ABSTRACT
The procedural generation of entire worlds is surely one of the most compelling possibilities of algorithmic content. In a nonprocedural game, exploration as game mechanics can only ever be truly and fully present on the first-ever playthrough of a game when the player has no prior knowledge of the single fixed game world. Procedural world generation can produce in-game worlds of a scale and complexity that handmade worlds could never hope to match, given the time and effort required by a developer to place every little part of that world. The author is therefore trying to move away from these quite mechanistic models of culture, and toward a deeper portrayal of individual cultures in the actions and deeds of their peoples, in shared aesthetic styles and the embodiment of practices and beliefs, in order to lend a depth, believability, and most importantly meaning to generated worlds, which are so often lacking.
