Landmarks, Monuments, and Beacons: Understanding Generative Calls to Action

Algorithmic evaluation of procedurally generated content struggles to find metrics that align with human experience, particularly for composite artefacts. Automatic decomposition as a possible solution requires concepts that meet a range of properties. To this end, drawing on Games Studies and Game AI research, we introduce the nested concepts of textitLandmarks, textitMonuments, and textitBeacons. These concepts are based on the artefact's perceivability, evocativeness, and Call to Action, all from a player-centric perspective. These terms are generic to games and usable across genres. We argue that these entities can be found and evaluated with techniques currently used in both research and industry, opening a path towards a fully automated decomposition of PCG, and evaluation of the salient sub-components. Although the work presented here emphasises mixed-initiative PCG and compositional PCG, we believe it applies beyond those domains. With this approach, we intend to create a connection between humanities and technical game research and allow for better computational PCG evaluation