Chapter 7. Gameplay


A ny game designer should agree that gameplay is the core of the game. Given an ideal world, designers would probably claim that gameplay should be put above all other considerations. And in a lot of cases, were it not for external pressures, these same game designers would attempt to treat the gameplay with the level of importance that it deserves . There's just one problem with this: There is no universally accepted definition of gameplay. Gameplay is an important, if nebulous, concept. Many times during discussions of games , we have heard comments such as, "This has great gameplay," followed by a detailed description of the particular aspect of the game. However, if instead you were to ask the question, "What is gameplay?", most answers would attempt to explain by example. Indeed, explanation by example can be helpful, but it requires that you infer a definition of gameplay by induction. Describing gameplay without using self-reference is similar to trying to explain the concept of red without reference to color . It is difficult to conceive, but not impossible .

There is a reason for this difficulty: The concept of gameplay is extremely difficult to define. Each designer has his or her own personal definition of gameplay, formed from exposure to many examples over the course of a career.

Gameplay is so difficult to define because there is no single entity that we can point to and say, "There! That's the gameplay." Gameplay is the result of a large number of contributing elements. The presence, or lack thereof, of gameplay can be deduced by examining a particular game for indications and contraindications of these elements. (These terms are borrowed from medical terminology: An indication is a positive sign that implies the existence of gameplay, and a contraindication is a negative sign that implies that gameplay does not exist.)



Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design
Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design
ISBN: 1592730019
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 148

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