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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Emergent Gameplay

  
 
Happy Dave Has Left
22:44 / 19.10.07
Hello,

Let's talk about Emergent Gameplay. That Wikipedia link is a good place to start, because it succintly defines this type of gameplaying as 'creative use of a game in ways unexpected by the game designer's original intent'. I'd like to see this thread as a discussion of a few things, namely:

- emergent gameplay that you have engaged in yourself, and what appealed to you about it
- the broader implications of increasingly complex games and artificial environments for increased instances of emergent gameplay
- 'free' or 'sandbox' gameplay, allowing the user apparent freedoms, and the unusual and interesting things that result

With, of course, the option to go off on great roaring tangents where useful, and expand our remit.

First off, here's a few of the key types, if you like, of EG I've seen.

Glitching
This is the most common I think, and dates right back to Sonic the Hedgehog (and possibly well before) when you could often find invisible ledges where programmers had accidentally made something a few pixels too big. Other examples are very high spots in Halo 2 & 3 multiplayer (and other FPSs) that can be reached through unforseen routes and used as virtually unassailable sniper positions, or the relatively common experience of walking through or being catapulted over the edge of a level and finding yourself in a Tron-like 'gamespace' of greyness.

Exploits
God mode, 'no-clipping' through walls, unlimited ammo. Just try and tell me you've never typed in a cheat and gone on a 3 hour killfest, laughing as their puny bullets/cars/arrows pinged off you like so many raindrops. I know I have.

Tooling around, or sandbox livin'
We've covered a lot of this ground in the sandbox games and MMO threads, but I think there could be a lot to discover in the corners of these types of games, the type of game where you boot up and just spend a couple of hours riding a BMX around San Andreas, or stealing planes and going parachuting, or flying at sub-light speed between solar systems in EVE Online, just to see if it can be done. It's when you're sitting doing something in an MMO or a sandbox game that would make the designers scratch their heads and think 'sheesh, never thought anyone would just sit and do that for a couple of hours at a go. Meanwhile, in the back of your head, a tiny voice says 'shit, this is awesome, just like the holodeck in Star Trek - I can do whatever I want!'

There are others (the Wiki article lumps in things like modding and machinima to the idea of EG, but I'd prefer if we stick to unmodified games and the wacky things we do with them).

So, what say you Barbelith? A cruise around Los Santos in a pimped out low-rider and skydiving from that big mountain? Or perhaps we should jump off the map in Half Life 2 again and see how far the grey goes....
 
 
w1rebaby
20:14 / 21.10.07
Everything that I am interested in these days tends to be sandbox or twitch.

I discovered that I wasn't really very interested in storylines, I think with Elder Scrolls: Arena, where I was quite happy wandering around mugging people and exploring landscapes as opposed to going into buggy dungeons. But even with Jet Set Willy and text adventures, exploring was always the most rewarding thing to do, seeing where the edge of the world was and testing how it would respond. I used to write games on the BBC B in which the only thing one could do was wander about between areas.

N64 Zelda perhaps was the first 3D open exploration game that I remember - I used to spend hours just wandering about and trying to get behind things, which is probably why I never finished it. GTA:SA is a super version of that, and I predict that I will never tire of it. There are also the "software toy" games like the Sims and SimCity, where there is nothing to do apart from create and explore, and open games like Civilisation where the real challenge is exploring the behaviour of the computer player and the number of options open to you, rather than facing any specific challenge.

Twitch games have their own visceral reward though. I play Mario Kart like a bastard. Nailing you with a red shell just before you get to the finish line will never get old. Perhaps the best combination I have found is the Castlevania games, which are both twitch and explore.

At the moment I don't really play games. I am on Second Life, which is the ultimate sandbox, and I have moved to be a professional developer for real money there. When I am playing other games I will go for either sandbox or twitch, Sims or Mario. I don't see the point in going for intermediaries these days.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
12:14 / 27.10.07
I thought a good example of emergent gameplay was Urban Dead, which if you recall Barbelith as a whole went crazy about a couple of years ago. It had the most basic set-up, but really came into its own when players starting grouping together and setting their own objectives- anything from organised territorial war to running marathons from one end of the city to the other.
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
17:06 / 30.10.07
dunno if it's a good example, but I was once at a party where the entire, pumped through big speakers soundtrack for the night was provided by random party people stealing cars in Vice City and changing the radio station.

mm, also brings back fond memories of that fucking amazing NES game Spyhunter. my roommate in college used to trade off with me setting up shit where you're off the screen where no one can hit you and you just sit there, doing nothing, while enemy cars crash into the wall and your score slowly builds. I think we let it run for at least a couple of days but I don't remember that we ever discovered anything interesting.

