Emergence & Progression
The categories of emergence and progression were originally introduced by game scholar Jesper Juul in his "The open and the closed: Games of emergence and games of progression" (2002).
Games of Emergence - Simple rules but variation
- flow & challenges are not planned but emerge
- Produced by the many possible combinations of rules in board games, car games, strategy game & some action games.
- A single change in the game state (e.g a pawn in chess) can make a critical difference
Games of Progression - Relies on a tightly controlled sequence of events
- preassigned challenges and progression within the game.
- Easily done in video games & books
- prepared in advance by the designer, that the player can access at arbitrary points.
- Well suited to game that tell a story
Simple Parts in Complex Systems
When a game can create a large number of possible states without using many rules, the game will be more accessible to players.
path players take through probability space - Trajectory
Civilizations -
Most of its mechanics are discrete, turn based, positions of units and locations are restricted to tiles. This makes them easy to understand individually.
Games of Progression -
Ludologists, argue that to understand games you should start by looking at the game mechanics and the gameplay first and foremost
Narratologists, put games in the tradition of other storytelling media, and they focus on the storytelling aspects of games
railroading is that the player’s freedom is mostly an illusion
