Game Design Ideas

I finally had some time to play some of the “weirder” games out there-and I must say I found a favorite: Dwarf Fortress!  It is hard to believe that an ASCII-based simulation can offer so much depth in gameplay. If I was to pick only one factor that distinguishes DF from other games (besides the obvious “geek appeal” its MS-DOS style interface creates) it would have to be the emergent, very complex interactions that the dwarves have with each other and their  environment. In this article I will discuss the concepts of complexity and emergence citing DF and other games as examples…

continue reading…

In part one of this series, “Defining Emergence and Complexity in Video Games”, I tried to define the concepts of complex systems and emergent behavior and how they apply to video games. I also tried to convince you that “emergence” is a good thing in games, and that it is worthwhile to consider designing your games so that there is a chance of “benevolent” emergence to appear. Now it’s time to introduce a number of techniques to assess the possibility and maximize the potential of emergence.

In this article, I will borrow concepts from the field of cellular automata and by studying the correspondence between CAs and video games, I am hoping to draw on the accumulated knowledge about CAs and apply it to the less formalized field of computer game design. The reason why I chose CAs as the source of comparison is the fact that they are probably the simplest constructs capable of clearly displaying emergent behavior (besides some sets of differential equations, but those are not as intuitive).

continue reading…