game-design

The idea behind an AI game generator is very easy to understand. You type a concept, describe a world, define a mechanic, and something appears. That promise is powerful because it goes right at one of the hardest parts of game creation: the gap between imagination and execution. So I completely understand why the phrase AI game generator gets attention so quickly. At the same time, I think it is…

Event box Level-Up League Interested in analyzing and inquiring about what makes some of your favourite video games work so well? Or why they may crash and burn, and you still can't look away from them? Come and join us for Level-Up League, a software development community where we play, game, and discuss why video games have the magic they do. We will look and analyze everyone from storytelling …

Last week at Gamescom, NVIDIA announced the winners of the NVIDIA and ModDB RTX Remix Mod Contest, a $50,000 competition celebrating community-made projects that reimagine classic games with modern fidelity. The entries showed how far video game modding has come, with individual modders and small teams pulling off overhauls of similar quality to those created […]

We discuss how navigation works in video games with a focus on how it provides challenge for players. Informed by work on how humans navigate real world space we propose a framework to guide the analysis and design of games. The framework considers three steps in the process of navigation: Destination (determining where the player needs to go), Routing (determining how to get there), and Executio…

This study presents a novel and systematic framework to integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) into video game design by reconceptualizing the inherent characteristic phenomenon of "hallucinations"—instances where LLMs generate plausible yet inaccurate or fictitious content—as intrinsic game features. Instead of treating hallucinations as errors, we adapt them to enrich narrative complexity and…

This paper is an entry into the recent discussion (Miltiadis, 2023; Perez, 2023) within game studies about the apparent disconnect between the theory and practice of game design. In response to a call for the field to embrace a research through design methodology to strengthen the dialog between game scholars and designers this paper explores the potential of autoethnography for examining the pra…

Integrating LLMs in video game development can create dynamic and interactive narratives. By involving players in the narrative design process, LLMs can generate unique player-driven strategies and provide valuable feedback for game designers. The post Players, creators, and AI collaborate to build and expand rich game narratives appeared first on Microsoft Research .

Non-playable characters often play a crucial role in video game storytelling, but since they’re usually designed with a fixed purpose, they can get repetitive and boring — especially in vast worlds where there are thousands.