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Lancehead · Mar 26, 2012

zkylon said:
System Shock 2 and Thief 2 I think qualify, but it has nothing to do with atmosphere or all-caps IMMERSION.

Eh? I meant environment as in player-environment interaction. Stalker's environment is filled with simulated AI. It doesn't have as many tools available to players as some other games may provide, but this is not about satisfying a bullet point list. Broadly, if you're interacting with game environment which isn't scripted mostly, then there's some immersion.

And 'atmosphere' is not a detached concept from immersive sims. You may have various stipulated gameplay systems, but without great atmosphere, immersive sims don't provide enough immersion, which defeats the game's purpose. Note that those gameplay systems do contribute towards atmosphere.

For example, the sound design in Thief 2 contributes heavily towards the game's atmosphere because the AI is not scripted. At the same time, that sound design is an important part of gameplay.

Going by that example, I would say that the elements of environment which both create an engaging atmosphere and be a part of gameplay systems, are crucial to immersive sims.

Totobeni · Mar 26, 2012

With Zenimax killing Prey 2 and keeping Dishonored alive,Dishonored better be/have to be good, like really really super heavenly good.

SoulUnison · Mar 26, 2012

Oh, I thought this was going to be a topic about untrustworthy gaming news sources.

Wiktor · Mar 26, 2012

In reality the only games that truly are immersive sim are propably Thief, Tresspasser and STALKER. But the term is simply used for every game that follows the design principles and style of Looking Glass Studio, because immersive sim was the ideal for which they aimed. As always with games, historical context means everything, while using literal meaning of the words that make up the name will lead you nowhere.

And while it might be hard to explain just what this Looking GLass Studio style is, at the same time it's instantly recognizable when you play the game.

robin2 · Mar 26, 2012

zkylon said:
A big thing on Immersive Sims is that there are a number of semi-complex systems that you need to exploit to solve problems through emergent gameplay. Crysis or STALKER play more like "sandbox FPSes" or something like that.

I agree.

zkylon said:
the systems outside shooting are too simple and they all end up converging in the action mechanics (i.e. you can do some stealth or choose how you traverse an area, but you still spend most of your time shooting or looking for ways to optimize your shooting).

That's exactly why I, personally, see Bioshock "just" as a fps too: 90% of the time you're strafing around and firing your uber and rich arsenal at countless enemies, the player challenge is largely reflex-based (system shock 2 is very different here).

Dead Man · Mar 26, 2012

Looks good, hope it has some deep mechanics though.

subversus · Mar 27, 2012

robin2 said:
That's exactly why I, personally, see Bioshock "just" as a fps too: 90% of the time you're strafing around and firing your uber and rich arsenal at countless enemies, the player challenge is largely reflex-based (system shock 2 is very different here).

again I disagree. It seems that people got suddenly braindead when they started playing Bioshock. May be it happened because ammunition was in abundance and shooting sucked less comparing to SS2. Also no weapon degradation.

I played as a stealthy hacker character who set up traps and use this plasmid which made enemies attack each other and another plasmed which made Big Daddies think that he is a Big Sister. I see no real difference between SS2 and Bioshock. SS2 was harder, that is all. The challenge it imposed made people think creatively and manage resources a lot. It seems that if a challenge is not imposed people stop thinking creatively.

Messofanego · Mar 27, 2012

Totobeni said:
With Zenimax killing Prey 2 and keeping Dishonored alive,Dishonored better be/have to be good, like really really super heavenly good.

Is it really that black-and-white for a publisher to cancel a game?

latinlikeaviolin · Mar 27, 2012

Looks really good. I love immersive sims. Shame I haven't heard this until today.

Lancehead · Mar 27, 2012

subversus said:
I played as a stealthy hacker character who set up traps and use this plasmid which made enemies attack each other and another plasmed which made Big Daddies think that he is a Big Sister. I see no real difference between SS2 and Bioshock. SS2 was harder, that is all. The challenge it imposed made people think creatively and manage resources a lot. It seems that if a challenge is not imposed people stop thinking creatively.

