Experimental Video Game Evolves Its Own Content

Ken Stanley writes "Just as interest in user-generated content in video games is heating up, a team of researchers at the University of Central Florida has released an experimental multiplayer game in which content items compete with each other in an evolutionary arms race to satisfy the players. As a result, particle system-based weapons, which are the evolving class of content, continually invent their own new behaviors based on what users liked in the past. Does the resulting experience in this game, called Galactic Arms Race, suggest that evolutionary algorithms may be the key to automated content generation in future multiplayer gaming and MMOs?"

Comments

Dynamic world

[sopssa]

This is actually what I've wished for long time that MMO's would have. For example in WoW, once you've seen one place it will always be like that.

It would be great to have kind of an ecosystem which would evolve on its own and when players help (or destroy) it. For example, there would be two or three independent towns controlled by NPC's living closely that you could build relationships with. Once one of the towns needs more resources, likes to expand or for whatever reason, it would go in war with another town. Player couldn't directly control it, but you could influence it indirectly. Taking it further, when you could really succesfully frame the other town for hostile act's, you could cause a war between them if they see so.

I know it makes it easier to design and create content when everything is static, but in this case some of the content and the actual gameplay would be created by itself. It would also be *a lot* more interesting when you could directly or indirectly affect the world. Doing a run against some giant badass boss dragon and decided to quit it and run away? Now no, that badass boss dragon wouldn't just get back to its place once you've just a little bit out of its attack range. It would actually be *pissed* at your group and follow you, tearing apart the environment when you try to run away from it. This creates even more tension, as other players and NPC controlled towns would be pissed at you for causing that.

I've always also thought that why there's no king's or province leaders in WoW or other MMORPG's. Other players could elect you into it or you could steal it from existing king. Obviously the other faction would first need to break thru the provinces to capitol city like Stormwind, fight your way thru the guards and other players finally to the king's castle and then have a huge fight there. If you succeeded with that, you would still need to defence the place and continue gaining control over it. Or you could take the spy approach, gaining trust and getting in ranks to work with the king, finally to just to backstab him when its the perfect moment to do so.

There's so much you could do with dynamic content or world where player actions actually matter. Now everything is just pretty static, grinding to kill enemies that just pop up back 5 mins later or doing mindless quests. I would really welcome some MMO where it would be more like a sandbox for players and the world. EVE Online actually works a bit like this and that's why its always interest me, even tho I'm not really into space genre. Would be great to see such fantasy MMORPG, or even modern day MMORPG.

Re:Dynamic world

[blahplusplus]

"This is actually what I've wished for long time that MMO's would have. For example in WoW, once you've seen one place it will always be like that."

Actually for some games this is a good thing, we already have algorithmically generated content creation in random maps, and it's hit and miss depending on the genre of game, i.e. you wouldn't want crappy lopsided distribution of resources in an RTS for example.

The problem with evolutionary algorithms that I can see that is that games are the result of a "vision" I doubt a vision would remain cohesive under a competitive process.

For instance in many games that have player created content, one could consider that an evolutionary algorithm (the players) in their own right, and then other players pick the best levels from among the community and assemble them in level packs. The problem becomes though that some levels that are downright shit become popular, as we've seen with summer blockbusters like Transformers: Most people have mediocre tastes, and I'm not sure a player driven world of clueless players would produce anything anyone would want to visit.

Re:Dynamic world

[aaaaaaargh!]

I agree with you and also would like to see more games with automatically created and evolving content. Unfortunately, game studios still seem to shy away from dynamic content because the behavior of dynamic systems is generally hard to predict. Some might fear that the game world suddenly becomes unstable and drops into chaos. But the game studios could hire more people with a strong physics/dynamic systems modeling background to deal with these problems.

  Another problem is that games with good dynamic content have a very high replay value, whereas it seems that most game studios would prefer people to buy a new game or expansion pack right after they have finished the old one---or even earlier, as one might infer from the sloppiness with which later levels are often designed in comparison to the first few levels.

Re:Dynamic world

[Anonymous Coward]

Too many other players will interfere with things like that.

What happens with other players start interacting with your two towns?
It'll simply boil down to how many people are supporting each town to what degree.

Taking over cities? Considering the number of people with the pvp bear mounts for killing the faction leaders, if there was anything useful to gain you'd have even more raids going into cities to take it over for a brief period before another group comes through.
Most likely that'll just disrupt game play for a lot of uninvolved people.

Though some more dynamic content would definitely be appreciated, implementing things as grand as you're talking about would be horrendous on an existing game in both time involved and negative impact on the game for other people.

Re:Dynamic world

[SatanicPuppy]

I think the best way to do dynamic content in an MMO is to build a static framework (e.g. a world) and allow people to expand and create content from there.

