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Ryan Premi

ENGL 134

Professor Erdiakoff

11/16/17

When is it right to use Procedural Generation?

Back in Middle School, all my friends were getting into this fun game called Minecraft.

Although I was initially reluctant to play Minecraft due to its seemingly steep learning curve

that demanded hefty amounts of experimentation and memorization, I feel in head over heels for

it. I have so many wonderful memories of playing it with my friends and creating extravagant

month spanning projects in game. Like me, many people also fell in love with the game and it

became an inescapable sensation that has amassed massive critical acclaim and has gone on to

sell over 100 million copies with around 53,000 copies being sold a day (Rad 2016). Many of

Minecrafts most notable features and game mechanics became extremely popular as a result,

such as its survival mode and innovative crafting system. But, perhaps the coolest and most

interesting feature is its infinitely huge procedurally generated worlds. Procedural Generation

(ProGen) is a method of creating data algorithmically, and it's commonly used by developers to

create sprawling, seemingly handcrafted spaces in blazingly fast time. ProGen has taken the

game industry by storm, a technique that used to be in a few releases a year are now being used

in dozens of new games a year (Wikipedia Staff 2017). Some consider ProGen to be a gimmick

and a game design crutch, leading to repetition and lack of creativity. While it can hamper

gameplay if used incorrectly, Id argue that ProGen is a great tool for game developers when it

compliments a games mechanics and strengths.

ProGen has a number of practical uses for developers that make it extremely worthwhile

to implement, which is evident in its historical and small studio adoptions of it. While there has

certainly been a drastic spike in the number of ProGen games on the market since Minecrafts

popularization, a small handful of game developers have been using this technique for decades. It

wasnt the first, but the video game Rogue used ProGen to create its sprawling, procedurally

created dungeons that players have to navigate and fight enemies in. Further, Rogue became a

design template for many Role Playing Games (RPGs) leading, to the creation of the subgenres

of Dungeon Crawler and RogueLite(Revolvy 2017). These games were made by smaller

developers who lacked the resources to craft thousands of levels by hand in a reasonable time.

Games like Exile, Toejam and Earl, Diablo I & II, and Elder Scrolls I & II all utilized ProGen to

create their massive worlds and dungeons. On the other hand, using ProGen also allowed for

smaller file sizes since developers didnt have to store a plethora of pre-defined levels (Smed and

Harri 2006). Usually the filesize of games whose levels and or open world are hand crafted are

larger than ones made with ProGen. For instance, The Witcher 3 and Grand Theft Auto V

(GTAV) are two of the hottest PC open world games require 38 and 52 GB of space respectively

whereas ProGen games like Minecraft and No Mans Sky have 2 and 8GB installation sizes

respectively. Although both The Witcher 3 and GTAV are around 50 square miles each which

seems massive, No Mans Skys has 18 quintillion planets you can explore and Minecraft can go

theoretically go on infinitely given enough storage and processing power (Moss 2016). To make

distribution as quick and convenient as possible, game developers aim to have the smallest file

sizes possible to lower the download size for the user making ProGen a very attractive option in

game creation.
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One can also capitalize on the strengths of a game using the infinite replayability that

comes with ProGen. Humans have immense trouble comprehending the idea behind true

randomness, heck, theres a whole field of psychology -Game Theory- which analyzes

humanitys lack of understanding probability. Games that utilize ProGen in a fantastic manner

are ones whose core gameplay benefits from the kind of quasi-randomness that comes from it,

and it can be used in far more ways than just level/world creation. 4X (eXplore eXpand eXploit

eXterminate) games like the Civilization series and Settlers of Catan use ProGen to prevent

people from merely memorizing routes and exploits inherent that would come from replaying the

same maps and rewards good strategy (Moss 2017). Then comes Rouge-Lite games, which are

games with elements like ProGen and permadeath (starting a new game every time they die) that

were inspired by the game Rogue. Rogue-Lite games like The Binding of Isaac, FTL, and

Downwell utilize ProGen to create non-linear gauntlets with permadeath where players progress

their skills through replaying the game a plethora of times. Contrastly, there are other intriguing

implementations of ProGen, like the dynamic difficulty ProGen director in the Left 4 Dead

games, which makes the game harder or easier depending on the performance of the team

playing (Extra Credits 2017). Perhaps one of my favorite out of the box uses of ProGen was in

the game Shadow of Mordor, which created boss enemies with unique strengths, weaknesses,

and personalities making every encounter immensely engaging and memorable. Thus, game

developers should make sure their ProGen systems leave the player feeling like they are

progressing their skills as they play, and are ready to hop into a barrage of fun, interesting

scenarios.

