When do Games Achieve Agency First, I want to say that I am not an expert on game design. Also, I would like to acknowledge my lack of experience on this platform. My goal with this blog is to give you a resource to reference and a schema to better understand what Agency is and how to incorporate it in your games. I have been playing games critically from over a decade and when becoming an architect wasn't gunna happen I switched my focus to game development. But enough about me. I have been watching a lot of videos on YT echoing sentiments from the gamer community that modern AAA titles are flat and lack emergent gameplay. Emergent gameplay is achieved when a games' systems are balanced in a way that allows for multiple paths and impart a sense of immersion. Every player wants this. But how can you guarantee that your player base will make this personal connection with your game? Like I said I watch a lot of YT. Gaming videos is not all I watch. Lately I have been keep-up with F1 racing by watching highlights from this season's races. At first glance motorsport racing seems like the least agential sport/game, but it is not. There is a lot of strategy about car placement and speed and varying grip conditions that drivers have to consider. Conceptually, racers are going around a pre-determined track as fast as they can, but in this proto-agential level we learn a lot about creating emergent gameplay. 1) Non-Agential gameplay: Player must go around a given track with no control other than go stop. Race result is deterministic and the player has exert no effort to achieve victory. 2) Intermidiate Agential: Track is now conceptualized with a width dimension. Although this scenario is identical in the forward direction - player must complete the pre-determined track - The added element of lane position creates agency. Players can now choose whether they want to enter a turn inside and exit wide, or exit more conservatively in anticipation of the next turn. It is a geometric schema for introducing player choice. You can imagine a plot line for your game existing as a range around a general trend. 3) Full Agency: Now consider racers picking their line, but now, they must also contend with other racers. Here, the competition has made it so that racers may compromise their ideal path through the track in order to block or deny other racers their ideal line. Further, player seek to not only control their chances to win, but also their opponent's chances to lose. Whether against AI or other players, this type of gameplay, for players who understand racing, can fully engage a player. 3) continued... (I don't think I full understand how to definitively abstract "Full Angency" into my game plot schema but I will proposed this): Consider a solution defined by a set of points. where intermediate agency would suggest that even if you don't hit every point in the solution you may still win. In fact you may do better, in the case of timed races. You can imagine a line where every point has 2D coordinates. The solution curve is drawn up, but the player's actual curve may differ so long as it remains within some range. I believe Full Agency can be conceptualized as a solution curve that is affected by the player's actions since it would depend on the performance of the other racers also. That is difficult for me to understand, so i'll leave it at that. Using this schema it is easy to see where to start to introducing agency in our games. This is wholly open for discussion but, conceptually, if we are giving players a zone within the flow of our narrative where they can make choices, we are getting close. Remember, in no agency systems, players can only choose to go or stop (think "Magic Tracks RC"). We can to introduce agency by adding more mechanisms of control. Where even though racers were still following a set circuit in the intermediate example, at any given moment they may change speed and lane position. Generally the aim is to allow play; racers can design a line that maximizes their speed and achieve a faster time. I hope this has been helpful. https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

First, I want to say that I am not an expert on game design. Also, I would like to acknowledge my lack of experience on this platform. My goal with this blog is to give you a resource to reference and a schema to better understand what Agency is and how to incorporate it in your games. I have been playing games critically from over a decade and when becoming an architect wasn't gunna happen I switched my focus to game development. But enough about me. I have been watching a lot of videos on YT echoing sentiments from the gamer community that modern AAA titles are flat and lack emergent gameplay. Emergent gameplay is achieved when a games' systems are balanced in a way that allows for multiple paths and impart a sense of immersion. Every player wants this. But how can you guarantee that your player base will make this personal connection with your game? Like I said I watch a lot of YT. Gaming videos is not all I watch. Lately I have been keep-up with F1 racing by watching highlights from this season's races. At first glance motorsport racing seems like the least agential sport/game, but it is not. There is a lot of strategy about car placement and speed and varying grip conditions that drivers have to consider. Conceptually, racers are going around a pre-determined track as fast as they can, but in this proto-agential level we learn a lot about creating emergent gameplay. 1) Non-Agential gameplay: Player must go around a given track with no control other than go stop. Race result is deterministic and the player has exert no effort to achieve victory. 2) Intermidiate Agential: Track is now conceptualized with a width dimension. Although this scenario is identical in the forward direction - player must complete the pre-determined track - The added element of lane position creates agency. Players can now choose whether they want to enter a turn inside and exit wide, or exit more conservatively in anticipation of the next turn. It is a geometric schema for introducing player choice. You can imagine a plot line for your game existing as a range around a general trend. 3) Full Agency: Now consider racers picking their line, but now, they must also contend with other racers. Here, the competition has made it so that racers may compromise their ideal path through the track in order to block or deny other racers their ideal line. Further, player seek to not only control their chances to win, but also their opponent's chances to lose. Whether against AI or other players, this type of gameplay, for players who understand racing, can fully engage a player. 3) continued... (I don't think I full understand how to definitively abstract "Full Angency" into my game plot schema but I will proposed this): Consider a solution defined by a set of points. where intermediate agency would suggest that even if you don't hit every point in the solution you may still win. In fact you may do better, in the case of timed races. You can imagine a line where every point has 2D coordinates. The solution curve is drawn up, but the player's actual curve may differ so long as it remains within some range. I believe Full Agency can be conceptualized as a solution curve that is affected by the player's actions since it would depend on the performance of the other racers also. That is difficult for me to understand, so i'll leave it at that. Using this schema it is easy to see where to start to introducing agency in our games. This is wholly open for discussion but, conceptually, if we are giving players a zone within the flow of our narrative where they can make choices, we are getting close. Remember, in no agency systems, players can only choose to go or stop (think "Magic Tracks RC"). We can to introduce agency by adding more mechanisms of control. Where even though racers were still following a set circuit in the intermediate example, at any given moment they may change speed and lane position. Generally the aim is to allow play; racers can design a line that maximizes their speed and achieve a faster time. I hope this has been helpful.

from GameDev.net https://ift.tt/2LpxEPM