Now, in my world, it would go like this: Your class, relative wealth, and profession would all have attendant properties and buildings. Some of them you could purchase for limited money generation: you're a smith, you need a smithy and a mine. You build the smithy, because you have to have one to make items, and then you prospect until you find a good spot, and you buy/build a mine, because it's cheaper than buying all your own ore.

Now, obviously, these buildings are vulnerable. You put the smithy and a shop (to sell your wares) in a big player-run city, where everyone who has buildings pays taxes that pay for NPC guards and defenses, so that's taken care of, but what about the mine? The mine is (obviously) outside the city, and not protected by the city guards. So you skim off some of your mining profits to pay NPC mercenaries to defend it.

Voila. You have player cities with guards, and dungeons with mobs, all at once. Make the shops able to be stolen from, and you have room for thieves, and let the players put in traps, fancy locks, etc. There is tons of stuff you can do. Obviously you're going to want to strike a balance. No fun to be a shopkeeper if you get cleaned out all the time. No fun to be a thief if it's too hard to break into a shop, and then there is nothing worth stealing...But that's just fine tuning.

See how logical and easy that is? And the person who built the buildings has a vested interest in keeping them going, paying for upgrades, replacing guards, etc. Everything can expand from that. Different types of buildings for different types of benefits to different groups. Military buildings for military bonuses, commercial buildings for commercial bonuses, etc, etc. You can throw in some PVE content: military group builds a building on the border with a non-human race, and kicks off a war with the orcs, or whatever.

Limitless possibilities, and everything that you do in the game matters. You clear a dungeon, it's gone, or empty, until someone rebuilds it, and then it won't be exactly the same...Depending on who builds it it could be completely different. You'll have done something unique, and how often does that happen in an MMO?

Re:Dynamic world

[maxume]

Being a smith in that world sounds incredibly boring. Does he have a computer in his smithy that he can play Tetris on?

Re:Dynamic world

[Minwee]

Having the players make their own content worked pretty well for City of Heroes, didn't it? What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Dynamic world

[SatanicPuppy]

Shrug. Some people like playing crafters, and you can add a frickton of strategy stuff to it.

I'd love to see a crafting system than was complex and open-ended. Hell, make it so that you have some sort of skill-based mini game (like Tetris?) that effects the quality of things you're trying to craft, so it's not just about the level of grinding you've done on the skill, but also on actual skill.

On top of that, you have the whole "defend my stuff" part of the game, which moves toward traditional strategy elements. You're recruiting and training units, you're building defenses. You're making alliances with other players to defend each others stuff.

That sounds a hell of a lot more fun to me than just another MMO level/loot grind, where crafting is something you do when you're tired of killing stuff, and has very little actual effect on the game. I'm so tired of that I can't even convey it.

Re:Dynamic world

[Talderas]

Your idea intrigues me. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Dynamic world

[Otto]

The problem with an open-ended system is that it is always unbalanced. At some point, the system evolves to the point where it makes more sense to be a smithy than to be a baker, or whatever. One profession/class/rank/item always tops out and becomes unbeatable. The only way to balance this is to either a) have mods who arbitrary slap people down by pushing the values this way or that or b) introduce a changing ruleset to balance things out through game events or some other "magic" process.

Either way, the players will find these changes "unfair". "I put all this effort into making this high ranking person, and your changes made me lesser!" is the basic gist of it. The problem of it is that they're correct, the changes did make that person lesser, in order to balance out the game.

Re:Dynamic world

[SatanicPuppy]

It's amusing, because when I first wrote that rant, it was in reaction to the utter cock-up that CoH made of the player generated content thing.

In CoH they let people generate their own missions, and they rewarded people based on how well OTHER PEOPLE liked their missions! What the fuck? What was the cost to the player when 100 people ripped through their level-farming mission like a fat guy through a door made of bacon? They were rewarded.

Oh god, could you do anything worse than that? What content did they think was going to be created?

In my system, the player gets benefits from building buildings/dungeons/whatever, and loses benefits when other players run roughshod over their stuff. The player would have a strong motivation to protect his stuff, and make it as hard as possible to beat.

It's not just about crafting either. Say you want to set up a dungeon full of bandits who raid nearby player junk. Why not? Player housing that gives bonuses based on the junk you've got in your house. You raid someones mine and trash it, and the miner gets pissed of and pays some thieves to loot your house, killing your bonuses.

It's about making the content created a needed and good thing for the character, and giving them bonuses/money/skills/whatever based on what they've got, so that they have an incentive to expand it and protect it.

Re:Dynamic world

[moderatorrater]

Make the shops able to be stolen from, and you have room for thieves, and let the players put in traps, fancy locks, etc.