The character progression in Shock 2 is much deeper and better.

And the shooting was fine. It was less about reflexes and more management.

subversus · Mar 27, 2012

Lancehead255 said:
The character progression in Shock 2 is much deeper and better.

I was talking about the genre, not about particulars. The core is the same, that is what important when we discuss the genre.

Lancehead · Mar 27, 2012

subversus said:
I was talking about the genre, not about particulars. The core is the same, that is what important when we discuss the genre.

Ah, I misread that. Although both games may be considered 'immersive sims', I wouldn't say the core is the same.

guidestone · Mar 29, 2012

subversus said:
Deus Ex: HR and Bloodlines are different because most times they have predetermined solutions for each situation.

ALL games have "predetermined" solutions, in the sense that there's nothing "emergent" about them. The criterion of emergence is calculability or predictability. In electronic games, everything is predictable and calculable.

subversus · Mar 29, 2012

guidestone said:
ALL games have "predetermined" solutions, in the sense that there's nothing "emergent" about them. The criterion of emergence is calculability or predictability. In electronic games, everything is predictable and calculable.

no. too long to explain. I wasn't talking about you need to press a) to get to b). I was talking about what you can do in order to press a). Subtleties, you know.

guidestone · Mar 29, 2012

subversus said:
no. too long to explain. I wasn't talking about you need to press a) to get to b). I was talking about what you can do in order to press a). Subtleties, you know.

Doesn't change the fact that it's all predetermined. "Just" the degree of it differs, i.e the granularity of simulation.

zkylon · Mar 29, 2012

guidestone said:
Doesn't change the fact that it's all predetermined. "Just" the degree of it differs, i.e the granularity of simulation.

That's a technicality that doesn't really make a difference. The more complex a system is and the more subsystems it has, the more difficult it is to predict and the more emergent gameplay it can spawn. The scenarios may never be infinite because that's simply not possible, so debating if it's emergent or not based on that is pretty much wasting your time.

There's a big difference between stuff like placing pots on top of shopkeepers' heads in Skyrim to avoid being caught while stealing (emergent gameplay) and choosing stealth or action in Alpha Protocol (multiple flat-out gameplay options).

Those are the differences that matter.

subversus · Mar 29, 2012

zkylon said:
There's big difference between stuff like placing pots on top of shopkeepers' heads in Skyrim to avoid being caught while stealing (emergent gameplay) choosing stealth or action on Alpha Protocol (multiple flat-out gameplay options).

Those are the differences that matter.

yep, I meant exactly this.

Riposte · Mar 29, 2012

zkylon said:
That's a technicality that doesn't really make a difference. The more complex a system is and the more subsystems it has, the more difficult it is to predict and the more emergent gameplay it can spawn. The scenarios may never be infinite because that's simply not possible, so debating if it's emergent or not based on that is pretty much wasting your time.

There's big difference between stuff like placing pots on top of shopkeepers' heads in Skyrim to avoid being caught while stealing (emergent gameplay) choosing stealth or action on Alpha Protocol (multiple flat-out gameplay options).

Those are the differences that matter.

This is simply vanilla complexity.

Also "immersive sim" is a bunch of B.S. lol. People really don't like it when their first person games are called FPS and the like.

zkylon · Mar 29, 2012

Riposte said:
This is simply vanilla complexity.

Also "immersive sim" is a bunch of B.S. lol. People really don't like it when their first person games are called FPS and the like.

It's a pretty useless term if meant to categorize games because there's only a handful of entries in the genre, so I think of more as an ideal or a couple of design headlines.

subversus · Mar 29, 2012

Riposte said:
This is simply vanilla complexity.

not at all.

for example there was one level in Deus Ex:HR where I tried to stack a lot of boxes to jump on the ledge and use it to enter the room. But the game didn't had this option. I was able to stack up boxes, jump on the ledge but I wasn't able to use the window because there was an invisible wall (this was the last level in

Singapore labs where Megan was kept

.

