Notice of 2020 Conditions

Due to FDG moving online, the PCG Workshop will also be entirely online. Our deadline for paper submissions has been moved to May 16.

We’re actually a little excited to try to take advantage of the new opportunities that this offers us: the low registration fee for the now-virtual FDG2020 (€20+VAT) will hopefully make it more accessible to new voices. Please send us your papers!

2020 Schedule

The 2020 PCG Workshop will take place on Monday, September 14, via Zoom, starting at 15:00 Malta time.

About

Our workshop aims to advance knowledge in the field of procedural content generation (PCG) by bringing together leading PCG researchers and facilitating discussion on practices, principles, and challenges faced in the field. In keeping with the previous years’ workshops, we provide multiple avenues for the submission of work depending on your interests: including dissemination of completed research, position papers for challenges faced by the community and demonstrations of ongoing projects.

Academic research can be submitted as a full-length paper, as well as the option for short position papers to raise talking points for the PCG community. For those with a keen interest in procedural generation methods and have work they wish to show, please consider submitting to our demo track. Accepted demo submissions will be invited to showcase at our demonstration session on the day and will be hosted online for those who cannot make the event in person. Please consult our Call for Papers for further information on formatting guidelines and submission deadlines.

What is PCG?

Procedural content generation (PCG) has many flavors, from growing trees to designing level layouts to proposing entire games. PCG software is being developed, researched and used by people from many different backgrounds, each with their own view on what defines PCG. The common denominator is that PCG has an algorithmic component with a certain degree of autonomy, that is, it can create game content by itself or together with a human creator.

A common misconception is that PCG has to create content on-the-fly during runtime. While its origin lies in these deterministic algorithms that save disk space, nowadays it is perfectly fine to propose a stochastic algorithm that inspires game designers during game development. Indeed, this workshop encourages the exploration of the creative aspects of using AI algorithms for game content creation.

What is generativity? To the procedural generation community, it often means the method of constructing content for use in a game. Game-creators seek to generate content to fulfill many conflicting constraints: content that is novel yet not game-breakingly novel, content that may either fill out the background of a game, or radically change the gameplay. A Generative Framework of Generativity, by Kate Compton and Michael Mateas

Some PCG systems try to help a designer out with a small part of the design process. Others try to provide a new way of working with game content. Some are interactive; others aren’t. Some aim to do fully autonomous, creative game design; others aim to automate routine or common aspects of design.

Procedural Content Generation in Games, Ch.1: Introduction, by Julian Togelius, Noor Shaker, and Mark J. Nelson

Code of Conduct & Remote Participation

PCG is a reflection of its community: a variety of eclectic and exciting contributions often imbued with traits of their designers. These traits are derived from our personal experience, our cultural upbringing, and personal philosophies. The procedural content generation workshop acts as a celebration of our community – from committee members to authors and attendees – that knows no distinction.

We are dedicated to providing a harassment-free workshop experience for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form, including verbal comments that reinforce social structures of domination, deliberate intimidation, stalking, or unwanted physical or sexual contact. Conference participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the conference at the discretion of the conference organizers.

If someone makes you or anyone else feel unsafe or unwelcome, please report it as soon as possible. Harassment and other code of conduct violations reduce the value of our event for everyone. We want you to be happy at our event. People like you make our event a better place.

We are happy to provide remote participation for accepted authors where necessary if attending in person will prove taxing. As the entire conference has been moved online, we are still more than happy to provide remote participation for both accepted authors and attendees.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact our organizing committee via our website or on twitter.

The Venue

The PCG Workshop will be hosted at the 2020 Foundation of Digital Games conference in Bugibba, Malta. As FDG 2020 has moved online, due to the global pandemic, this year’s PCG Workshop will also be online. The conference will run from September 15th-18th, 2020, with the date and time of the workshop still to be announced. Please consult the FDG website for more details, including the greatly reduced online registration price. Our schedule will be made available closer to the date of the event.

Header graphic (L to R)

As is appropriate for the PCG workshop, the header image is randomly selected from a pool of images from papers presented in past workshops:

2019 (a)

A Generalized Semantic Representation for Procedural Generation of Rooms, by J. Timothy Balint and Rafael Bidarra; Design-Centric Maze Generation, by Paul Hyunjin Kim, Jacob Grove, Skylar Wurster, and Roger Crawfis; Two-step Constructive Approaches for Dungeon Generation, by Michael Cerny Green, Ahmed Khalifa, Athoug Alsoughayer, Divyesh Surana, Antonios Liapis, and Julian Togelius

2019 (b)

Cozy Mystery Construction Kit, by Max Kreminski, Devi Acharya, Nick Junius, Elisabeth Oliver, Kate Compton, Melanie Dickinson, Cyril Focht, Stacey Mason, Stella Mazeika, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin; Stories of the Town: Balancing Character Autonomy and Coherent Narrative in Procedurally Generated Worlds, by Chris Miller, Mayank Dighe, Chris Martens, and Arnav Jhala; Anarchy: A Library for Incremental Chaos, by Peter Mawhorter

2018

Tarot-Based Narrative Generation by Anne Sullivan, Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari, and Michael Cook; Pairing Character Classes in a Deathmatch Shooter Game via a Deep-Learning Surrogate Model by Daniel Karavolos, Antonios Liapis, and Georgios N. Yannakakis; ‘Play Your Own Way’: Adapting a Procedural Framework for Accessibility by Thomas Thompson and Matthew Syrett; Evolving Maps and Decks for Ticket to Ride by Fernando De Mesentier Silva, Scott Lee, Julian Togelius, and Andy Nealen

2017

Generominos by Kate Compton, WaveFunctionCollapse by Maxim Gumin, Evolutionary Dungeon Designer by Jose Font, Alexander Baldwin, Steve Dahlskog and Johan Holmberg, Caves of Qud by Freehold Games.