Randy Smith's Recent Blog Entries

• The Zen Of Emergence

  Randy Smith considers the ingredients for emergent situations, and how best to deploy them when designing a game.

  The spirit of emergence is unpredictability. The player will wind up in situations they did not expect. They will find solutions you did not foresee. This will break your design, unless the design is too flexible to be broken. The situations may seem too harsh, the solutions too degenerate, but the player has had as much a hand in creating them as you have. To support emergence is to empower co-authorship, to reach towards the interactive medium’s highest calling. If unpredictability is incompatible with your design, do not pursue emergence.
   

  August 26, 2010
• When Is A Game Not A Game?

  No matter how open their worlds, games are bound by objective rules. But this is precisely what defines them, argues Randy Smith.

  The only strange thing about this talking wolf is the high quality of its conversation. “I could shoot you, you know,” I threaten the wolf, having already established that my daughter might still be alive inside its belly. That wasn’t picked from a dialogue menu; I typed it in. Without missing a beat, the wolf responds, “I’m afraid you’ll have to.” Sentient characters and interactive dialogue have been common this entire play session. Impressed? The game’s responses are driven by game designer Jason Rohrer.
   

  August 13, 2010
• Lengthy Arguments

  Game stories are rarely as good as those found in films, so why, asks Randy Smith, do developers insist on stretching them over 12 hours?

  A while back I wrote about how repetitive gameplay over long periods of time can provide a depth of familiarity unique to our medium. That’s true, and great, and whatever, but to be less sunny about it my honest opinion is that most games don’t achieve this ideal, this gradual osmosis of artistic intent. Most games are just way too long. Presumably, you also hardly ever finish games you start, and those you do finish involve some punishing, boring slog solely for the sake of completion. Right?
   

  August 5, 2010