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Emergent Gameplay, Best Examples?
http://www.runestorm.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=77383		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  Black Eagle [ Mon Mar 19, 2012 3:29 am ]
Post subject:  Emergent Gameplay, Best Examples?
Emergent Gamplay, what is it you say?; Well it's pretty much the evil act of a game being built freely enough to allow additional and unintentional gameplay to creep out of the wood work as you play it... :shock:

This generally involves players being able to do all kinds of things that weren't specifically thought of as a rule by the developers, but 'emerges' as a byproduct of the game's structure... ;)

In Multiplayer games this is almost always present in some form. But what about Singleplayer games?, how common is that?.. :think:

It is generally not very common, and tends to reveal itself best in more sandbox-esque games, for example:

GTA: All of them: Torch the civies, why not?..
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion/Skyrim: Kill townspeople and fight for your life, then go renegade.
Minecraft: Pretty much nothing but emergant gameplay..
Saints Row: Man, where do I start?.. :D

However there are certain other games that you wouldn't think of at first.. ;)

Half-Life 1: A game of shoot the security guard and then play hide and seek(*Abstract!)
I honestly can't think of anymore examples right now... :doh:

So what are the best examples of this rather strange and abstract feature of games, multiplayer or singleplayer?.
The shining beacon of the most insane emergent gameplay ever conceived by man, beast, or arthropod?. Which could it be? :think:

PS: In case you missed nonexistent pre-warning, I feel it is necessary to warn you that this preceding post contains mention of words and spiders, if you feel you have been infected with the most hideous disease known to man, please keep it to yourself... ;)
Author:  Bjossi [ Mon Mar 19, 2012 4:58 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Emergent Gameplay, Best Examples?
Emergent gameplay is the most fun, in my opinion.

Though there are situations when you think you're doing something clever/unexpected but then find out the developers saw it coming. Have you tried falling into the pit in the final boss fight of Return to Na Pali and land on the spikes where the Nali are hanging? You'll get a secret translator message if you accomplish this...
Author:  ShadowBlade [ Mon Mar 19, 2012 5:55 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Emergent Gameplay, Best Examples?
@Bjossi: Hah, I've never seen that, no. I'll have to look :)
Author:  ChaosMarine [ Mon Mar 19, 2012 6:45 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Emergent Gameplay, Best Examples?
The Fallout series can be included on that first list....


In Halo, all of them, I think. You can kill two or three of your allies and then all of them(including backup you may receive later in the level) will try to kill you....
Author:  Blade sword [ Mon Mar 19, 2012 9:47 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Emergent Gameplay, Best Examples?
System shock, ultima underworld, deus ex, Thief comes on the list.

System shock for having massive interactivity with its gameworld, wide panel of player movement while in doom you just couldn't jump or even aim verically.
An inventory system and a lot of things that was very innovative for the first person shooter genre, other that that there is the ultima underworld with its basic stealth mechanics.

Deus Ex for being the game who introduced pretty much the open gameplay, playing brutal or stealthy, killing almost everyone as almost no one, boss fights that you can avoid if you are smart enough, level design suited for allowing various approaches to a situation, possibility to solve certain situations with dialog. People can still complain about the shooting mechanics and the AI that can be very stupid at times, but actually it was pretty evolved and advanced at the time.
This game also contain one of my favorite tricks from Unreal Engine 1 games, the Mario stomp, it just works and it's very satisfying to use.

Thief for being simply the very first and practically only first person sneaker game, the goal is more think about alternate solutions instead of fighting, some people can dislike this game because it's difficult and well most people when they play FPS wants to shoot stuff ...
but actually that's pretty much it.

Quake, just for being the game to popularise trick moves and jumps, rocket and grenade jumps, that is pretty much the novelty there.

Mirror's edge, well while the body awareness is very old (trespasser in 1998) this game pretty much allowed people to do stunts, a thing that was actually unique to the third person genre / 2d platformer. but also the fact that the game pretty much forced people to be unarmed was pretty interesting.
Author:  Black Eagle [ Mon Mar 19, 2012 1:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Emergent Gameplay, Best Examples?
Thief was a nice change from most FPSs, you never willingly engage in combat with enemies, it's always stealth based, and the atmosphere was great!. But more to the point, the game allowed you to do things in many different ways, many of which you had to figure out, and you could still have an all out duel with guards if you wanted... ;)

However, none of these games really have anything emergent in them... Allow me to try and clear up the matter, and better explain what I'm getting at... ;)

Emergent Gameplay is not an intentional mechanic of the game, if a game has stealth as a way to help you finish the game, it is not emergent, that was planed by the devs, such as DeusEx...

For example, take World of Warcraft, nowhere in the game does it set up a situation where you must race other players across the continents by different means/routes and see who gets there first, this was an idea SB and I had, WE came up with it and used the mechanics of the game to make a mini game out of it, that's emergent... :handgestures-thumbupright:

Another example is SoF2, us 3 and a friend have played this many times, and a favorite game of ours was to take the 4 people we had, give 1 person a pistol and the other 3 knifes, objective: Kill the pistol guy, and visa versa, that is emergent gameplay, we took the mechanics and made our own game out of it... :handgestures-thumbupright:

See what I mean?. Emergent Gameplay could be anything really, it just has to be something you came up with to utilize the game's mechanics in a way it wasn't supposed to.. ;)

Make a game out of collecting random junk/obscure objects and placing them in your house, like if I were to collect pelts, bones, and skulls in Oblivion, then decorate my house with them, who'd have thought someone would do that?, but I can say I've done something no one else has... :D
Author:  Bjossi [ Mon Mar 19, 2012 3:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Emergent Gameplay, Best Examples?
System Shock 2 does have some elements that could be interpreted as emergent gameplay; such as Hybrid farming, or looting every single recyclable junk (like coffee mugs, cigarettes, etc.), collecting them in a megapile, like in the MedSci chem storage room, and then recycle everything when you get the Recycler object. I have been able to get the game to lag and even crash when doing this.
Author:  Blade sword [ Mon Mar 19, 2012 5:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Emergent Gameplay, Best Examples?
Well then but you can't say that Deus ex isn't a game with emergent gameplay, there is lots of things that aren't planed by the developers that you can do in.
The mario stomps aren't something planed there; you can also set up LAMS on walls and used them as a step to climb into places that you can't go with any normal mean.
Also you can kill people by throwing your items above them.
As for decorating stuff just for the fun you can do that in deus ex, ultima and pretty much any game that allow you to move random items from a place to an other, I don't think many of them allows you to kill them with candy bars.
Author:  Black Eagle [ Tue Mar 20, 2012 3:41 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Emergent Gameplay, Best Examples?
Those are indeed more emergent examples... ;)
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