Getting Started in Automated Game Design

Automated game design, or AGD, is an artificial intelligence research area all about building AI that can design games. I made this tutorial to help introduce people to the area. It's split into parts, to make it easier to digest:

What is Automated Game Design? - 4:06
Why Automate Game Design? - 17:35
Building An Automated Game Designer - 31:43
Creativity and Communities - 1:15:29
Where Next? - 1:22:34

If you're interested just in the ideas behind the field, I recommend skipping Part 3, which is mostly technical.

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My website: www.possibilityspace.org
Games by me: https://cutgarnetgames.itch.io/
Games by ANGELINA: https://gamesbyangelina.itch.io/
On Twitter: www.twitter.com/mtrc

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Academic Links

METAGAME in Symmetric Chess-Like Games - B Pell, 1992.
Evolutionary Game Design - C Browne, F Maire, 2010.
Towards automated game design - M J Nelson, M Mateas, 2007.
The micro-rhetorics of Game-o-Matic - M Treanor, B Schweizer, I Bogost and M Mateas, 2012.
Aesthetic considerations for automated platformer design - M Cook, S Colton and A Pease, 2012.
Computational Game Creativity - A Liapis, G N. Yannakakis and J Togelius, 2014.
Gemini: Bidirectional Generation and Analysis of Games via ASP - A Summerville, C Martens, B Samuel, J C Osborn, N Wardrip-Fruin and M Mateas, 2018.
Data-driven Design: A Case for Maximalist Game Design - G Barros, M C Green, A Liapis and J Togelius, 2018.
Automated Game Design via Conceptual Expansion - M Guzdial, M Riedl, 2018.
PCGRL: Procedural Content Generation via Reinforcement Learning - A Khalifa, P Bontrager, S Earle, J Togelius, 2020.
Baba is Y'all: Collaborative Mixed-Initiative Level Design - M Charity, A Khalifa, J Togelius, 2020.
Formalising Non-Formalism: Breaking The Rules Of Automated Game Design - M Cook, G Smith, 2015.
Sentient Sketchbook: Computer-Assisted Game Level Authoring - A Liapis, G Yannakakis, J Togelius, 2013.
Friend, Collaborator, Student, Manager: How Design of an AI-Driven Game Level Editor Affects Creators - M Guzdial, N Liao, J Chen, S Chen, S Shah, V Shah, J Reno, G Smith, M Riedl, 2019.
Redesigning Computational Creativity Systems for Continuous Creativity, M Cook, 2018 -    • Redesigning Computationally Creative Syste...  

Rob Saunder's lecture: http://videolectures.net/ascc2013_sau...

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Game Links

Tombs of Tomeria - https://cutgarnetgames.itch.io/tombs-...
Condition Unknown - https://cutgarnetgames.itch.io/condit...
September 12th - http://www.gamesforchange.org/game/se...
Passage - http://passage.toolness.org/
The Marriage - https://www.rodvik.com/rodgames/marri...
Braid - https://store.steampowered.com/app/26...
Data Agent - https://champchampchamp.itch.io/data-...
BABA IS Y'ALL - http://game.engineering.nyu.edu/babai...

SuperMash - Digital Continue - Available on the Epic Store and Nintendo Switch
Drowsy - https://pyrofoux.itch.io/drowsy

Kula World -    • Видео  
A Short Hike - https://store.steampowered.com/app/10...
Elegy for a Dead World - https://store.steampowered.com/app/25...
DOGFORCE: SEASONS - https://cutgarnetgames.itch.io/dogfor...
Firewatch - https://www.firewatchgame.com/

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Game Engines/Tools

Unity - https://unity.com/

Ren'Py - https://www.renpy.org/
Ink - https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/
Twine - https://twinery.org/
Godot - https://godotengine.org/
HaxeFlixel - https://haxeflixel.com/
libGDX - https://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/
Game Maker - https://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker
Construct - https://www.construct.net
Stencyl - http://www.stencyl.com/
Bitsy - https://ledoux.itch.io/bitsy
Puzzlescript - https://www.puzzlescript.net/

PICO-8 - https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
OmniLudiCon - https://zarat.us/olc/


Tom Francis' Game Maker tutorial:    • Make A Game With No Experience #1: Your fi...  
Tom Francis' Unity tutorial (ongoing):    • Make A Game In Unity With No Experience #1...  

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Other links

Super Game Jam: http://www.supergamejam.com/

Now Play This - A Festival of Experimental Game Design - https://nowplaythis.net/
A MAZE Festival(s) - http://www.a-maze.net/
10 Oink Games Reviewed In 10* Minutes! - Shut Up & Sit Down -    • 10 Oink Games Reviewed In 10* Minutes!  
The General Video Game Playing Competition - http://gvgai.net/
Four Bit Friday (Twitch) -   / fourbitfriday  
AI and Games -    / tthompso  
The Next Rembrandt -    • The Next Rembrandt  
National Novel Generating Month - https://nanogenmo.github.io/
Cursed Problems in Game Design -    • Cursed Problems in Game Design  
Wicked Problems - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_...
teamLab - https://borderless.teamlab.art/