Generating and Adapting Game Mechanics

Game designs often center on the game mechanics—rules governing the logical evolution of the game. We seek to develop an intelligent system that generates computer games and assists humans in designing games. As first steps towards this goal we present a composable and cross-domain representation for game mechanics that draws from AI planning action representations. We use a constraint solver to generate mechanics subject to design requirements on the form of those mechanics—what they do in the game. A planner takes a set of generated mechanics and tests whether those mechanics meet playability requirements—controlling how mechanics function in a game to affect player behavior. We demonstrate our system by modeling and generating mechanics in a role-playing game, platformer game, and combined role-playing-platformer game.