thread: 2013-09-03 : Ordering the Conversation: How do you choose?
On 2013-09-03, Rickard wrote:
To make a system create a result, you must make it's components interact. The result is called emergence. Four people in a room creates a closed system. When they interact, an emergence will appear.
I know five groups of components that can exist in an activity.
- meaning (questions about existence)
- structures (techniques and game mechanics)
- group (the participants and their relations)
- fiction (a story being revealed)
- setting (world and it's occupants)
Components from same group can interact with each other or a component from one group can interact with a component from another group. It all depends on what the designer think is the interesting part of the activity.
It's not that simple, because we also got four different reasons to engage in an activity - and we have all of them at different levels during different situations.
Exploration: to discover the components and find their interaction.
Expression: to express yourself through the activity.
Competition: to be challenged by the activity or the other participants.
Sensation: to feel, to experience, to get an insight, to escape from reality.
Playing one game can activate several of these engagements at different levels while another game activates them at another level. Even playing the game for the first time will be different compared to if you played the game a lot.
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Now, an extraordinary thing happens when you combine the components with the engagements. To explore the structure of the game (ex. tactics), to sensate the setting, to compete with the group. These are all emergences of what the system creates, and these are the reasons why the magic system will be different to one another ...
... or traditional. I mean, if you played a game several times and picks up another similar game, you will expect it to have the same ratio of engagement as the previous one. The same goes with designing similar games. You draw from your experience in how you normally play them, and will therefor create a similar emergence from what you've done before.
