As Kate Compton quipped in her amazing post about procedural generators, every bowl of oatmeal is unique. Uniqueness almost always is used in the weakest, most technically correct way possible. It might also mean that, mathematically speaking, there's a rock somewhere on the planet that doesn't look like any other rock in the universe. 'Every Planet Unique' might mean that each planet has a complex sci-fi backstory rich enough to fill a two-part Star Trek episode. These words are not necessarily used falsely (although I'm sure they are in some instances, but I'm not here to cast aspersions), but intentionally or not they do mislead people, because they are very easily interpreted in a lot of different ways.
It talks in numbers and powers of ten, and bigger is always better. It uses words like discover, unique, endless, forever, replayable. Procedural generation has a vocabulary that you'll most likely be familiar with. The Binding of Isaac's Steam page, for example, promises ' you never play the same game twice' but no-one so much as raises an eyebrow when they sit down and discover that they are, shockingly, playing The Binding Of Isaac every time. What was surprising about No Man's Sky's first trailer was the degree to which people were buying into its claims, before almost anything was known about the game (before even the developers were truly sure what they were making, I imagine). On its own, this language was not a surprising angle for a game to take in its marketing. It also included several interesting phrases which stood out to me, including Every Atom Procedural and Every Planet Unique. The first trailer for No Man's Sky caused an incredible stir when it launched, showing vivid planets with diverse organic life on it, implying all manner of space adventures. We need to talk about how we talk about procedural generation.
With the release of No Man's Sky this month, I feel like it simply can't be ignored any longer. But throughout this evolution and growth one area has remained largely the same, swept under the rug every time it caused problems, hoping that we could forget about it for a little longer. We've seen old ideas refined and polished over those decades, and new ideas experimented with and tested out. We are approaching the 40th anniversary of Rogue, Elite has already had its 30th birthday, and even sprightly young Spelunky is coming up to double digits. Procedural generation has been around for a long, long time now. It originally appeared at Games By ANGELINA. This is the first in a short series of posts about No Man's Sky and the future of procedural generation.
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