When you have an invisible wall anywhere in your game except the bounds of the location you limit player's freedom.

What could be possible on this level if DX:HR was an immersive sim (for example):

1)All walls could be destructible but some of them would be too thick.
2)Somehow the designer uses some random material for the roof of the building becayse he doesn't care - a player isn't supposed to reach the roof. And this material isn't actually thick. It's destructible if you have fully upgraded aug. Let's pretend that DX:HR was a bit more complex and there was five steps to upgrade each aug - like breaking walls aug would have 5 levels of power and the last level would be very hard to achieve. Like almost impossible until you invest in this constantly. So not a lot of players would invest in it.
3)So there are some boxes on this level. And what player do? He builds a piramide of twenty or so crates of different size and form to reach the roof - the only place on the level where it's possible to destroy materials. The designer didn't expect a player to reach this place. He also didn't expect that somebody would hoarde so much exp and invest in this very aug because it's stupid. The designer just used the random material on the ceiling.
4)This situation isn't playtested but when the player does what he does and reaches the objective THIS WAY by breaking through the ceiling instead of using the predesigned way of going through all floors he feels special. He expressed himself in this world by the means of the environment.

Deus Ex 1 had this while Deus Ex: HR had not. DX:HR had predictable playtested interactivity.

zkylon said:
It's a pretty useless term if meant to categorize games because there's only a handful of entries in the genre, so I think of more as an ideal or a couple of design headlines.

and this too.

guidestone · Mar 29, 2012

zkylon said:
That's a technicality that doesn't really make a difference. The more complex a system is and the more subsystems it has, the more difficult it is to predict and the more emergent gameplay it can spawn. The scenarios may never be infinite because that's simply not possible, so debating if it's emergent or not based on that is pretty much wasting your time.

There's big difference between stuff like placing pots on top of shopkeepers' heads in Skyrim to avoid being caught while stealing (emergent gameplay) choosing stealth or action on Alpha Protocol (multiple flat-out gameplay options).

Those are the differences that matter.

The whole "emergent gameplay" thing is nonsense.
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_emergent_game_behavior_and_other_miracles/

And I think this is good place to link this:
http://www.witchboy.net/articles/th...ing-beyond-deus-ex-and-other-dated-paradigms/

Riposte · Mar 29, 2012

subversus said:
Deus Ex 1 had this while Deus Ex: HR had not. DX:HR had predictable playtested interactivity.

So Deus Ex 1 had more complex environment interaction than Deus Ex: HR.

subversus · Mar 29, 2012

guidestone said:
The whole "emergent gameplay" thing is nonsense.
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_emergent_game_behavior_and_other_miracles/

And I think this is good place to link this:
http://www.witchboy.net/articles/th...ing-beyond-deus-ex-and-other-dated-paradigms/

these are very interesting links and I skimmed through (I will read them later) and stumbled upon this:

In the world of intelligent, educated adults, therefore, the criterion of emergence is "predictability"; whether a behavior is predictable or not, whether it is possible to predict it -- not whether this or that person bothered to predict it! Whether it is calculable or not, whether it is possible to calculate it -- not whether any random idiot off the street bothered to calculate it! And in a videogame, whose behavior is governed entirely by a collection of algorithms, everything is predictable, everything is ultimately calculable, consequently nothing that happens in it is emergent -- nothing in it can ever be emergent! You are given the entire range of possible, of allowable inputs, as well as all the preprogrammed corresponding outputs: they are right there in front of you, in the lines of the code; calculating all possibilities is therefore a trivial matter of number-crunching. That is how Chess and Go were completely mapped, and that is how every videogame ever can be completely mapped (given, of course, the required time and processing power). This is why Baudrillard calls videogames "the horizon of programmed reality", the word "programmed" here finally assuming its full weight and meaning.

yes, I agree.

the only drawback of this logic is that is somehow implies that humans who build a game from these pretermined parts are able to calculate everything. If there are a lot, like A LOT of variables that are in play the whole environment becomes so complex that it's not possible to predict all possible outcomes.

so you can design:
1)strict rules and a strict number of variables which can be used in strict ways
2)you can throw a lot of stuff there and don't think that a player can somehow "break the game" i.e. play it the way it should not be played.

