Well Played, Player: The Result of Emergent Gameplay

Ever since man wore cloth (and disputably even earlier than that), mankind has had an interest in pretending to be someone or something that is not necessarily them. I dare say this is perhaps one of the oldest incarnations of play and has been seen in many variants, some role-plays might just be a group of children pretending to be adults, but for the most part we are more use to the varieties seen in video games and on table tops where players will often be in some swords and sorcery world where they choose a class, a race and level up as they attempt to kill dragons thirty times their own level.

He looks tough, but I bet the Game Master probably exploited his lack of face...

Now, video games have been trying their hardest to flush out the popularity of the table-top role-plays by emulating them as much as they can whilst incorporating the convenience and less stigma plagued video game medium. In spite of this however, table tops are still as strong as ever. Now while one could argue that this is attributed to the fact that the ‘Game Master’ is the best game engine you could ever find but is that really the only reason? Of course not! I dare say that there is also a factor that game developers could still deal with: “The Hidden Option(s)”.

There have been many names for this gameplay phenomenon but the name I knew it best by was “Emergence”. Emergence is best described as that moment where the player does something the game does not go out of its way to highlight as possible but is not necessarily a glitch. A good example of this would be perhaps my favourite thing in first- and third- person shooters: ROCKET JUMPING!

Team Fortress 2's Soldier, one of the most famous Rocket Jumpers...

...and Super Monday Night Combat's Megabeth, a girl who I swear is related to the Soldier.

Yup, the rocket jump was an accident! One day, a player was playing a game of Quake and when he grabbed his rocket launcher he looked down and thought, “Hmm, I wonder if I can get up onto the sniping deck above me and blast those camping wussies with my manly, not compensating for anything, guns?”

Lo and behold, he could, and there was much rejoicing as shooters said to themselves “Hey, now rocket launchers can be viable in our games! We are no longer shackled by the ‘assault rifle’ pansies that are sadly more popular in terms of balance and viability in game”.

Ok, but what does this have to do with role-playing? Well, table top role-playing games benefit from their lack of hard coding to allow players to pull off random ideas or strategies that leaves the Game Master no option but to light his or her conveniently present smoking pipe and say “Well played”. In video games however, this is rarely exploited despite the fact it is very possible to achieve.

Reward unconventional actions; give players subtle alternatives to problems and so on. Why should the only way to defeat the dragon guarding the wand of molten flames be challenging it to combat? Why can’t the thief trade with the dragon and fool it into giving away the wand for a bag of grain? Why can’t you use your fire spell to clear out all the residents in the pub and exploit the landlord’s absence and start chugging down the healing mead for free rather than having to pay for it?

Now, while I say games should promote “out of the box” thinking and testing the grounds the game provides them, please do not make them the ONLY way to constantly prevail. What I mean is that if the player has two obvious options and one hidden option; don’t make every one of these events have the “hidden option” as the one and ONLY answer.

Yeah, I'm looking at you, Star Trek: Borg! Don't think I forgot about you!

You see it is all well in good that you want to encourage players trying to think out with the games on screen choices, but if everything was answered out with the given choices then, why give the player’s choices to begin with? You also cause the initial “Hey, that’s actually rather clever” will lose its charm and suddenly players with a thought process that doesn’t suit the hunting of hidden third options will start cursing “WHY DOES EVERYTHING I DO NOT WORK!?” and they’ll curse more when you have to tell them that they are meant to use the rocket launcher to rocket jump onto the ladders above and climb up to safety.

I know this little article is much shorter than the others but I think my point is apparent enough: embrace game emergence. Well, I could ramble more and actually give the content manager a legitimate reason for spending 2 weeks touching up articles before publishing them.

What else can I cover though? I mean, I cannot give spoilers on any future projects or else the Andrew will go “Omnislash” at my expense. Don’t tell me he won’t, HE PLAYS FINAL FANTASY! (I’m looking at you, Andrew! And Lee approves!)

How about something I can open up to our audience. Yup, I actually want someone’s opinion on the internet, perish the thought.

Greg Baxter
Amber Glass Broadcast