Procedural Regeneration: Matching the World to the Player

In this 2018 GDC Level Design Workshop talk, game designer Heather Robertson introduces the concept of procedural regeneration, that is, the concept of dynamically altering the world space of a game to fit the play style of its play.

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[SAMACSTUDIOS]

I wish I could make 30 games a year... Instead I've been working on one game for the past three years

[voldlifilm]

I really like the idea that a game could keep track of what the player likes to do. Sort of like a virtual DM that understand your fantasy.

[jvufxcy]

This concept reminds me of the dynamic difficulty of Ratchet and Clank games so I already see the usefulness in this design. Thanks for sharing.

[RobLang]

Brilliant talk, lots of food for thought for my game as I approach next phase of environment generation.

[joshuastein]

the idea of a living reactive map/building is really exciting. I`m interested where this is going

[spiderspyy]

Well that was some clickbait with spelunky.. I love procedural generation but this got my too bummed out to actually watch it in its completion.

[IamWibbly]

Anyone know the name of the game with procedural creature/DNA she mentioned at the start? can't find it

[matheuspapibaquigrafo]

I think could look strange to players to not acess a room they acess before in other play through. Resident evil 4 resolve this problem by changing how the AI fights you and changing the number of enemies.

[Mysda_]

The idea of giving more enemies when the player have a better weapon is great but on a full game, player could manipulate it a lot sadly. Cool concept

[russiannotation]

Can someone tell me what were the 3d and the 4th games on this slide at 2:23

[connorhillen]

I feel that this talk didn't really say very much, especially in a talk as recent as 2018. Adaptive procedural content has been around for a long time, and all this talk seemed to do is attempt to coin some terms, advertise some games, and vaguely discuss "procedural regeneration" as a deus ex machina to solve hard problems. It's not relatively unexplored, and saying it's used for "balance" is vague given how broad balance is applied.

We should have had specific uses that haven't been considered.

* Using target pacing curves to align current in-game interest levels with a target level of interest, and using metrics like health vs net enemy health, ammo vs bullets to kill enemies, number of deaths per level
* Designing your systems to provide meaningful choices when choices get obvious, like Resi's common crafting ingredients for health and ammo, so you can help the player by giving more materials but they decide how to use them
* Use interactions to get an estimate of the player's reaction to content, like emotes, and drive content from that

[velashevskyy]

Wait... what is this game about watching civilizations die? I can't grasp a name, and I can't google it. Would love to take a look though...

[Tysto]

I was looking forward to the zombie body horror. I was disappointed.

[ReubenAStern]

You'll never live that moment down if you keep mentioning it. Here's how to stop being embarrassed by it. Don't mention it. Stop reacting to it. Stop caring, Move on.