Emergent Game Play

Note: I will review this later to flesh out disjointed thoughts and notes)

This program is the presentation of 3 papers.

The Significance of Jeep Tag: On Player-Imposed Rules in Video Games
By: Felan Parker

(PDF of file available after link)

The game takes place in Halo. The rules of Jeep Tag exist in the players, and are not included in the Halo engine. The engine of Halo provides the physics, the game comes from player imposed rule sets: an agrement between the players as to what the rules are.

Rules are by definition expansive. Add more rules to a game, then entirely new player opportunities emerge.

Expansive game design, is not modding. Expansive game play changes the game, modding does not. The game play changes and exists entirely outside of the game.

(unfortunately, Felon is reading his paper.)

In an analog game, one must read the rules in order to find out how to play. digital games can be figured out as you play, no requirement to read rules. This experimental learning/playing allows not only the game to emerge, but new ways of game play to emerge.

Visualizing Game Mechanics and Emergent Gameplay
By: Joris Dormans

(PDF of full paper after link)

Emergent game play to Joris is about the complexity of games. What I"m really interested in, is game gestalt.

Related research

• Pattern in Game Design (S. Bjork)
  
• Game Design diagrams (R Koster, 2005)
  
• UML use case diagram to represent game flow (MJ Taylor et. al., 2006
  
• UML for Chess & Tic Tac Toe (Stevens & Pooley, 1999)

His research focuses on board games with emergent gameplay. I try to visualize those structural qualities of games that directly contribute to the emergent gaqme play. What can be learnd from this type of games is relevant (to some extend) for all types of games.

Emergence: In emergent systems the whole is more than the sum of their parts: it is hard (if possible at all) to predeict the behavior of the whole by just looking at the behanvior of the parts. The best way to find out is to simulate the system, or (in the case of games) to play the game.

Some aspects to emergence:

• System of many independent active elements
• Sufficient level of activity
• Local communication indirectly enables long-range communciation (Wolfram, 2002)
• Feedback structures within the system
• different scalse of organization (Fromm, 2005

Aside: Interesting. An academic presenter wearing a lego block t-shirt. Very Cool!

Multiple feedback systems are better than a single feedback system. The relations between the two can create interesting emergent systems.
Game Diagrams can show model of:

• Resources
• Economy
• Feedback

Note to self: I really need to figure out how to diagram the systems in a game, and compare with how the system of learning overlays the game.

• Example of diagrams of the differences between Tic Tac Toe and connect 4.
• Next example: Power Grid. Shows the complicated diagram of Power Grid.
• Next example: Risk.
• Next Example: Settlers of Catan.
• Next Example: Boulder Dash

Does it work: Open and expressive (extendbale) notation Game design UML is still a work in progress, helps identify weaknesses and opportunities in the design. Further Work

• Extend with emergent computer games
• Identify patterns
• Visualize how patterns can be combined
• Brainstorming technique

Question: Have you identified a weaknesses in designs? Joris looked at the diagrams of Risk and Settlers and showed where some weaknesses were shown. His analysis on Risk was right on, but on Settlers, I would disagree. The point of the strategy identified as a weakness ("Doesn't add much to the game") was the development card. However, earlier he said the game is fun because of interaction. The strategy keeps people in the game, and can lead to a win, however it's about staying in the game to have the fun.

User Experiences of Game Idea Generation Games

By: Annakaisa Kultima, Johannes Niemel, Janne Paavilainen and Hannamari Saarenp

(PDF of full paper available after link)

In this presentation:

• Idea generation (Purposeful creation of new ideas).
• Developing idea generation tools for creative work (Creativity techniques, brainstorming techniques, idea generation techniques, complimentary for natural ideation processes.
• Domain specific idea generation
• Game-based idea generation

Reviewed some of their game ideas...ok, sort of flashed them on screen due to time constraints. Interesting presentation, but difficult following along. Need to read the paper. The focus is on games that are played to create new ideas.