Institute of Digital Games

The Procedural Content Generation Benchmark: An Open-source Testbed for Generative Challenges in Games

The Procedural Content Generation (PCG) Benchmark establishes a standardized, open-source framework to address the historical lack of unified evaluation protocols in game artificial intelligence.

Lode Enhancer: Level Co-creation Through Scaling

Lode Enhancer functions as a mixed-initiative design tool designed to streamline the creation of Lode Runner levels through neural network-driven upscaling.

• Lode Enhancer utilizes a neural network-driven mixed-initiative design tool to upscale low-resolution Lode Runner level segments into playable, high-resolution maps.
• The system employs a specialized layer-scaling neural network architecture designed to capture both micro-patterns and macro-patterns inherent in classic level design.
• A built-in persistence module allows designers to maintain granular control over the balance between manual creative edits and AI-generated modifications.

Generative Personas That Behave and Experience Like Humans

The Go-Blend framework advances automated game testing and procedural content generation by integrating reinforcement learning with human-centric behavioral and emotional modeling.

• The Go-Blend framework integrates reinforcement learning with human-centric emotional modeling to create AI agents that replicate both performance metrics and affective responses.
• By utilizing the Go-Explore algorithm and a dataset of over 100 human playtraces, the framework moves beyond mechanical efficiency to simulate the idiosyncratic nature of human play.
• Hierarchical clustering of the AGAIN dataset successfully identified and modeled four distinct player personas: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Expert.

Problematizing Cultural Appropriation

Cultural appropriation in game design represents an unavoidable ethical challenge that requires designers to balance pedagogical objectives with the preservation of cultural authenticity.

• Designers must shift from attempting to eliminate cultural reinterpretation to adopting a more informed and sensitive design practice, as cultural appropriation is an inherent byproduct of cross-cultural interaction.
• Children aged nine to eleven do not passively consume cultural frameworks but actively synthesize them with their own existing tropes, such as religious fatalism, violence, and social status.
• Meaning in games is a hybrid product formed by the designer’s intent and the player’s personal, media-influenced background.