Towards Computational Co-Creation in Modding Communities

Large online repositories of player-generated game content are a popular component of modern interactive digital entertainment. These add-ons are typically referred to as "mods", and the communities of co-creators that coalesce around them "modding communities". We propose a method to augment these communities with computational agents that encourage creative submissions, which we define as those that are both unexpected and valuable. We propose to combine player experience modelling, computational creativity evaluation and mixed-initiative co-creation to drive modding communities towards more fun and diverse gaming experiences.

[1]  Geraint A. Wiggins,et al.  A preliminary framework for description, analysis and comparison of creative systems , 2006, Knowl. Based Syst..

[2]  Rob Saunders,et al.  Towards Autonomous Creative Systems: A Computational Approach , 2012, Cognitive Computation.

[3]  Julian Togelius,et al.  Multiobjective exploration of the StarCraft map space , 2010, Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games.

[4]  Simon Colton,et al.  Initial Results from Co-operative Co-evolution for Automated Platformer Design , 2012, EvoApplications.

[5]  Kenneth O. Stanley,et al.  Abandoning Objectives: Evolution Through the Search for Novelty Alone , 2011, Evolutionary Computation.

[6]  Terri Gullickson.  The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms. , 1995 .

[7]  Simon Colton,et al.  Multi-faceted evolution of simple arcade games , 2011, 2011 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG'11).

[8]  Geraint A. Wiggins,et al.  Auditory Expectation: The Information Dynamics of Music Perception and Cognition , 2012, Top. Cogn. Sci..

[9]  Jürgen Schmidhuber,et al.  Formal Theory of Creativity, Fun, and Intrinsic Motivation (1990–2010) , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development.

[10]  Antonios Liapis,et al.  Mixed-initiative co-creativity , 2014, FDG.

[11]  Katherine A. Brady,et al.  Modeling Expectation for Evaluating Surprise in Design Creativity , 2015 .

[12]  H. Simon,et al.  The Processes of Creative Thinking , 1959 .

[13]  Judy Kay,et al.  RECON: a reciprocal recommender for online dating , 2010, RecSys '10.

[14]  Georgios N. Yannakakis.  AI in computer games : generating interesting interactive opponents by the use of evolutionary computation , 2005 .

[15]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation , 1991 .

[16]  Carlos Cotta,et al.  Evolution of Artificial Terrains for Video Games Based on Accessibility , 2010, EvoApplications.

[17]  Olli Sotamaa,et al.  When the Game Is Not Enough: Motivations and Practices Among Computer Game Modding Culture , 2010, Games Cult..

[18]  Simon Colton,et al.  Automating Game Design In Three Dimensions , 2014 .

[19]  Julian Togelius,et al.  Modeling player experience in Super Mario Bros , 2009, 2009 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games.

[20]  Simon Colton,et al.  On the Notion of Framing in Computational Creativity , 2012, ICCC.

[21]  M. Boden.  The creative mind : myths & mechanisms , 1991 .

[22]  C. Prahalad,et al.  Co-creation experiences: The next practice in value creation , 2004 .

[23]  Julian Togelius,et al.  An experiment in automatic game design , 2008, 2008 IEEE Symposium On Computational Intelligence and Games.

[24]  Douglas H. Fisher,et al.  USING AI TO EVALUATE CREATIVE DESIGNS , 2012 .

[25]  Kazjon Grace,et al.  What to expect when you're expecting: The role of unexpectedness in computationally evaluating creativity , 2014, ICCC.

[26]  A. Koestler.  The Act of Creation , 1964 .

[27]  Georgios N. Yannakakis,et al.  Evolving opponents for interesting interactive computer games , 2004 .

[28]  Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.  The creative person and the creative system , 2009, C&C '09.

[29]  Julian Togelius,et al.  Constrained Novelty Search: A Study on Game Content Generation , 2015, Evolutionary Computation.

[30]  Julian Togelius,et al.  Enhancements to constrained novelty search: two-population novelty search for generating game content , 2013, GECCO '13.

[31]  Julian Togelius,et al.  Modeling Player Experience for Content Creation , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games.

[32]  Carlos Cotta,et al.  Evolution of artificial terrains for video games based on obstacles edge length , 2010, IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation.