Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
but reveal the costs in printed strategy guides that the player must pay extra for.
This is an abusive practice.
In practice, designers most often use transitive relationships to upgrade a player's
powers during her progress through the game. The player begins with a single
option, the weakest, and works her way up to better ones. In other words, she starts
with the Chevrolet, then receives the Dodge as a reward for good performance, and
later still receives the Ford. This creates positive feedback, which is covered in a
later section. If you also make it possible for a player to lose her upgrade due to poor
performance—going back to the Dodge after a bad performance in the Ford—you
can create an interesting progression/regression dynamic that can lead to some taut
and suspenseful gameplay. Take care to ensure that the player can reestablish her
previous level once she does well again.
INTRANSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS (ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS)
If the relationship between strategies or other player options is intransitive , then
just because A beats B and B beats C, you can't assume that A also beats C. Game
professionals use intransitive relationship to mean not merely a lack of transitivity
but an explicit loop in which option A beats option B, B beats C, and C beats A
(see Figure 11.1 ). The game rock-paper-scissors (also called scissors-paper-stone
and Rochambeau) works that way: Paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, scissors
beat paper. This results in a balanced, three-way intransitive relationship (although
intransitive relationships are not confined to systems of only three entities).
FIGURE 11.1
A three-way
intransitive relation-
ship, with arrows
indicating which
option beats another
Rock
Paper
Scissors
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