This would be a REALLY cool contest: make a "random" game generator, where the objectives of this app would be be

1)It makes fun "games"
2)It makes "very different" (from one another) games

In practice you would probably have to limit to very simple arcade-style games, though maybe not.

(I was thinking of using my physics engine to put objects randomly in space and somehow randomize what you are controlling and the game objective.)

Anyway I think it would be really interesting to try and do one

Possibly it's worth further investigation, but my guess is the best people could do (with the results be fun rather then weird) would result in something more similar to a game with a random level generator then a series of unique-'enough' games.

Feel free to try this out, I'd be willing to follow the progress.

I think someone posted this a while ago: http://clevermedia.com/game.php?myog

It's very difficult to get emergent behavior that works well and is fun without explicitly designing it. You can randomize a lot of the game behavior, but too much and it's not possible to balance the game properly.

Quote:It's very difficult to get emergent behavior that works well and is fun without explicitly designing it. You can randomize a lot of the game behavior, but too much and it's not possible to balance the game properly.

I would be satisfied enough just with very "different" kind of games, even if they're not fun or balanced.

Among the games I played and remember, the one with the maximium (both in quality and quantity) randomness is Zangband, where all levels are randomly generated and also the surface is. Damn what a cool game.

Yes it would be very difficult but probably it's possible and for sure interesting.