ABSTRACT
Content selection is something that happens frequently inside games. This chapter looks at a simple yet powerful content selection mechanism that uses tags. In a game with dynamic content, it can be helpful for content creators to know where content is sparse. Tag-based content selection has been used in several other games. SWAT 4, Tribes: Vengeance, BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite by Irrational Games used something very similar to tag-based content selection. The system matched audio and visual effects to abstract game events at runtime, by examining the nature of the content involved in the event and then choosing the "best match" effect that artists had mapped for that combination. The storytelling game Six Ages also makes heavy use of tags. Rule-based systems have their place. For instance, systems that select audio reactions for AI-controlled entities are inherently complex, because they need to react to a lot of different stimuli in complex ways.
