Friday, May 30, 2008

Emergent Gameplay

According to the wikipedia definition, emergent gameplay is:

Emergent gameplay is the creative use of a game in ways unexpected by the game designer's original intent. It commonly appears as complex behaviors that emerge from the interaction of simple game mechanisms.


I've always been keen on developing truly original game ideas. The idea of emergent gameplay hit me really hard. The originality of the game doesn't always have to come from the game designer. If the game is structured in special ways, it can be played in ways which have never been thought of before. Now that's emergent gameplay. Not only does it bring originality to the game, it also tremendously adds to the replay value of the game.

But now I'm beginning to wonder. How do we develop games that allow the rise of emergent gameplay. Is it through a complex AI system that changes unpredictably yet intelligibly with time? Or is through exploitation of a new combination of a lot of simple rules of a game?

The question is worth exploring...

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