Procedural generation underlies the most popular game of all time (Minecraft) and is foundational for numerous other games of a similar type - Dwarf Fortress, et al.
And it's used to power effect where you might not expect it (Stardew Valley mines).
What procedural generation does NOT work at is generating "story elements" though perhaps even that can fall, Dwarf Fortress already does decently enough given that the player will fill in the blanks.
> And it's used to power effect where you might not expect it (Stardew Valley mines).
Apparently Stardew Valley's mines are not procedurally generated, but rather hand-crafted. Per their recent 10 year anniversary video, the developer did try to implement procedural generation for the mines, but ended up scrapping it:
https://www.stardewvalley.net/stardew-valley-10-year-anniver...
They're quasi-generated with random elements and fixed elements - similarly to early Diablo procedural generation.
That’s not the same procedural generation as GPT or diffusion and you know it.
It’s not even in the same ballpark as Elite, NMS, terraria, or Minecraft.
The levels are all hand drawn, not generated by an algorithm, even if they’re shuffled. Eric Barone, the developer, has publicly said as much. Are you calling him a liar?
It’s like the difference between sudoku/crossword and conways game of life
And here I thought the most popular game of all time was Soccer or Super Mario Bros 3