Experimental Video Game Evolves Its Own Content

Ken Stanley writes "Just as interest in user-generated content in video games is heating up, a team of researchers at the University of Central Florida has released an experimental multiplayer game in which content items compete with each other in an evolutionary arms race to satisfy the players. As a result, particle system-based weapons, which are the evolving class of content, continually invent their own new behaviors based on what users liked in the past. Does the resulting experience in this game, called Galactic Arms Race, suggest that evolutionary algorithms may be the key to automated content generation in future multiplayer gaming and MMOs?"

Great idea for a business

[dan_sdot]

Now you just need to create a video game that purchases and plays its own content and it seems like you might have quite a booming business on your hands.

Re:Dynamic world

[maxume]

Being a smith in that world sounds incredibly boring. Does he have a computer in his smithy that he can play Tetris on?

Re:Dynamic world

[castironpigeon]

Actually you'd end up with everyone starting as a scantily clad max level female nelf/belf hunter. All the major towns would be burnt to the ground, there would be a huge rainstorm, and all gameplay would afterward revolve around PvP mud wrestling.

Re:Dynamic world

[Minwee]

Having the players make their own content worked pretty well for City of Heroes, didn't it? What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Dynamic world

[jez9999]

Sod Tetris, I'm bored with that. Does he have a computer he can play World of Warcraft on, and be something more interesting than a smith?

Re:Dynamic world

[Talderas]

Your idea intrigues me. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Dynamic world

[Canazza]

Gnomeregen wouldn't be missed honestly. That and Ulduman. They're so un-loved that the Alliance would rather walk to Scarlet Monastry, across a lake and through Horde territory, rather than do the two instances within 2 minutes of Ironforge.

A point I've always made about WoW was how static it was. They've been rebuilding Redridge for 4 years now.

WOTLK went some way to address this using 'phasing' - in that your progression through quests changed the landscape (the biggest, most obvious change being the Wrathgate quest chain) and it is, imo, the best system usesd in an MMO so far to give a sense of the progression of time.
WAR doesn't progress, it resets weekly.
As for CoX, I'd like to see the finalé to that game be the utter destruction of Earth as all their heroes have been plugging themselves into a VR Simulator constantly, totally neglecting the real world :P

Re:Dynamic world

[fractoid]

And can he download an addon for World of Warcraft that'll let him play Bejeweled [popcap.com]?

'cuz Bejeweled is, like, a million times better than Tetris.