Emergence and progression - Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design - page 30

violent conflict, and eventually a technology and production race to space. The
Civilization setup causes all these strategies and game phases to emerge quite natu-
rally from its mechanics.

Civilization Gameplay phases Vs. historical periods
and Golden aGes

in Civilization , your civilization will evolve through a number of historical periods in
the game. it starts in a classical period and eventually will grow into a medieval period,
renaissance, and modern period. The game uses these periods to keep the graphics and
representation of your civilization in tune with your progress. The triggers that cause
you to move into a new period are rather arbitrary. They don't emerge from the game
mechanics as the different strategic phases of exploration, development, and conflict
do. The historical periods are a fairly superficial addition that provides visual color; they
aren't emergent game phases.
a golden age, a mechanism that can trigger a 20-turn span of increased production for
your civilization, falls somewhere in between a gameplay phase and a historical period.
The events that trigger a golden age are nearly as arbitrary as the triggers for the histori-
cal periods. however, the player does have more control over these events and can aim
to trigger a golden age on purpose. Golden ages do not emerge from the gameplay but
do affect the gameplay phase.

Imagine that you are asked to design the mechanics for a game like Civilization .
How would you approach that task? You will probably have to design and tune the
mechanics over many different iterations and prototypes. If you are clever, you keep
all the elements as simple as possible, but you create several relationships among
them. In that way, you can be sure that the game will be complex, but that is little
guarantee that interesting gameplay will emerge. To get it right, you will need to be
aware of the structure of these mechanics. Some structures will cause more emergent
behavior than others. Structures like feedback loops in the game mechanics are a
good way of creating emergent behaviors, especially if this feedback operates on dif-
ferent scales and at different speeds. Right now, this will probably sound somewhat
vague. In this and later chapters, we will explore these structures and feedback in
much more detail.

NOTE We use the
word structures to refer
to the various ways that
a game designer can
set up game mechanics
to influence or control
one another. a feed-
back loop is a structure,
for example, and so is
a trigger that sets off
an event when certain
conditions are met.

Games of Progression
Despite the importance of emergence in games, no professional game designer can
ignore the mechanics of progression. Many games contain a story to drive the game-
play, often told over the course of many levels. Individual levels typically have clearly
defined missions that set the player's goals and structure the tasks they must com-
plete to finish the level. The designer should plan the game and its levels in such
a way that the game creates a coherent experience for the player. Often this means