Came across this article tonight.
Looks interesting to say the least.
Oton Console to Bring Artificial Intelligent Design to Retro Gaming
Seems only reasonable that if we are seeing something like this now within a few years or so a 3D more modern game version will be created.
Who knows people may just get that Make MMO button they have been after.
Thoughts?
It’s a bad idea that’s also badly executed…
Humans are bad at making arbitrary decisions. Since humans were the ones inventing machines and Random function, they’re not arbitrary either!
So if a console creates unlimited games people would always find a pattern. (art style, gameplay etc).
This ignores the fact that in order to want “infinite” levels the core mechanic better be pretty darn good. Back in the day I might have wanted to have more Mario levels, Contra, etc. but there are only a few that I can think of. That and Hipster Whale is doing a pretty good job at making “infinite” versions of those games (frogger, pacman, etc.) without the need for a whole dedicated console.
AI or procedural generation is one of those things (at least currently) that you better narrow down the parameters pretty far and really focus on that specific task and pair it with a great game mechanic for it to have legs and longevity. It can be done and will probably will continue to be done but there is not that many games (classic or not) that if you make it infinite that the core mechanic is so strong that it will be interesting for more than a few hours of play.
Replace me with a machine? (Loads shotgun)
Why not? You can hardly make worse quality games then are coming across green light these days.
Hook the consoles up to the cloud and add in a genetic algorithm and you’ll actually be able to get really solid, innovative games out of it.
Yes, just about anything will be greenlit these days. Take this weird game for example…
There are a lot of “different” games out there for sure. This thing creates games on its own as well as being used as a game creator. I can see many people jumping in just to use it to create games.
It’s kind of a console for all of the people who want to make games without investing any time and effort into learning how. I suppose occasionally the console algorithms would create something special that would get some good attention.
And yeah I was thinking the same things. It can probably produce games as good as a lot of game devs are churning out. Fortunately, they should be limited to this console… for now.
Might be a cool prototyping tool.
If you don’t mind the $399 price tag for the devkit…
But for the genetic algorithm to be used it needs to be able to judge success. So this could be by players rating, players who play it, ect… But for that to work, there needs to be a lot of bad games to teach the algorithm what its doing wrong.
Oh there’s plenty of them…
Ah I’ll pass. I am into retro gaming so this hit my radar. Mainly I just think it’s good to stay in the know on what is going on out there. I suppose it is only a matter of time as companies continue to focus on making game dev easier and cheaper combined with experiments such as the programs that can play video games and so forth. Ultimately a console such as this might be able to actually playtest and tweak the games it creates.
For me I’d rather go the other way. My joy comes from crafting the game world “by hand” not from clicking some buttons.
So, basically, they’re procedurally generating some games, and trying to bundle it with hardware as a marketing ploy?