Emergent Gameplay

Over the past few days, I have come across an interesting concept in my free time that I’d like to talk about here. Emergent Gamepaly.

What is it?

This is the practice of, within a set of pre-existing mechanics, creating a new way to play a game with a different set of rules than those provided.
While user created game play is something I found to be of low quality in my contextual review, the scope is still very broad.

An example

Take children on a playground for example. Games I played in my childhood like Tag, Cops and Robbers and stuck in the mud where all games made up that simply used people as the players.
Add a ball to the mix, and you get catch and doge ball.
Add the ability to create markings, and this can become almost any sport.
These are all ideas I have thought of from the top of my head, but in terms of depth, yuo can see how adding simple tools can add infinite ways to play, and this is something I feel games designers could embrace.

Current application within games

2 examples I have found that had taken steps to incorporate this are Runescape, a fantasy MMORPG by Jagex, and Habbo Hotel, by Sulake is an avatar based chat game set in various use created ‘rooms’ that originated in Finland.
This year, both have added tools to help automate, streamline, or give additional options to players who set up community based game play outside the core content of the game.
Jagex, for instance, created tools that would simply make games fair, such as dice that all players could see, race markers, voting systems and the such, meaning that everything could be done in an orderly fashion.

Habbo Hotel on the other hand already had numerous games ran by users, with the primary mechanics available being the ability to move in 4 directions, and for various items of furniture to move and be interacted with (sat on, or changed state) and a large amount of games had been created as simple variations on one person moving items and players having to avoid or get to them in some form.
But within the last week or so, a series of items have been released, the “Wired Furniture” which allows users to create automated processes, with the basic formula of Trigger (+ condition) = Effect users can combine the various triggers and effects to create rooms that move on their own, items that respond to touch, and even the ability to use passwords.
I will talk about this more in my next post, and I hope to bring a unique style of game play to the table. (You’ll have to believe its unique, unless you have experience with the community!)

In closing

To close off, I should say this is something I am particularly interested in, as somebody who, when I was young, would roam around off course in Mario Kart, and give voices to the racers as if they where toys, finding ways to squeeze more fun out of a game, and subsequently more length is a very important element which has yet to be fully utilised within games.