Persona-driven Dominant/Submissive Map (PDSM) Generation for Tutorials

Aug 27, 2026

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Automated persona-driven video game tutorial level generation is addressed through a method that uses procedural personas to compute behavioral characteristics for tutorial scenarios. The behavioral descriptors drive evolutionary search using Constrained MAP-Elites, where each evolved map is evaluated by simplicity as a quality criterion. Results demonstrate that the generated maps can strongly encourage or discourage persona-like behaviors and span from simple solutions to complex puzzle levels, making them suitable for generative tutorial systems.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages10

Reading Time25 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Tutorial generation and player-specific needs

Experience-driven procedural content generation (EDPCG)

Designing tutorials for playstyles

Persona-driven Dominant/Submissive Map (PDSM) Generation for Tutorials Michael Cerny Green [mike.green@nyu.edu](mike.green@nyu.edu)[ ](mike.green@nyu.edu)New York University New York, New York, USA Ahmed Khalifa [ahmed.khalifa@um.edu.mt](ahmed.khalifa@um.edu.mt)[ ](ahmed.khalifa@um.edu.mt)University of Malta Msida, Malta arXiv :2204 .05217v1 [ cs .AI] 11 Apr 2022 M Charity [mlc761@nyu.edu](mlc761@nyu.edu)[ ](mlc761@nyu.edu)New York University New York, New York, USA Julian Togelius [julian@togelius.com](julian@togelius.com)[ ](julian@togelius.com)New York University New York, New York, USA ABSTRACT In this paper, we present a method for automated persona-driven video game tutorial level generation. Tutorial levels are scenarios in which the player can explore and discover different rules and game mechanics. Procedural personas can guide generators to create content which encourages or discourages certain playstyle behaviors. In this system, we use procedural personas to calculate the behavioral characteristics of levels which are evolved using the quality-diversity algorithm known as Constrained MAP-Elites. An evolved map’s quality is determined by its simplicity: the simpler it is, the better it is. Within this work, we show that the generated maps can strongly encourage or discourage different persona-like behaviors and range from simple solutions to complex puzzle-levels, making them perfect candidates for a tutorial generative system. CCS CONCEPTS • Applied computing → Computer games; • Mathematics of computing → Evolutionary algorithms. KEYWORDS procedural level generation, procedural persona, quality diversity, evolution, experience driven level generation, minidungeons ACM Reference Format: Michael Cerny Green, Ahmed Khalifa, M Charity, and Julian Togelius. 2022. Persona-driven Dominant/Submissive Map (PDSM) Generation for Tutorials. In Proceedings of International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG’22). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 10 pages. [https://doi.org/10.1145/](https://doi.org/10.1145/)[ ](https://doi.org/10.1145/)nnnnnnn.nnnnnnn 1 INTRODUCTION Most games include some form of tutorial that teaches you how to play the game. In particular, games often feature levels that teach the player various aspects of the game. It is very common Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions [from permissions@acm.org](from permissions@acm.org). FDG’22, September 05–08, 2022, Athens, Greece © 2022 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-XXXX-X/18/06. . . $15.00 [https://doi.org/10.1145/nnnnnnn.nnnnnnn](https://doi.org/10.1145/nnnnnnn.nnnnnnn) for such tutorial content to occur at the beginning of the game, but also whenever new mechanics, NPC types or similar concepts are introduced. For example, when you find the grapple hook in one of the Zelda games, you can be certain to find a few puzzles nearby that requires you to use it so that you can learn by doing. Many games feature some form of level generation, and procedural content generation for games is also an active research field [35] . In this context, the question of how to generate tutorials has attracted some attention recently [3, 13, 14, 16] . The reasons for wanting to generate tutorials are multiple: one might want to part-automate the tutorial creation process to free up game designers and developers to work on other topics; one might want to enable automatically generated games to have tutorial

FAQs

What problem does the paper address in video game tutorial design?

It targets automated generation of tutorial level content that can teach or influence how players use game mechanics and playstyles.

How are procedural personas used in the generation process?

Procedural personas compute behavioral characteristics that guide the generator in producing levels aligned with or against certain playstyle behaviors.

What algorithm evaluates and evolves the tutorial level maps?

Levels are evolved using Constrained MAP-Elites, with map quality determined by simplicity so the system prefers simpler, higher-quality solutions.

Aug 27, 2026

Upload by Aditya