Procedural Content Generation As an Opportunity to Foster Collaborative

Procedural Content Generation as an Opportunity to Foster Collaborative Mindful Learning Gillian Smith, Casper Harteveld Playable Innovative Technologies Lab Northeastern University [email protected], [email protected] ABSTRACT technologies that are developed by its researchers. The use of procedural content generation (PCG) is increasingly The games for learning community, on the other hand, has been explored in game design. Yet so far, few have explored its use focusing its efforts on how games could be harnessed as a tool to from a learning perspective. In this paper we describe how PCG achieve learning outcomes. Discussions have been about why provides for an opportunity for fostering collaborative mindful games are suitable for learning and how games need to be learning. The increase in content variety due to PCG has the designed and implemented. The most prevalent issue is whether potential to make players more mindful about the educational educational games are effective and how they can be made more content and create incentives to discuss the content between effective. This community is outcome-driven; its drive has been to players. We encourage scholars to investigate this interesting see what effects games have under different circumstances. intersection of two research communities—PCG and educational In this paper, we explore how these two communities can benefit games—and also consider other potential impact that comes from from each other. We will make clear that the PCG community understanding how players communicate about generated content. could benefit from having a new view on PCG, one that is Categories and Subject Descriptors primarily seen from a learning perspective and becomes outcome- driven in addition to technology-driven. We also posit that I.2.1 [Artificial Intelligence] Applications and Expert Systems – educational games can be made more effective with the inclusion Games. K.8.0 [Personal Computing] General – Games. K.3.1 of PCG. Its inclusion will create an opportunity for fostering [Computers and Education] Computer Uses in Education – collaborative mindful learning. Collaborative learning. These hypotheses are elaborated by first illustrating what the General Terms missing links are in considering PCG for game design (Section 2). Design. From there we will introduce this new view on PCG (Section 3). We conclude this paper by describing an early design concept that Keywords explores the intersection of learning and PCG (Section 4), and by procedural content generation; mindfulness; collaborative encouraging others to find a synthesis between these two learning; educational games; game design. communities (Section 5). 1. INTRODUCTION 2. THE ROLE OF PCG IN GAME DESIGN Two important topics in digital game research are Procedural With regards to game design, PCG has been broadly defined as Content Generation (PCG) and games for learning (as highlighted “creating game content automatically, through algorithmic by two of the workshops at this FDG conference: Workshop on means” [3]. Recently, PCG has been applied to aspects of the Procedural Content Generation and Workshop on Games for game’s design, with research focusing on how to intelligently Learning). Both topics have been around from the very beginning create levels [5]–[7], weapons [8], [9], puzzles [10], [11], and of the introduction of digital games as a medium and both have even the rules of the game itself [12], [13]. Perhaps PCG’s most found an increasing amount of attention in this past decade [1]–[4] common purpose in game design is to promote game The PCG community has been concerned largely with techniques replayability, by providing players with a new experience each for how to implement PCG in games, and more recently in time they play. One of the earliest examples of PCG used in this discussing its role in game design. The community has focused manner is in the game Rogue [14], in which the player never sees primarily on technologies for content generation–graphics, level exactly the same dungeon more than once. Another experience design, and/or game rules–and sometimes considered what effects that PCG promotes is game adaptability (e.g. [9], [15]), which it has on the player experience. We can consider this community focuses on changing the game dynamically based on how the as largely technology-driven. Its drive has been to see what game unfolds and by using procedural techniques. creative accomplishments are possible within games using the There has also recently been a great deal of work looking at adaptive games; in particular, how to create game content that adapts to an individual’s play preferences. The Mario AI competition, for example, asks competitors in the level generation track to design systems that can create content that an individual player is expected to enjoy [5]. The game Galactic Arms Race [9] aims to create personalized weapons for players based on their past play style. This (highly condensed) overview of PCG in game design reveals two main ways that PCG intervenes in game design: content procedurally generated, which allows players to experience new (yet similar) challenges each time they play. Although there has been very little research of how players communicate about the PCG in these games, such generated content does seem to lead to a discussion about the game’s strategies on forums such as CivFanatics.com1. From these discussions players arguably learn about the game’s structures and underlying system and become better at playing it. A similar phenomenon has been observed by Clara Fernandez-Vara, who noticed that players of her game Symon began to reverse engineer the PCG system underlying the game as part of their efforts to construct a walkthrough2. Figure 1. An overview of the relationships between the main Few games have thus far used PCG for learning. Those that do concepts of PCG and learning. engage education and training have focused on using PCG for replayability or adaptability in a single-player experience [10], composition, which focuses on the design of game content and the [20], [21]. For example, consider the game Refraction that mechanics that make up the game system; and player experience, attempts to teach fractional arithmetic. The goal of using PCG in which studies the way individual players perceive the game and Refraction is to dynamically create levels that adapt to an generated content (for more elaborate overviews, see [2], [3]). individual player’s demonstrated abilities and reveal new These two foci are related to each other: the composition of game mathematical concepts at a reasonable pace [10]. content informs and constrains player experience, while the desired player experience provides context for how content should It is important to note that the impact of PCG upon learning is not be composed [16]. Underlying these avenues are the approaches only interesting for those who wish to create educational or and algorithms used for content generation. Different technologies serious games; it has been observed by many game designers that open up different design options and can make a vast difference in learning is an integral part of gameplay, and that good game how a game is experienced. These aspects of PCG—technology, designers teach players how to understand the systems underlying content composition, and player experience—have formed the their games [22], [23]. We suggest that in order for PCG to core of PCG research thus far (see Fig. 1). meaningfully engage game design, it must engage in all three focus areas: content composition, player experience, and learning 2.1 The Missing Links (see Fig. 1). In the relatively short history of the field of PCG in We argue that there are two related and crucial aspects of game game design, a shift can be observed from purely technological design that have not been considered in PCG research thus far: the approaches to interventions toward composition and experience. impact of PCG on learning in games and the role of multiple The remainder of this paper describes this third focus area of players seeing and interacting with generated content. Although learning, and the initial stages of an experiment in this area. the connection between the serious game movement and PCG has been made, such connections have typically been considered in 3. PCG FOR LEARNING: A NEW VIEW terms of developmental efficiencies. Creating serious games is ON PCG time consuming and costly; PCG can alleviate the burden of We see a new view on PCG: its use for learning. We hypothesize content creation. We suggest that PCG has the ability to do far that a PCG-driven educational game is more effective because the more than simply shorten development time; it has the potential to variety it creates stimulates mindful and collaborative learning significantly increase their educational efficacy (see Section 3). and this enhances the learning outcomes that such games attempt Based on this hypothesis, we propose an additional way in which to achieve. In this section we will elaborate on why we think that PCG intervenes in game design: that of learning. This focus is PCG stimulates these learning types. related to the player experience focus, in that a single player’s learning experiences from seeing a variety of content will inform 3.1 Mindful Learning her overall play experience. However, it is also dependent on Transfer to new situations is a critical success factor of another aspect of PCG that has rarely been considered before: that educational game [1]. Despite this importance, no educational of the community of players surrounding a game. Research into game researcher has considered mindfulness theory as put forward the impact and use of PCG in games has thus far been almost by Langer [24], [25]. This theory asserts that we should not be exclusively restricted to that of single-player experiences. What mindless about what we do, using routines and working on an happens outside of the game—what Gee [17] has coined the automatic pilot, but rather be mindful–by being aware of our external semiotic domain—has received little consideration.

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