Achieving desirable gameplay objectives by niched evolution of game parameters

Setting parameters for video games is important and often difficult. Poor choices can lead to games being too easy or too difficult, too short or too long, too linear or too open-ended. In many cases there is no alternative to making value judgments on what these parameter values should be. This paper explores whether evolutionary computation can be successfully applied to finding values that facilitate desired gameplay objectives in a Tower Defense game. Initial experiments suggest that a two-tier evolutionary method can create strategies to successfully play such games and configurations of game parameters that facilitate gameplay objectives desired by the developer.