The Gong Show

I have been thinking about why I like video games. What’s the common thread? I play pretty much all genres (Sports, RPG, FPS, Strategy, Racing, Puzzle, etc). I enjoy a high-production, 50-hour game and I like 15-minute little flash games. I like all the consoles. I like both beautifully rendered CGI games and ASCII games with no graphics at all. There is no superficial common thread between the games that I like.

But, there is a common theme that ties my gaming interests together. It’s an emergent system. A low-level, simple set of rules that govern all interaction between atomic elements, such that complex behavior emerges. These simple rules (hopefully) set up to generate strong game balance.

For example, Grand Theft Auto (GTA) wasn’t fun because it was about gang violence, chicks, and drugs. There have been countless games about those illicit themes both before and after GTA, and none of them are as interesting. GTA is fun because it had one of the most realistic and deep physics engines in gaming at the time, and physics is an exciting emergent system.

Or, look at the Civilization series. Civ has almost nothing in common with GTA, yet I like it just as much for almost identical reasons. The platform, visuals, genre, control, pace, and theme are all radically different. But, like GTA, Civ is governed by a simple set of rules for interaction that can be broken down to two verbs, attack or support. The gamer must allocate resources to either build additional units to attack (and defend) or build infrastructure to support the offensive (and defensive) strategy. There are many paths to optimal play (aggressive war-mongering or peaceful capitalization) because strong balance emerges from these simple rules.

I think video games are a remarkable art form because of the emergent system design (for more on video games as art: read this. Different argument, but killer rant). Other emergent system design, like architecture, is widely recognized as art, so why no games? I wish there was a good site for video game reviews that understood the excitement that I get from emergence in gaming. No good art form is without critics and analysis, plus it was be great for finding new game recommendations.