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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild'da
ne zaman yağmur yağarsa herşey değişiverir.
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Kayalar kayganlaşır, ve bu
sebepten onlara tırmanmak zorlaşır.
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Ama Link'in adımları sessizleşir, bu
sayede gizlenmek kolaylaşır.
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Elektrik hasarları önemli ölçüde artar, ancak
patlayıcı ve yanan oklar özelliklerini kayberder;
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sadece oka dönüşürler.
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Belirli canlılar ve bitkiler, ELECTRIC DARNER
gibi, sadece yağmur yağarken ortaya çıkarlar.
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İnsanlar yağmurdan korunmaya çalışırlar.
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Camp ateşleri söner.
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Ve hatta belirli yerlede büyük su birikintileri
dahi bulabilirsiniz - güneş çıktığında
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buharlaşmış olacak.
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Breath of the Wild'daki değişen hava durumu
yalnızca şık bir görsel numara değil, ayrıca
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dünyadaki hemen hemen her yere ulaşıp
dünyanın üzerinde etki yaratacak bir şey.
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Ve bu SYSTEMIC GAME'in tanımıdır.
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Ubisoft'ta eski bir lead programmer
olan Aleissia Laidacker şöyle diyor:
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ALEISSIA LAIDACKER: SYSTEMİC oyununuzdaki tüm
sistemler arasında bir bağ olduğu anlamına gelir.
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Bunu tasarlar ve geliştirirlerken amaçları,
her şeyin birbirinden etkilenmesini sağlamaktı.
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And in the last few years we’ve seen an
explosion of games that have this sort of
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interconnectivity - from Japanese titles like
Metal Gear Solid V and Zelda, to ambitious
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European games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance,
to smaller indie titles like Mark of the Ninja,
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to pretty much everything Ubisoft’s making
at the moment.
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Take Far Cry, for example, where much of the
joy comes from the fact that not only do you
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fight enemies, and not only do you fight wild
animals - but enemies can fight animals.
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And vice versa.
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This is not a scripted encounter, hand crafted
by the developer.
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It’s just the enemy system and the wildlife
system interacting… as a tiger mauls a guard’s
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face clean off.
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This works thanks to “awareness” and “rules”.
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In super simplified terms, every entity in the
game has inputs, which are things it can “listen” for.
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In the case of the Far Cry tiger, that might
be the player, bait, fire, and enemies.
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And entities also have outputs, which is when
they broadcast their existence out into the
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world.
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If the input and the output match, and the
entities can see or touch each other, a connection
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is made.
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And that’s when a rule is followed.
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In the case of the tiger and the enemy, that
rule is face mauling.
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But for other games, it could be that if a
flame touches a wooden arrow, it sets on fire.
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Or if an orange tree frog explodes near a
floor tile, it’s destroyed.
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Or if it rains on a camp fire, it sizzles
out.
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So systemic games work by having all sorts
of objects, characters, bits of the environment,
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and game systems be aware of each other, and
have rules for how to interact.
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But why should we care?
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What makes this style of design more interesting
than games where the systems aren’t so connected?
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Well, one huge advantage is that the player
can make interesting plans.
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In a lot of traditional games, entities are
only really aware of the player and not much else.
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Meaning the only way to interact with an enemy
is through very direct means.
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A.K.A shooting them.
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But because entities in systemic games are
aware of so many more things, we can get to
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enemies through indirect means.
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Like, releasing a caged animal to have it
attack nearby guards.
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So a defining trait of systemic games is that
you can exploit those relationships between
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different entities and systems, as part of
plans - which make you feel rather smart when
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they come together.
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Here’s a good one from Watch Dogs 2.
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I was getting chased by the cops, so I lead
the police into gang territory, hid on a rooftop
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and watched those opposing factions fight
it out, and then used the distraction to high
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tail it out of there and lose my wanted level.
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That felt great, and a lot more interesting
than just shooting a bunch of cops.
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Another massive advantage of systemic design
is that these games can create moments of
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drama and surprise.
