Simple rules interacting produce play the designer never authored, and often the play people remember.
A designed sequence gives every player the same experience, and a system of interacting rules gives each player a different one. Emergence is cheaper to produce and impossible to guarantee, which is the trade: the memorable episode is generated rather than written, and so is the broken one.
In practice
- A physics system meant for puzzles is used to skip the puzzles, and the story is better than the intended route.
- A workplace policy with three simple rules produces behaviour nobody drafted, in both directions.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Play & Game Design
- Essay
- Small worlds with visible rules