Experiments in Motivating Exploratory Agents

Exploration is found in a variety of game genres, but there has been little research in the context of PCG. This paper investigates the potential for exploratory agents to provide feedback on how well levels support exploration, with the ultimate goal of guiding level generation. We propose several motivations which might drive exploratory behaviour and model these as metrics within an agent framework based on context steering. We present a study of how the different metrics influence exploration of six game levels. It was found that combinations of metrics lead to distinct exploratory behaviours, mostly within our expectations.