There is a lot of creative process that goes into designing and developing a game. Mike Cook, a research assistant at the University of London raised an interesting question though: Can artificial intelligence design a game more compelling then something created by humans?

Cook is no stranger to this sort of thing. He created Angelina - an AI game designer. Now he is using Angelina to study how computers behave when given creative tasks.

Cook entered Angelina’s game into Ludum Jam, an event held every few months that challenges game designers to make a game in a single weekend.

The theme this time round was "You Only Get One", which, according to gameplay, gives players just one item or one chance to accomplish something.

Angelina began its creation process by searching its database, using an algorithm, to search for references with the word one, but since it found too many, it ignored that and looked for a similar word - "founder". It then started searching for metaphors associated with the word and based on the results, chose the game's imagery, setting, color scheme, items and sounds.

Her submission is called "To That Sect", a game where players find a certain object while avoiding others.

The AI chose colors of blood red, along with disturbing music. Cook doesn't feel that To The Sect ended up being representative of the Ludum Dare theme, but voters called it "creepy," which is always good when creating a compelling gaming experience.

Cook's experiment showed that even with preliminary stages of AI designing games, the results can be quite fascinating. Could the next big game be designed by an artificial intelligence? In time, it will probably get close to what we humans can creatively think of.

Via New Scientist