Riposte said:
So Deus Ex 1 had more complex environment interaction than Deus Ex: HR.

Deus Ex had more variables. Like limb damage for example. Going through the level without legs and succeeding was a unique experience.

ctrayne · Mar 29, 2012

Eight Diagram Bat Fighter · Mar 29, 2012

I thought this was a thread about Kotaku/Destructoid. Didn't know "Dishonored" was actually the name of a game.

subversus · Mar 29, 2012

ctrayne said:
Not enough good stealth games out there. I can't wait for this one.

Re: Immersive Sim. It's just a term coined by Spector to describe the difference between Whack-a-Mole FPSes and something like Thief. No need to worry about it too much, as you aren't going to see an "IS" section on Amazon anytime soon. It's more of an ideal or set of principles than a genre IMO.

yeah, now the discussion is more about simulation than "immersiveness". I just used this term to describe the game better. When update OP I'll change the description.

Deified Data · Mar 29, 2012

Currently my most anticipated game.

ctrayne · Mar 29, 2012

Lancehead · Mar 29, 2012

guidestone said:
The whole ";emergent gameplay" thing is nonsense.
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_emergent_game_behavior_and_other_miracles/

And I think this is good place to link this:
http://www.witchboy.net/articles/th...ing-beyond-deus-ex-and-other-dated-paradigms/

Really good reads, both of them. Thanks for the links!

zkylon · Mar 29, 2012

guidestone said:
The whole "emergent gameplay" thing is nonsense.
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_emergent_game_behavior_and_other_miracles/

And I think this is good place to link this:
http://www.witchboy.net/articles/th...ing-beyond-deus-ex-and-other-dated-paradigms/

Don't want to say tl;dr, but I don't have the time to browse through all of that.

I skimmed through the first article and was a waste of time. The guy does a cheap Nietzsche impersonation and rants on and on about a definition taken from Wikipedia and then gets pseudo-philosophical on how programs are predictable by definition, completely skipping the core of the matter. The emergent experience exists, even if the definition is a little dodgy.

The second article looks more constructive, so I see if I can find the time to read it. It's written by Harvey Smith, who I've seen to be a nice guy, so that's a plus.

ctrayne · Mar 30, 2012

guidestone · Mar 30, 2012

zkylon said:
Don't want to say tl;dr, but I don't have the time to browse through all of that.

I skimmed through the first article and was a waste of time. The guy does a cheap Nietzsche impersonation and rants on and on about a definition taken from Wikipedia and then gets pseudo-philosophical on how programs are predictable by definition, completely skipping the core of the matter. The emergent experience exists, even if the definition is a little dodgy.

It's teling that you haven't even tried to deconstruct his article and prove it wrong, but instead just pseudo-criticized him.

guidestone · Mar 30, 2012

subversus said:
If there are a lot, like A LOT of variables that are in play the whole environment becomes so complex that it's not possible to predict all possible outcomes.

How is it not possible? It is a matter of time, tools, processing power, etc.

Whether the team bothered to do it or not is irrelevant.

BadData · Mar 30, 2012

guidestone said:
It's teling that you haven't even tried to deconstruct his article and prove it wrong, but instead just pseudo-criticized him.

It's telling that you didn't try to summarize it for him and the rest of us to further the discussion.

subversus · Mar 30, 2012

guidestone said:
How is it not possible? It is a matter of time, tools, processing power, etc.

