Ben Gonshaw: Digital Media Theorist & Game Design Consultant
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EMERGENCE: Gaming's Saviour, or False Hope? Summary

 

Emergence has been a buzzword in scientific circles for a long while. Luminaries like Kenneth Arrow, John Holland, Stuart Kauffman and Stephen Wolfram, from fields as diverse as economics, biology and mathematics all settled on the same conclusions. Their findings all fall under the banner of Complexity theory, which threatened to recast determinism in a scientific, mathematical form. The theory spawned its own research centre, The Santa Fe Institute and it continues to be applied to every aspect of the material universe and all of human creation, both as a way of explaining observations and for creating new entities. Now emergence has become a buzzword in games too, but what does that mean, how is it applied and is it really a helpful framework to make enjoyable games?

 

• Introduction to Complexity
  If you have not come across emergence or complexity before, or you are unsure of the exact ins and outs, try reading this summary before you head on to the main article.

 

• Games and Complexity
  Let's take a look at the impact that complexity has on current gaming and the ways that emergence could be used in the future. Exciting as they are, we will also evaluate whether such applications are useful or indeed desirable.

 

• Catgorising Emergence in Games
  So we've looked at what emergence is and how it can be used in games. Emergence in games needs to be formalised, or we will fall into a trap of thinking that things are emergent when they are not, or even that emergence is important to a game when it isn't. This section is an attempt to stop such confusion by categorising the different types of emergence that can be found in games.

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