Giacomo Gambineri

This article was taken from The WIRED World in 2016 -- our fourth annual trends report, a standalone magazine in which our network of expert writers and influencers predicts what's coming next. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.

Producing a blockbuster video game -- so-called "AAA" titles such as Call of Duty or Uncharted -- is an expensive and labour-intensive process. (Bungie's Destiny, released in 2014, cost an estimated $500 million [£323m] to develop.) In 2016, however, a new type of video game will take centre stage: one whose worlds are created not by developers, but by algorithms. Using programmatic generation, games will become larger and more varied while slashing the costs of entry for indie developers.


Programmatic generation isn't new to gaming. In the 80s, classic titles such as Elite used algorithms to create its simple blocky environments, such as planets or asteroids. Modern titles already use it to create the kind of mass details required by games: weapons, plant life or the faces of orcs.

But now, inspired largely by the blockbuster success of Minecraft -- which uses programmatic generation to create its block-filled worlds -- a new wave of developers is adopting the technique in bigger and more inventive ways. The most high-profile of these: PlayStation 4 title No Man's Sky, created by Guildford-based developer Hello Games, which uses algorithms not to create a world, but an entire universe. No Man's Sky claims to contain the potential to generate an astonishing 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets for players to explore. "Right now, if you have a game idea and it's set in a city, then you are going to need hundreds of artists to build that city by hand. It's why sequels are so common and real innovation is very rare," says Hello Games founder Sean Murray, 35. "Procedural generation allows us, a little team in Guildford, to build an incomprehensibly big universe filled with a huge amount of variety."

Read next The future of online retail is collaboration The future of online retail is collaboration

Giacomo Gambineri

Procedural generation has been embraced by the space genre -- Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen both use the technique to populate their universes -- but it's not the only category jumping on board. Indie developers have used the tool as a means to create huge, enveloping worlds at a fraction of the cost of AAA titles. Games such as Terraria and Salt create new worlds and stories for players to explore on each play; Stranded Deep creates an ocean of desert islands, which the player must survive by adapting (think Castaway, but bleaker).

It's not just environments, either: in Rimworld, an "AI storyteller" creates events and mini-narratives for the player; Moon Hunters uses the technique to create "myths" -- in-world stories and art -- about the player's exploits; and in SkySaga: Infinite Isles, a role-playing game by UK-based Radiant Worlds, entire adventures are generated by algorithm. "We wanted to give the player something new to play with every time," says design director Ben Fisher, 34. "We want SkySaga to become what we call an anecdote engine: where the unique combination of circumstances turns into a story that nobody else has experienced, and you're eager to share."


Algorithms as designers has the potential to turn the whole notion of developing on its head. "Our art director is used to just creating beautiful art, then exporting into a game," says Murray. "I have to analyse why flowers grow at the base of trees in a meadow, and come up with a formula that would cause this to happen." "Another disadvantage is that you can't directly tailor the player's experience -- a great deal of the skill in game design comes down to tuning the player's emotional journey," says Fisher. "It may sound counter-intuitive, but a lot of effort has gone into figuring out exactly how much you have to group and filter content to stop it feeling too random."

Algorithms are also dumb, which means extensive testing and tweaking. "When Minecraft generates a waterfall, it doesn't know this has happened," says Michael Cook, 27, a procedural generation researcher and founder of PROCJAM, an annual UK-based industry event. "A major challenge is building software that is good at analysing and understanding what it's made."

Still, with improvements in graphics -- traditionally used to sell gamers newer titles -- slowing relative to spiralling costs, procedural generation poses the prospective of a revolution. Soon, more games will no longer be limited to pre-scripted, film-like experiences, but will contain entire universes; developers won't be sculpting, but playing God. "It's a fraught process, one which requires programmers to be much more visually motivated than usual," says Murray of No Man's Sky. "But the pay-off is seeing flowers sprout up around the base of every tree in every meadow across an infinite universe."