Meaningful Mechanics - Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design - page 293

n Because the game removes unnecessary detail, it allows the player to focus on
the structural features and strategic interaction that is allowed. (It also reduces the
complexity of the user interface, which many players appreciate.) As we have seen
throughout this topic, these structural features drive emergent behavior. By offering
a simpler version that is easier to understand, games can train players to understand
far more detailed complex systems in real life.
n A system that uses analogous and symbolic simulation can allow a complete
session of play in much less time than the system that the play represents could
run with many complex systems represented. The player learns the results of his
actions and decisions fast and efficiently. On the one hand, this allows players to
go through the process more often, and on the other hand, it will contribute to the
pleasurable experience of agency and power that drives many commercial enter-
tainment games. (In contrast, scientific and engineering simulations, with their
emphasis on accuracy, often run much slower than real time.)
n For game designers, game systems that are reduced to their essence are easier to
manage and easier to balance. Without many parts, the designer can focus on those
elements and structures that contribute directly to the game's emergent behavior
and more easily tweak that behavior into the desired shape. Games would do well
to strive for symbolic or analogous, emergent gameplay rather than detailed realism.
It is economically more feasible, and it allows more effective communication. (The
audience's preferences will influence this, however: Hardcore racing fans will not be
content with Mario Kart. )
discrete inFinity
systems do not have to have many parts and mechanisms to create many different mean-
ings. spoken language serves as a good example. Linguist noam chomsky observed that
in language, our vocabulary might be large but is essentially limited (most people know
tens of thousands of words). Yet, the number of things you can say is infinite (or at least
unlimited). This is because we can combine words in many different ways and still make
sense of them. We write a book using language, and there is no upper bound on how
long that book may be. chomsky called this characteristic of language discrete infinity :
the possibility to make infinite use of discrete means (1972, p. 17).
discrete infinity is a useful concept that applies well to games. To create discrete infin-
ity, the number of elements is not as important as the number of possible connections
between the elements. it means that as a game designer you should always be on the
lookout to create systems where the number of meaningful combinations is large and
possibly endless. That way, you can never know exactly what might come out of the
system. This constitutes a risk: You might get unexpected results. But it is a good way to
create a game from which more can come out than you've put in.