While ProGen can be a great tool developers and compliment a games mechanics, it can

lead to repetitive gameplay and be a crutch on game design. The idea of ProGen sounds excellent
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inspirit and one would think that games created with it would not feel repetitive. Well ProGen

can generate functionally infinite scenarios and possibilities, but if the game itself lacks depth

and the actions one performs in a game is far too simplistic and or non engaging players will

begin to get bored. I actually learned this the hard way myself when I was programming my own

game with ProGen. Even though I made functionally infinite worlds, everyone that played it

rightfully got bored after a few minutes because all one can do in it is try to find water or food to

survive. Influential video game critic John Bain -more commonly known as TotalBiscuit or

Cynical Brit- has cited games like No Mans Sky for being the wide as an ocean with the depth

of a puddle, (2017) for having little mechanical depth, heavy repetition, and having planets that

seem way too similar to each other. On the other hand, competitive multiplayer games strive off

of balance and try to rely on as little randomness as possible, something like ProGen created

levels in a game like League of Legends or Counter Strike Global Offensive are strictly not

allowed because of this (Smed and Harri 2006). This is a fair statement. Quasi random systems

of ProGen will inherently generate positive and negative biases, effectively making high level

play who got the best dice roll (Extra Credits 2017). You also lose some of the magic of a

personal, human handcrafted experience that can be far more memorable than a [ProGen game

loop (Extra Credits). Consequently, while some games mechanics do benefit from having

ProGen in them, you can lead to repetition, lack of balance and humanity within your experience.

Although ProGen doesnt belong in every game, theres definitely games like RPGs and

Rogue-Lites that compliment the game and make it easier to develop all content by hand. Game

development is as much of an art as it is a science, therefore theres always going to be hotly

debated ways on whats good game design. At the end of the day, there are three main

takeaways to ProGen. Firstly, ProGen can be an important tool and as such it should be used by
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Game developer to enhance their gameplay by allowing them to focus on perfecting the core

mechanics of a game instead of just spending a disproportionate amount of time making

levels/worlds. Additionally, ProGen as a game design technique is not always the optimal

solution for your game, and if a game developer has enough resources a hand crafted human

touch can leave a memorable, fun impression. Lastly, ProGen has a plethora of applications, and

in the future more developers and designers will hopefully continue utilize its potential outside of

the standard texture and level/world creation and make incredible games using this powerful

technology.
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Bibliography:

Smed, Jouni, and Harri Hakonen. Algorithms and Networking for Computer Games . 1st Edition,

Wiley, 2006.

Moss, Richard. "7 uses of procedural generation that all developers should study ." Gamasutra,

UBM, 1 Jan. 2016,

www.gamasutra.com/view/news/262869/7_uses_of_procedural_generation_that_a

ll_developers_should_study.php.

Rad, Chloi. "Minecraft Sales Surpass 100 Million Copies." IGN.com, IGN, 2 June 2016,

www.ign.com/articles/2016/06/02/minecraft-sales-surpass-100-million-copies.

Wikipedia. "List of games using procedural generation." Wikipedia.org, Wikipedia , 7 Oct. 2017,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_using_procedural_generation

Extra Credits. " Procedural Generation - How Games Create Infinite Worlds Episode." Extra

Credits, season 10, Episode 24, Extra Credits, 22 July 2015. Youtube.com,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgbuWfGeG2o.

Revolvy Staff. " Rogue (video game) ." Revolvy, Revolvy, 2017,

www.revolvy.com/topic/Rogue%20(video%20game).

Bain, John. I will now talk about No Man's Sky hype for about 40 minutes. 16 Aug. 2016.

Youtube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCG9YLeIB98.