Procedural Generation in Game Design

I would be remiss if I didn’t inform you that the Procedural Generation in Game Design book, organized and edited by Tanya X. Short and Tarn Adams, is out.

It’s very dense.  Each chapter covers a lot of ground. There’s chapters on level design, expressive range, meaning, puzzles, rules, narrative, audio–just a ton of topics. By a lot of experts:  It’s even got a small sidebar that I contributed.

I’d love to go more in depth on everything it covers, but I’m still working my way through it! Like I said, there’s a lot of stuff in here. I could do a whole post on just the first chapter, where Darren Grey lays out why you might want to use procedural generation–and just as importantly, reasons why you might not.