The only problem I see there (and I don't think it's necessarily a deal breaker) is that the designers have competing interests: the thieves have to be able to max out a skill, but if a thief can always steal from the shop then there's no incentive to open the shop in the first place. Either the shop is impossible to steal from, thus making the thief feel slighted, or the thief can steal from the shop, which means that all thieves which max out their skills can steal from the shops. And if you make it a progression, where lower-level shop owners are more easily stolen from than more senior shop owners, then you have a situation where thieves always steal from lower level shops, making it so that the only workable levels for owning a shop are extremely high.

I would probably resolve that issue through making it so that either the shops can't be stolen from at all, or else there's a limited scope in what can be stolen. For instance, there's a certain amount of gold on hand from items being bought and sold. Only half of that gold can be stolen, thus ensuring that there's something to steal but the shop owner can't lose everything. Or maybe shops earn latent income through the assumed purchases made by NPCs, and it's only this income which can be stolen from. Or maybe it's only custom made weapons, and the regular stock can't be stolen from, etc. Because anyone and everyone can get to the highest levels of thievery, there has to be an artificial barrier when it comes to thievery between PCs.

Re:Dynamic world

[SatanicPuppy]

Balance is absolutely the challenge, but that's the case with every game.

Fricking WoW has been trying to balance it's handful of character classes for years now, and they're not getting anywhere. There is always a "most powerful" class/spec combo which all the hardcore people are using, and every major patch sees some class get nerfed or buffed.

Does that mean WoW isn't a successful game?

Re:Dynamic world

[TrippTDF]

At some point, the system evolves to the point where it makes more sense to be a smithy than to be a baker, or whatever.

Welcome to real life

Re:Dynamic world

[ReverendLoki]

This is something Guild Wars tried to address in their approach. By making gaming areas instanced and meet-up areas MMO, a player's actions can effect the game world on a slightly grander scale. The state of the instance is decided based upon the previous actions of those entering it.

The thing is, I feel they didn't capitalize on this opportunity nearly enough...

Great idea for a business

[dan_sdot]

Now you just need to create a video game that purchases and plays its own content and it seems like you might have quite a booming business on your hands.

Logical conclusion

[Explodo]

Every gun will be a physics bending super shotgun that scatters with super-high density in all directions at once obliterating every enemy within two miles with every piece of shot being a smart projectile that can turn corners and hunt your enemies! BOOM HEADSHOTx1000!

Re:Logical conclusion

[Opportunist]

And that leads to what we already have in all MMOs: One perfect setup with the rest being crap.

Let's take the average "power gamer". His goal: Becoming stronger. His way: Acquiring equipment that makes him stronger. Which equipment is that? The one that abuses the game bugs and loopholes in the ruleset the best.

In other words, this is not a simulation of evolution, it's a simulation of business.

How to achieve this: Dynamic world

[StCredZero]

I've been thinking along these lines quite a bit. Here's what I've come up with:

Let your players design their own ships. (For the Space games. Armor/Mounts/Minions for the others.) The appearance of the items will determine the stats according to some simple geometric rules. (Examples: A part of the hull which is angled back will have more armor resistance from certain directions. The larger your ship is in any direction, the slower it can turn, etc.) There will also be "design points" players can spend. The player will then submit the design by spending the in-game money for a "research project." During this time, the item will be submitted to a user-driven forum much like /. or reddit, and the top vote-getters during their "research period" will succeed in their research projects and actually get prototyped. Players are rewarded for designing cool ships by being given the opportunity to license their designs for a royalty.

Now here's the kicker -- the stats of ships of a certain design will shrink over time. So players who want the best ships will constantly have to seek out new designs. (All items would be temporary in this scheme. Nothing would ever be permanently bound to any player.)

I'd also like to see opportunities for players to legitimately program their own bots/minions. The code could run on a specialized VM only on the servers, so you could sandbox them and enforce DRM. Then the scripts could again be licensed. Balance this out by having genetic algorithms constantly evolving the monsters. Also, this would co-opt farming and macros, and make them a part of the game. (And subject to game balance by he devs.)

Don't try to fight the forces of evolution and economics and the scheming of crowds. CO-OPT them!

NEAT

[theinvisibleguy]

This game has come a long way since I saw a demo version in my AI class at UCF, the techniques have a lot of potential to be utilized in other video games as well for dynamic content creation. The NEAT algorithm (NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies is really cool too, in fact I believe it's open source and can be found at Professor Ken Stanley's UCF website.

Re:NEAT

[castorvx]

It has also been used for various other things. My girlfriend is actually a part of that research group (EPLEX - http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu/) ... It has been used for all kinds of things. Everywhere from evolving complex pictures to music generation to our future overlords: hyper evolved zombie dancers.