I had a friend in college who beat a level (the last level?) of Dune 2 with no units except a sandcrawler, by moving it around and encouraging enemy units to fire at each other until they were all gone. took him days.

I've also done a few similar challenges like beating Zelda with only the red sword, getting the master sword without getting the first two, beating Final Fantasy 1 with only the White Mage, etc. Frustrating and slow, fun to figure out tricks that make it possible. Not sure where that kind of silly patience comes from though.
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
17:18 / 30.10.07
sorry, that's not much of a discussion. let me talk about why I liked it then.

for me the fun was in figuring out some trick to make it all work. there's only one way to make the no-swords rule in Zelda work (you have to start by hitting up the guy in the north-east for free rupees and buy a blue candle.) or playing FF with the white wizard(s) - it's the worst thing ever until you get to this crypt full of undead near the dark elf's castle where you can unload with your Harm spells and earn loads of cash and XP.

Unlike most of the game secrets I know, I didn't read this stuff in Nintendo Power or whatever. I figured them out on my own, usually by reasoning out what might work (not by exhaustively trying random shit, which I've never had much patience for, for some reason.)

Makes me feel smart, I guess.
 
 
Feverfew
17:42 / 30.10.07
I have fond memories of testing the ways of beating Command and Conquer. Comedy Guerilla tactics fall apart, however, in the multiplayer mode, but in single player it was interesting (in the original at least) to avoid the Build Up Big Force Base Rush tactics and go for smaller units, hitting and running. More viable when they put in the medic unit, I seem to remember.

This came to a head when I ended up finishing off Red Alert using only Chronotroops - Bamf in, one after the other, then lock on to anything and everything, and as long as you had as many chronotroops as they had base defences, you were basically golden to dissect the entire place as you liked.

Then came C&C Generals. The most fun to be had with that was playing as the GLA, wherein once you had the camouflage upgrade, you could set up little hijacker points and rip apart enemy attacks. Just set the units up on a place where the enemy was likely to come, number them up and off you go; if you were lucky, you got a force of your own, and if you weren't, you could take apart the enemy's force without risking more than a few ground units. Add into the mix the special unit (Jermaine Kell, I believe), who could snipe the drivers out of cars, and you were on for full-ambush style gameplay, as opposed to the Chinese force's brute-force numbers approach or the American's technological approach.

Although the Chinese did have a tank so big it had the option to build a mobile radio mast on top. (Then again, the GLA did have possibly the worst-taste unit ever, in the Suicide Bomber. I'm not even going to repeat the sound sample they gave for his 'built noise'. Ugh.)

I'm eulogising now for the C&C series, now, however, and I feel I should stop. They weren't designed in any way for emergent gameplay, other than allowing you choice of unit.

I've mellowed, and I'm working my way through the latest DS Harvest Moon, which combines Farming and Dungeon Crawling, quite impressively. It has emergent gameplay in the way that you decide what you want to do every day, with the caveat that you have to make some cashy money to keep your stables fed. Except the stables are now for the monsters you capture - by running up to them and stroking them as they attack you, until they are so stoked by stroking that they decide working for you would be better - and they'll do jobs around the farm for you.

I currently have a wizard watering my crops and a giant ant collecting them, along with a stable full of Sheep Monsters that like being sheared.

There is a storyline behind it - the dungeons get progressively harder commensurate with levelling up, and you're encouraged to Find a Girl, Settle Down, If you want, maybe get married (once you've expanded your house), but you don't have to do anything except maintain your farm. It can be blissful, it can be annoying.

My desire to test games for twinges of emergent-ness has declined in proportion with my age, I find, however - but that's mostly a time thing, in that I don't have the time or, occasionally, the patience, to play for long enough to find interesting things out. Then again, maybe I should have got out more...
 
  
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