Whether the team bothered to do it or not is irrelevant.

dude, you are just arguing about abstract things. Yes, it is possible to calculate all outcomes if you have 1000 years or more, so what? But realistically it's not possible to calculate all outcomes if you include tons of destructible materials in the game with different characteristics (like 500 of them for example), objects that are subject to realistic physics, complicated AI systems, complicated progression systems and tons of other gameplay systems. Yes, if we plug this shit into some quantum computer from the future it will calculate all possible outcomes. Until then if the game is really complex no matter how many excel spreadsheets you will have you won't be able to predict everything. But more to that - you shouldn't even try too hard to predict it. I say this once again for the last time - you can design with predictability in mind and thus limiting yourself from the start to the amount of variables the team and playtesters can actually process or you can design with some ambition in mind admitting that you won't control everything.

Lancehead · Mar 30, 2012

BadData said:
It's telling that you didn't try to summarize it for him and the rest of us to further the discussion.

Eh, the artice is quite long. I think it's worth a complete read, whatever you think of its opinions.

Anyway, here's a summary, in my words:

In videogames, 'emergence' is treated as gameplay possibilities that surface which were not 'intented' or 'expected' by the desiger(s). The 'intention' part is where it becomes slippery. Firstly, how does one know if something is intended or not. Secondly, does it even matter if it's intended or not.

In science, 'emergence' is phenomenon that arises and exists due to individual parts working together, and that cannot be predicted based the individual properties. So it's about whether something is predictable or not. Whether someone tried to predict is irrelavent. Emergence is a common phenomenon in sciences; we have theories to predict events, but the results obtained from theoritical calculations *always* deviate from observed values. Science is incapable of accurately predicting real events based on the fundamental laws. Mind you, even those laws are based on observation. Scientific models constructed from individual components to mirror real models are always inaccurate. This is due to 'emergence'.

In videogames, the whole game exists in the code. All possible inputs, and all possible outcomes based all the permutations and combinations of inputs are there in the code. Of course, designers and programmers may not know all the gameplay possibilties, but that's beside the point. The point is, given resources, the code can be analysed and every single possibility can be calculated. So there's nothing unpredictable about the videogame code, hence no emergence.

guidestone said:
How is it not possible? It is a matter of time, tools, processing power, etc.

Whether the team bothered to do it or not is irrelevant.

Here's my issue with that: if no one bothered to predict or calculate, how does one know whether something is predictable or not? The article presumes, perhaps rightly so, that every possibility of a videogame code is ultimately calculable. Do we know that to be true? Even if someone writes a simple programme to output the addition of two numbers, is it possible to predict every single outcome? I mean, there is hardware behind this '0 and 1' code. And that hardware is governed by different laws of science. For example, can we accurately predict what an overheating graphics card can result in the game?

subversus · Mar 30, 2012

Lancehead255 said:
In videogames, the whole game exists in the code. All possible inputs, and all possible outcomes based all the permutations and combinations of inputs are there in the code. Of course, designers and programmers may not know all the gameplay possibilties, but that's beside the point. The point is, given resources, the code can be analysed and every single possibility can be calculated. So there's nothing unpredictable about the videogame code, hence no emergence.

it's just a matter of semantics. Emergent gameplay in games is provided by inability of teams to playtest their complex systems to death.

but most of teams don't even try to build complex systems. They design every system thinking if it can be playtested completely or not.

guidestone · Mar 30, 2012

Lancehead255 said:
I mean, there is hardware behind this '0 and 1' code. And that hardware is governed by different laws of science. For example, can we accurately predict what an overheating graphics card can result in the game?

It certainly can't add new rules to the game's ruleset, i.e it can't expand its possibility space, which is what this whole situation is about.

subversus said:
Emergent gameplay in games is provided by inability of teams to playtest their complex systems to death

It doesn't matter AT ALL whether ALL the systems are playtested or not, and they absolutely won't be. No new possibilities can all of a sudden show up in the code, no matter how many variables there are. Nothing can miraculously appear in it after the code has been written.

