This seems more like marketing lingo than a legitimate concept to me. What do you guys think? Maybe it's that it's 2:00am, and I'm not really understanding exactly what the concept is, but it doesn't seem too well-defined either.
But none of those things really describe emergent gameplay, they are just common elements of it. I don't think there is any other word to describe emergent gameplay other than by describing it. So I reckon it should stay.
There are plenty of games that don't have emergent gameplay, and some that do. Why should it be deleted?
Sure, it's a buzzword, but I think the description for the concept on the page makes a pretty solid case for defining emergent gameplay. It's the principle of letting players choose the way they interact with a scenario of objects or systems with their own sets of defined rules rather than predetermining how players will interact with the game. It's like the polar opposite of scripted events.
While I agree that emergent gameplay often involves open worlds and physics, I think it's unfair to limit it to these things. There's plenty of ways to have emergent gameplay without either.
Emergent game play is a concept that is worth being on the site.
Think of project gotham and the tag mode. It originally started online when there was an unwritten rule that you needed to bump the driver ahead of you before you were allowed to pass. This game mode grew in popularity to the point where the next game in the series had that mode built in as a feature.
The rocket jump in quake is another great example of emergent gameplay (featured in the article so I won't go into it). Or GTA III multiplayer, where one person goes on a rampage until he dies / gets arrested, then passes the controller to the next guy.
As a marketing buzzword I think the term, if to be taken away, should be from the likes of Scribblenauts - the player is supposed to use any of the 10,000 objects to complete a level, its intentional where the term emergent suggests unintentional (imo). An example of unintentional is Cat & Mouse from PGR2.
Because it's a completely nebulous term. *All* games have some kind of rules, and given the interactive nature of games, even in the most linear of games, could turn out to be "unpredictable".
Take the idea of teabagging; if the rules of a game allow you to crouch, then you more or less have the ability to teabag, right? The ability to crouch specifically over someone else's corpse, wasn't necessarily programmed into the game, it's just something that can happen. Should we consider that emergent? Where would/should a line be drawn? I can perhaps see the case for some of the games on that list (Scribblenauts, Minecraft), but the page should at least provide more clarity if it's to become a useful concept. At the moment, it just comes across as awkwardly trying to define a confusing buzzword.
tl;dr: what do Mirror's Edge and Scribblenauts have in common? Emergent Gameplay, of course! Wait...what? =/
@BeachThunder: Exactamundo. The problem with this concept is that it's so non-specific that it can be applied to anything. One of the ways I always play Smash Bros. is that I'll randomly decide to play as Jigglypuff, play on Final Destination, and then force everyone to dodge me as I constantly perform rollouts from one side of the stage to another. Is that emergent gameplay? Saints Row 2 had all those bizarre things you could do like skydiving, car surfing and streaking that you could turn into score-whore games if you so wanted. Is that emergent gameplay?
With a strong concept, we need to be able to say both what the concept is and what the concept isn't. With emergent gameplay, we have a nebulous idea of what it is that we're poorly defining through examples of things that started off as people screwing around and then became game modes (so does that mean they're no longer emergent gameplay?), and no clear definition of what it isn't. That's a problem.
Unpredictable or unintended effects of players interactions with a gameworld applies to all games equally, so it's too broad to be a useful concept. It's advertising language.
" @BeachThunder: Exactamundo. The problem with this concept is that it's so non-specific that it can be applied to anything. One of the ways I always play Smash Bros. is that I'll randomly decide to play as Jigglypuff, play on Final Destination, and then force everyone to dodge me as I constantly perform rollouts from one side of the stage to another. Is that emergent gameplay? Saints Row 2 had all those bizarre things you could do like skydiving, car surfing and streaking that you could turn into score-whore games if you so wanted. Is that emergent gameplay? With a strong concept, we need to be able to say both what the concept is and what the concept isn't. With emergent gameplay, we have a nebulous idea of what it is that we're poorly defining through examples of things that started off as people screwing around and then became game modes (so does that mean they're no longer emergent gameplay?), and no clear definition of what it isn't. That's a problem. "
Agreed. If we go by some of the types of "Emergent Gameplay" from the Wikipedia article, it seems like Emergent gameplay could be as simple as Mario Bros. speed runs
" @iAmJohn: Neither of your examples are emergent gameplay because they were designed consciously into the game. And it's not just marketing speak whoever suggested that, it's a part of game theory. "
Then whoever theorized it should either do a better job of writing the page or provide a better defense for why this page should even exist. As it is, it's almost entirely subjective and should be deleted.
@Hailinel: I don't really understand the argument against, it's as nebulous as any other theoretical concept from which debate it likely to arise. I believe the central concept is as solid as anything else, just when looking at specific instances that disagreement might occur and when the intent of the creator comes into question then things are inevitably going to swing either way.
That said, I have no interest whether the page stays or goes. Just that if the requirement for adding any conceptual game ideas into the database in complete objective agreement on terms between theorists ... that is never going to happen.
" @Hailinel: I don't really understand the argument against, it's as nebulous as any other theoretical concept from which debate it likely to arise. I believe the central concept is as solid as anything else, just when looking at specific instances that disagreement might occur and when the intent of the creator comes into question then things are inevitably going to swing either way.
That said, I have no interest whether the page stays or goes. Just that if the requirement for adding any conceptual game ideas into the database in complete objective agreement on terms between theorists ... that is never going to happen.
"
So let me get this straight: despite the fact that you don't care whether or the page stays or not, you think the page should stay because other theoretical concepts (which you haven't given us an example of) are equally nebulous and poorly defined? You fully understand that a good concept is defined not only by its ability to be well articulated, but by being broad enough to not just be applicable to one game while being narrow enough to not include every game under the sun, right?
So I ask you: in your own words, define this concept. If the examples I gave earlier aren't Emergent Gameplay (and why aren't they? They may be things we created out of messing with all the modifiers the game allows you to tweak in addition to our own in-house rules, but they aren't modes you will ever find in the game except for that we created them; how are they not valid and yet something like any of the Halo modes that came from people experimenting with Forge - Rocket Race, for example - makes the cut?), what are? How does saying "I'm going to force myself to play a game a certain way" and maybe having a whole different experience because of it, be it playing Soul Calibur with a fishing rod controller, doing a pacifist run in Super Mario Bros. or speed running Portal, not constitute Emergent Gameplay? Why does a developer saying "this game has emergent gameplay" make it suddenly true time and time again we've seen developers say whatever it takes to get people interested in their game, let alone not trading it back to GameStop?
But you can't, otherwise you wouldn't have defended this concept by saying that other theoretical concepts are just as questionable (while, again, not giving a single example). And this is exactly why this concept should be deleted.
I'm with you guys on this one, this page is a little silly. One could argue that every game ever made has some sort of "emergent" quality, and the concept as it's currently written is an bad example.
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