Procedural Generation & Information Games - IEEE CoG 2020 Talk

This is a talk I gave at the 2020 IEEE Computation on Games conference. You can read the full paper here: https://ieee-cog.org/2020/papers/pape...

Information games are a category of games about finding, combining and applying information to solve mysteries - Her Story, Return of the Obra Dinn, Heaven's Vault and Outer Wilds are all examples of information games. In this talk I discuss how procedural generation - especially ideas from massive simulationist games like Dwarf Fortress and Caves of Qud - can be combined with the ideals of information games to create 'generative forensics' games, in which the player must explore procedurally generated worlds in order to solve mysteries.

This talk covers two game prototypes I made for PROCJAM in 2018 and 2019. I discuss why I made them, what I learned from making them, and why I think this is an interesting area to pursue. I hope you like the talk!

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Links
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Information Games (Tom Francis) -    • Design Talk: Information Games  
Nothing Beside Remains - https://cutgarnetgames.itch.io/nothin...
Condition Unknown - https://cutgarnetgames.itch.io/condit...

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Games
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Return of the Obra Dinn - https://dukope.itch.io/return-of-the-...
Her Story - https://store.steampowered.com/app/36...
Dwarf Fortress - https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
Caves of Qud - https://freeholdgames.itch.io/cavesofqud
Ultima Ratio Regum - https://www.markrjohnsongames.com/games/
Bad News - https://badnews.ai/