Even Spacewar players devised maneuvers and strategies that its designers (who were also its first players) had not predicted, probably because they did not bother trying to predict them -- this has happened in every game ever made, there is nothing new nor revolutionary about the fact that a game's designer has not sat down to map out every single fucking possibility down to the last pixel before releasing his game to the world -- it is the normal, universal condition -- anything other than that would be entirely abnormal; it would mean that someone had a little bit too much time on their hands and would perhaps do better to leave their room now and then and go out and get some fucking air.

subversus · Mar 30, 2012

Damn, you are ~~dense~~ stubborn. Whatever, dude.

guidestone · Mar 30, 2012

subversus said:
Damn, you are ~~dense~~ stubborn. Whatever, dude.

You sure showed me. But keep enjoying emergence in a virtual world.

In Harvey's article, he wrote that game environments with higher fidelity simulations require less time to create content, which is obvious.

subversus said:
Deus Ex 1 had this while Deus Ex: HR had not. DX:HR had predictable playtested interactivity.

No, DE1 had systems of both lower and higher fidelity. From Harvey'article:

In the past, games have been mostly about branching paths. The designer manually sets up a number of outcomes or interactions and allows the player to pick one. This merely equates to a handful of canned solutions to a particular game problem. (Some hypertext writings refer to this as “multilinear,” or allowing simultaneously for multiple linear options of equal value.) Deus Ex featured some options for player expression that were facilitated by systems of coarser granularity. (Good examples here might include our branching conversation system or a critical room that could be entered at only three specific spots, each representing a different approach.) Manually setting up solutions to game problems requires a lot of work on the part of the team, can result in inconsistencies and generally only equates to a small number of possibilities for the player. However, Deus Ex also featured options for player expression that were facilitated by systems of finer granularity. (Good examples might include some of the player-tools that we provided that were tied into analogue systems like lighting or sound, such as the ability to see through walls or dampen the sound of movement. These tools interacted with our enemy awareness models in numerous, fairly complex ways. They could be activated at any time in a very wide range of situations, incorporating distance, facing, enemy type, etc.) The finer-granularity systems required more feedback and introduced some uncertainty that equated to some interesting degenerative exploits; but the freedom players felt more than made up for these costs.

benny_a · Mar 30, 2012

An example from Pac-Man:
Wouldn't the ghosts chasing the ghosts be considered emergent behavior for the AI?

That's something that the game developers didn't have in mind and were very surprised about when highlevel-players found it and used it for topping each other (and the leadersboards.)

They basically violated the main rule of the game, which is "chase pac-man". What makes this bug different from a real emergent property?

NotTheGuyYouKill · Mar 30, 2012

I had no knowledge or interest of this game at all till I watched the Gamespot video.

Man, it sounds awesome.

guidestone · Mar 30, 2012

bandresen said:
That's something that the game developers didn't have in mind and were very surprised about when highlevel-players found it and used it for topping each other (and the leadersboards.)?

Just because they didn't expect it/map out all the possible interactions, it doesn't change the fact that the rule(s) that allow that kind of behaviour are there, in the code, from the very moment the game has been finished. They didn't abruptly materialised themselves in the game's ruleset.

And there's no way to verify the truthfulness of their claims that they didn't have it in mind.

zkylon · Mar 30, 2012

guidestone said:
Just because they didn't expect it, it doesn't change the fact that the rule(s) that allow that kind of behaviour are there, in the code, from the very moment the game has been finished. They didn't abruptly materialised themselves in the game's code.

And there's no way to verify the truthfulness of their claims that they didn't have it in mind.

Dude, nobody disagrees with what you're saying, but honestly, no one cares. Or to be more precise, it doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking in this thread. In case you forgot: we're talking about a new Immersive Sim game. We compare it to DX:HR or some other cases and we discuss Immersive Sims. You're dragging a completely different (unrelated) topic that doesn't really matter to this conversation.

Harvey Smith's quote is what this is all about: analogue and complex systems that give players the ability to express themselves through creative interpretations of the game mechanics. They're usually hard to accurately predict by designers and QA, so that's why it's usually referred as non-predictable. Whether a machine could predict it or not is unimportant. That's emergent gameplay.

