Obviously since no one person is technically creating worlds/items/characters manually when using this method, is the program then being creative when it builds these things? It may (or may not) be thinking about where to place things "randomly," given certain ranges and positions programmed in by humans. For example, it shouldn't try to place a mountain top in a river, or it shouldn't spawn a pig deep in a cave on Minecraft.
On the other hand, Minecraft does other weird things regarding placement of blocks:
Like Megan's recent post, I just wanted to throw this in for consideration, whether you're debating on Monday or not.
Further reading:
- A blog post discussing procedural narrative to create diverse stories
- Massive's website, showcasing the media in which it's been used already, like the Lord of the Rings film trilogy
- Some photos of the game Civilization V, displaying how procedural generation has created different terrains for maps
I find this topic to be very interesting! Personally, I feel that while the computer is 'creating' different objects randomly, I don't believe that the creation of the objects constitutes for the computer actually being creative. The computer or program for the game, such as "No Man's Sky" is simply using a random object to place the different objects for the user playing the game.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I kind of feel like there's got to be some involvement of intention. However, I think a produced work--say, closing your eyes and finger painting--can be creative even if it's not what you intended to create--like knowingly drawing a portrait of Shakespeare. Of course, maybe a game creating a landscape needs to be able to appreciate its "creativity" (perhaps remembering what it's produced and considering it in future map compositions) for it to be considered creative.
DeleteI think this could be in interesting argument that could be brought up on Wednesday. I think it's worth asking whether the computer or the algorithm is creative. The computer is just taking the instruction of the algorithm and generating a world. In the instance of Minecraft, the computer will use a random or user generated seed to generate a world. Yes, the world is random within a set of parameters, but sometimes can leave interesting results. Whether or not that is creative is a philosophical question. If we define creativity as originality, this could be no different then music. An original song is made up of random notes with in a scale, with random note lengths according to a beat or certain swing, and I could go on and on.
ReplyDeleteI think this is very interesting. However, I just have to say one thing first is that No Man's Sky sucks. It is not freedom if you don't have a boundary. You have infinite number of things doesn't necessary mean that any of those are meaningfully creative. However, I do appreciate the application of this and I hope the use of AI for creativity gets better in the future.
ReplyDeleteGood point. Lots of stuff isn't always a good thing. For example, I love the variety of things to do in GTA V, but No Man's Sky will always be a great example of a game that was too hyped up for its own good.
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