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We're the tech support guys. In a narrow, oddly-shaped building deep within the Imperial College campus in South Kensington, a PhD student named Michael Cook sits working beneath a large picture called The Dancing Salesman Problem. On his laptop, he is building something astonishing. He is building a game designer.
He's been successful, too - albeit in a qualified sort of way. The qualifications, though, are fascinating, as is his artificial designer's output. Over the last few years, Cook's programs have created games about Peter Mandelson and games about rape. They've arrived, independently, at the gravity-flipping conceit that made Terry Cavanagh's VVVVVV such a clever platformer, and they've even built emergent mechanics from bugs in existing code. They've taught Cook a lot about how games get put together, and in the future, he hopes, they may even be able to show the rest of us something much more valuable. Something truly extraordinary.
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