Please stop wasting everybody's time.

guidestone · Mar 30, 2012

zkylon said:
Or to be more precise, it doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking in this thread..

Yes, it does. It's just that you aren't willing to see it.

According to the stupid definition of emergence, everything in any video game can be seen as "emergent".

zkylon said:
Please stop wasting everybody's time.

lol

Well, people can choose to say ignorant on the subject. I can't convince them. "Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do."

subversus · Mar 30, 2012

zkylon said:
Dude, nobody disagrees with what you're saying, but honestly, no one cares.

Please stop wasting everybody's time.

exactly. It's the game and I just pushed it into immersive sim category because it's a pretty established label, it fits it and it will ring the right bells among those who played the games in genre but never heard of this game. How this has turned into some absurd scientific discussion is beyond me. The dude doesn't hear anything except himself so even when you tell him that YES IT'S NOT EMERGENT but passes as an illusion of emergent he doesn't hear it but keeps on pushing his agenda like a motorised patriot from the recent Bioshock video.

anyway, it's time to update OP with some info and more screens.

benny_a · Mar 31, 2012

guidestone said:
Just because they didn't expect it/map out all the possible interactions, it doesn't change the fact that the rule(s) that allow that kind of behaviour are there, in the code, from the very moment the game has been finished.

What a strange point of view. Nobody says otherwise. That doesn't mean emergence isn't happening. See Conway's Game of Life.
Seems like absolute wankery by defining a term to exclude something and then showing, "oh look, it's excluded, per definition."

guidestone said:
And there's no way to verify the truthfulness of their claims that they didn't have it in mind.

A reasonable person would say. "Oh, the original team of programmers, when they were shown the conditions that lead to this behavior were genuinely surprised.:
This anecdote by the world record holder in Pac-Man uttered in the presence of Namco representatives sounds likely.

It's not a global conspiracy against your blog post. ;-)

(And I'm out, as it's off-topic. But worth creating a new thread for perhaps when a new game with alleged emergent gameplay is on the horizon.)

guidestone · Mar 31, 2012

bandresen said:
It's not a global conspiracy against your blog post. ;-)

It's not my blog post. Why whould you think that?

bandresen said:
What a strange point of view. Nobody says otherwise..)

This what you wrote.

"That's something that the game developers didn't have in mind and were very surprised about when highlevel-players found it and used it for topping each other (and the leadersboards.)?"

My answer was in respond to that, specifically to the part that developers didn't have it in mind. in other words they didn't predict it/map out the all the options beforehand. The gist of all this is that regardless of that, nothing can emerge in the code. How hard is to understand that?

bandresen said:
That doesn't mean emergence isn't happening..)

It really isn't.

Zeliard · Mar 31, 2012

guidestone said:
Just because they didn't expect it/map out all the possible interactions, it doesn't change the fact that the rule(s) that allow that kind of behaviour are there, in the code, from the very moment the game has been finished. They didn't abruptly materialised themselves in the game's ruleset.

lol

Yeah, I think people realize it's not literally magical.

Lancehead · Mar 31, 2012

Two things I want to say regarding emergence.

Science has a strict definition of the concept emergence, and for good reason. But applying that same definition beyond science is inappropriate. If you look up emergence in dictionaries, it doesn't limit itself to what science uses it for. Take a planning session for a project. People put forward ideas, and some new idea may come out of the discussion. Now we certainly don't apply the scientific definition to see whether new ideas have emerged there.

Point of reference is important. When Harvey Smith talked about emergent gameplay, he certainly did not mean it with reference to the code of the game. It's more from a design and development point of view: designers incorporate ideas with potential possibility space. When players use those ideas and possibility space to come up with new ideas, it can be said to have emerged.

"It's already in the code" is kinda useless argument because in case of science I can say that emergence is human inability to predict, rather than it being unpredictable.

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I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap

Member

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap

Banned

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap

Banned

extra source of jiggaflops

Member

Banned

zkylewd

Banned

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap

extra source of jiggaflops

Banned

Member

Member

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