Reflection Week 3

http://comp4431.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/reflection-week-3-emergence/

As I understand it emergence is where a game is given simple controls and the player has to figure out how to utilise the controls given to accomplish tasks, even as simple as jumping in a platform game.

Games such as Gish make this very obvious, with the control system allowing for a lower level controls that cause the player to think of ways to create higher level controls. The lower level controls in gish allow the character to stick to walls, become slippery, and hence slide down slopes, or become heavy for various reasons.

Emergent gameplay allows for the player to decide how they wish to accomplish their tasks in different ways. This is opposed to games which have explicit instructions which effectively means that the player doesn’t have much choice in what to do. However the issue I found with Gish is that the controls are not that smooth, and sometimes it is very frustrating to make the character do what you want it to do.