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Such as a wild three-way tussle between the
royal army, the golden path, and an angry
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elephant
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Again - this wasn’t scripted, but something
that occurred organically from a bunch of
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different entities that are all aware of each
other, have rules for dealing with each other,
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and have found themselves in the same place.
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And I think these anecdotes are cool for two
reasons.
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For one, they often follow a really interesting
story structure as you devise a plan and try
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to execute it, but a surprising chain reaction
of events scuppers your plan and you must
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react and adapt.
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And because these anecdotes are completely
unique to your experience, I think that often
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makes them more special and memorable than
the ultra epic moment that every single player
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is going to see happen.
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No one’s tweeting about that, are they?
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So systemic games allow the player to come
up with interesting plans.
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And they lead to surprising anecdotes.
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And we call this stuff “emergent gameplay”
- things that weren’t intentionally designed
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by the game’s makers, but solutions and
situations that emerge thanks to the meeting
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of multiple systems.
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That doesn’t let game makers off the hook,
though.
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They’ve got to set all this stuff up, to
create the possibility of emergence.
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So to make this work, we need to create awareness
between lots of different entities in the
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game.
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The more things that are aware of each other,
the better.
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Having characters be able to fight amongst
themselves is one thing, but we can also have
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enemies be able to damage the environment,
have entities be aware of systems like the
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day and night cycle, or - in the case of Zelda
- invent a whole chemistry engine with wind,
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fire, ice, and so on.
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Next, we need rules that are consistent.
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Because - as I talked about in the AI episode
- you can only make good plans if you have
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a pretty strong idea of how the system will
react when you push on it.
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But that means we also need rules that are
universal.
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Like, if some wooden objects catch on fire,
then all wooden objects should catch on fire.
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Any time a rule like that is broken, the believability
of the world is reduced and the player is
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bit less likely to experiment in future.
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So to make this sort of universal connectivity
easier, perhaps take this advice from Dishonored’s
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co-directors Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio.
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They say that instead of having entities be
able to listen for specific objects and characters
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in the world, they let entities output general
stimuli - like fire damage, piercing damage,
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or explosive damage - and then have other
things in the game be aware of those.
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This layer of abstraction makes it easier
to add and modify entities, and even allows
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players to find connections that the designers
never even thought of.
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Like in Harvey Smith’s most famous game,
Deus Ex, where you can exploit the fact that
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MIB enemies explode upon death to blow your
way through doors.
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This is also why you can lay metal objects
on the floor in Zelda to conduct electricity
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and solve some of the shrines in your own
way.
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It might feel a bit like cheating, but that’s
what makes systemic games fun.
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Instead of finding the single, authored solution
to a puzzle, you can use the inherent behaviours
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of the game’s systems to find your own way
to overcome the problem at hand.
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And then, if you want surprising events to
happen on the regular, it’s important for
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the system to be somewhat unstable.
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To not be in perfect equilibrium until the
player comes along and pushes on it, but capable
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of moving and shifting all by itself.
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This can be achieved with automated systems
like how the rolling weather in Breath of
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the Wild can create unpredictable thunderstorms.
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Or by giving AI their own goals and needs
which will push them to move about and, hopefully,
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into conflict with other entities.
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Okay. So you’ve made a systemic game.
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You’ve created connections between all the
entities in your game, and they follow consistent
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and universal rules of interaction.
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But there’s still work to do, because it’s
easy to screw these sorts of games up.
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Many fail to truly encourage players to find
these emergent solutions.
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Because, despite all of the exciting opportunities
afforded by a game like Metal Gear Solid V,
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I ended up finishing a lot of missions by
abusing the silenced tranquilliser gun.
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Why risk some ridiculous plan if there’s
a much more reliable solution to the game’s
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challenges?
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Hitman pushes you to be imaginative by making
Agent 47 weak in a straight up firefight.
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And Zelda, controversially, makes your weapon
turn to dust in the hopes of pushing you to
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try more creative solutions.
