Automated Game Design Learning

TL;DR

Automated Game Design Learning (AGDL) aims to learn game designs directly through gameplay interaction, using game programs as the primary source of design information, enabling new applications and insights.

Contribution

This paper introduces AGDL as a new research field, detailing its foundations, current projects, and potential applications, emphasizing learning game design via play.

Findings

Existing work touches AGDL edges

Successful AGDL projects demonstrate feasibility

AGDL enables new game analysis applications

Abstract

While general game playing is an active field of research, the learning of game design has tended to be either a secondary goal of such research or it has been solely the domain of humans. We propose a field of research, Automated Game Design Learning (AGDL), with the direct purpose of learning game designs directly through interaction with games in the mode that most people experience games: via play. We detail existing work that touches the edges of this field, describe current successful projects in AGDL and the theoretical foundations that enable them, point to promising applications enabled by AGDL, and discuss next steps for this exciting area of study. The key moves of AGDL are to use game programs as the ultimate source of truth about their own design, and to make these design properties available to other systems and avenues of inquiry.