What about choices that have no real effect but the player doesn’t know it? See also my Unmanned. Did my choice had an effect? Was that event random or was it my fault?īut also: did I have several interesting choices or there was always a no-brainer choice? Lost Cities (discarding), Zooloretto (pushing the luck, affecting the players). When choices are not discernible and integrated the game may break or stop making sense to the player.

Tic-tac-toe stops being meaningful to an “expert” player. Meaningful play is what occurs when the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernible and integrated into the larger context of the gameĬandyland, battleship, bingo lack actual choices. The meaning of an action in a game resides in the relationship between action and outcome Meaningful play in a game emerges from the relationship between player action and system outcome it is the process by which a player takes action within the designed system of a game and the system responds to the action. In Rules of Play, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman provide two definitions of meaningful play (the goal of game design): Meaningful play / meaningful choices Candyland: worst game ever or tool for game literacy? Let’s examine 3 extreme cases: The Graveyard by Tale of Tales, a Call of Duty “pacifist speedrun”, and Progress Quest. The issue of agency will come up frequently while discussing story-based and art/arty games. Janet Murray – Hamlet on the Holodeck 1997 Murray sees immersion and agency as central elements for the enjoyment of games.Įvery expressive medium has its own unique patterns of desire its own way of giving pleasure, of creating beauty, of capturing what we feel to be true about life its own aesthetic. Most of these unique features of the gaming situation (or cyberdrama or interactive literature…) relate to the concept of agency, popularized by media theorist Janet Murray.Īgency: the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices Some useful concepts for this phase of pre-production, as we move from non interactive scenarios to games Agency

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