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It’s also important to give the player a
whole range of ways to interact with the world,
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that go beyond just killing everything.
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Killing enemies essentially removes an entity
from the space, which most often reduces the
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possibility for systemic fun.
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You want to give the player tools that let
them change, or even add entities - not just
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remove them.
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That might mean hacking a security system
to change its allegiance, or creating an inflatable
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decoy to distract enemies.
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Other games screw up by constraining the player’s
options in really linear missions.
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Grand Theft Auto is a right pain for this.
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Those games are filled with good systems,
to ensure that the cities feel alive and realistic.
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And the police wanted level is an absolute
stroke of genius.
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Without it, killing a civilian in GTA would
have no interesting impact on the world.
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But because your murder feeds into this wanted
system, which sends cop cars after you, your
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action actually has consequences that ripple
out into the different systems in the game.
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It’s terrific.
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But the game’s main missions are often incredibly
linear with scripted sequences and have all
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sorts of fail states for not perfectly following
the commands on screen.
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Far Cry has this problem too, where the main
missions are often nowhere near as much fun
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as the camps - which are just open-ended testbeds
for the different systems.
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Making levels for systemic games is more about
giving the player a goal, and not caring how
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they achieve it.
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They require open areas, and lots of entities
that are aware of each other to create the
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opportunities for good plans and memorable
anecdotes.
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Also, some systemic games fail to create a
unique experience.
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Ubisoft, bless their hearts, are trying to
fill all of their games with the ingredients
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for emergent thrills but the camps in Assassin’s
Creed Origins feel remarkably similar to those
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in Far Cry 4.
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So it’s important to set the systems up
so they deliver their own experience.
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Look at the rather different Far Cry 2, where
it feels like the systems - such as fire propagation
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and roving bad guys - are designed primarily
to whip up moments of peril and danger for
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the player.
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Whereas assassination simulator Hitman goes
completely in the other direction, with the
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focus being more on having a perfectly choreographed
system, where the player becomes the spanner
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in the works.
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You can even imbue systems with a message,
like in Mafia 3 where the police react to
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crime less quickly in a black neighbourhood
than a white neighbourhood.
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That’s a game speaking through its systems.
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Now, this sort of systemic design is really nothing
new.
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For decades, simulation games have been using
this sort of interconnectivity to mimic real
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world systems.
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They just happened to be games where you play
as some sort of omnipotent being, looking
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down on things.
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And we’re still seeing this sort of stuff
today with games like Rimworld, and the absurdly
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interconnected Dwarf Fortress.
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In that game, you can have an emergent situation
where cats wind up dying - because dwarves
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splash wine onto them while drinking, the
cats drink the wine while cleaning themselves,
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and then end up dying of alcohol poisoning.
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Ridiculous.
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Watch this episode of Eurogamer’s Here’s
A Thing for more on that.
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But then there was the immersive sim - the
genre of games like Thief and Deus Ex - where
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the whole point was that they took that simulation
design and put it into an immersive, first-person
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game where you control a single character.
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Hence, the name.
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And this is a big reason why I was stoked
for the comeback of the immersive sim - with
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great games like Prey and Dishonored 2 - but
pretty bummed out when it seemed like those
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games weren’t connecting with a lot of people.
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Sales wise.
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But now it’s starting to become clear that
this sort of design is popular, it just doesn’t
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have to be limited to that very specific legacy
of games that stretches back to Ultima Underworld
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and System Shock.
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Whether it’s big budget experiences.
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Or janky European games.
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Or indie titles, made by immersive sim fans.
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Or - absolutely weirdest of all - the latest
Legend of Zelda game, we’re seeing systemic
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design and emergent gameplay rise up and appear
in all sorts of games.
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And as someone who loves this sort of stuff
- for the opportunity to make plans, and then
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see them go horribly wrong - I’m very excited
to see where this trend goes next.
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Thank you for watching!
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Systemic game design is a super complicated
topic so I’m only scratching the surface
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in this video.
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But check out the description below for links
to loads of resources from experts in the field.