Another week, another topic. I think I will settle into alternating a game genre with a game concept, it seems to have been working well so far.

This week we will be talking about Emergent Gameplay. This term is, like the previous week’s, fairly self explanatory; it describes gameplay (puzzle solving, narratives, etc.) that arises naturally as a result of combinatory game mechanics and systems rather than having been hardcoded or otherwise directly intended. It is most common in simulation-based games and games involving procedural generation, but can crop up anywhere. Immersive Sims are known for this, and it is one of their core design philosophies - to give the player tools and let them come up with their own solution, one that works as the logical consequence of a series of actions rather than hardcoded. Emergent Narrative is a term used as a subset of Emergent Gameplay, to specifically describe when a story or narrative sequence of events is born naturally through gameplay, often driven by the player’s involvement but not deliberately implemented by the devs.

Here are some questions and subtopics that I encourage people to discuss:

  • What are some of your favorite games that encourage emergent gameplay and/or emergent narrative?
  • What instances of emergent gameplay have you been most proud of executing?
  • What emergent narratives have you encountered and/or engineered that you found particularly interesting or compelling?
  • What game design elements do you feel are most conducive toward generating emergent gameplay? What hinders it?
  • Have you had any instances of emergent gameplay crop up from games that you wouldn’t’ve expected it to occur in?

Also feel free to bring up anything you like related to the topic! If you have suggestions for future discussion topics, leave them in the suggestion thread.

Additional Resources
  • None this time! If you have something that would be good to put here, let me know.
  • @Katana314English
    2•1 year ago

    I think I’ve realized some of my favorite games recently have involved a lot of walking up to objects and holding the E key to fill a meter.

    That sounds like a terribly bad-modern style of game, but of course the context of decisionmaking and effects to those actions can be very important. Going to a terminal that takes 10 seconds to hack may mean 10 seconds you’re very vulnerable to attacks, and that a success means you successfully distracted, or trapped out, any adversaries that may not want you to hold E.

    And then of course, it’s also fun sometimes for singleplayer games when you don’t want the tension of outsmarting opponents, just rewards for good positional decisionmaking.