Rogue: Procedural Generation
Matt Barton · 2019
Rogue’s development, like many games originating on mainframes, was a collaborative effort among college students, who had little thought at the time of profiting from their creation: Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, Ken Arnold, and Jon Lane. Rogue ’s success on the college scene seemed to bode well for a commercial release. After graduating and moving to Italy, Toy met Jon Lane, who helped him found a company called A.I. Design to adapt and publish Rogue for the new IBM PC. Rogue represents an addictive and compelling hack and slash type of experience. Unlike the majority of Computer role-playing games, it’s an easy game to pick up and play for a few minutes while waiting for a bus. An interesting question concerning rogue-likes is whether advanced graphics contribute to or distract from the essential gameplay. Some prefer American Standard Code for Information Interchange or other character set graphics, but others choose games with more advanced graphics.