Links: Evolutionary Game Design, Game Design the Old-Fashioned Way & The Zeroeth Move

Techniques of genetic and evolutionary computation are being increasingly applied to difficult real-world problems – often yielding results that are not merely academically interesting, but competitive with the work done by creative and inventive humans. Starting at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) in Seattle in 2004, cash prizes have been awarded for human-competitive results that had been produced by some form of genetic and evolutionary computation in the previous year...

An automatically created result is considered "human-competitive" if it satisfies at least one of the eight criteria below.

-----• (A) The result was patented as an invention in the past, is an improvement over a patented invention, or would qualify today as a patentable new invention.
-----• (B) The result is equal to or better than a result that was accepted as a new scientific result at the time when it was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
-----• (C) The result is equal to or better than a result that was placed into a database or archive of results maintained by an internationally recognized panel of scientific experts.
-----• (D) The result is publishable in its own right as a new scientific result ¾ independent of the fact that the result was mechanically created.
-----• (E) The result is equal to or better than the most recent human-created solution to a long-standing problem for which there has been a succession of increasingly better human-created solutions.
-----• (F) The result is equal to or better than a result that was considered an achievement in its field at the time it was first discovered.
-----• (G) The result solves a problem of indisputable difficulty in its field.
-----• (H) The result holds its own or wins a regulated competition involving human contestants (in the form of either live human players or human-written computer programs).

Hawaii is just like Dominion. Okay, that's a disingenuous lead to get you to read the rest of the post. But I do believe there is an important similarity: The most important part of both games comes before the first move...

[T]he genius of Hawaii is that all things are not equal from one game to the next. Fruits may be much farther away than boats. So Hawaii has this element of looking at the board, figuring out what's cheap in this game, and finding the intersection of cheap+synergistic. Which combination of tiles produces the best outcome, factoring in the cost?

Many aspiring game designers have crippling misconceptions about the process involved in creating a game from scratch, believing a "big idea" is all that is needed to get started. But game design requires action as well as thought, and proper training and practice to do so skillfully. In this indispensible guide, a published commercial game designer and longtime teacher offers practical instruction in the art of video and tabletop game design. The topics explored include the varying types of games, vital preliminaries of making a game, the nuts and bolts of devising a game, creating a prototype, testing, designing levels, technical aspects, and assessing nature of the audience. With practice challenges, a list of resources for further exploration, and a glossary of industry terms, this manual is essential for the nascent game designer and offers food for thought for even the most experienced professional.

As an online game store, it sometimes feels like the entire industry is out to shut you down. We're the evil demon in the mists, the boogieman destroying the fabric of the gaming universe. We are the bad guys.