Let's Make Games Together: Explainability in Mixed-initiative Co-creative Game Design

Solange Margarido, Penousal Machado, Licínio Roque, Pedro Martins

Abstract: There has been growing development of co-creative systems for game design, where both humans and computers work as colleagues, proactively contributing with creative input. However, the collaborative process is still not as seamless as in human-human co-creativity. A key element still underdeveloped in these approaches is the communication between the human and the machine, which can be facilitated by providing the computational agent with explanatory capabilities. Based on principles of explainability for co-creative systems from previous literature, we propose a framework of explainability specifically applied to mixed-initiative scenarios in game design. We illustrate the applications of the framework by suggesting possible solutions adapted to different use cases of existing approaches and, additionally, of our own proposed approach.