next »

[shinygerbil]

A friend of mine was telling me once about how he and his brothers used to play Duke Nukem 64 when they were fairly young, but instead of killing, they'd treat it more like the Sims - going round each others' "house", having parties, and just generally not killing each other until the end.

Like I said, they were young. It was almost like a playhouse, except not.

[moshboy]

I know in a few different racing games, me and a friend decided to race backwards around the tracks for the hell of it.

[Xander]

Haha, that was also the way I took to the Forza 2 demo when it first came out.

'Realistic Damage Modelling, huh?... '

[Robotacon]

I'm doing something similar, but it's not exactly what you're talking about.

I've hooked up the platform game I'm building so that the game engine reloads the map file if it's updated. since I'm using a png-files (at 1/8 scale, each pixel representing a tile in-game) for level design, I can simply draw platforms in front of myself using Pro Motion as a drawing tool.

It's like debugging the map in real time and it becomes a game in itself when you box in enemies or remove the floor under their feet.

Finally I had to make myself invincible/untouchable because the enemies got to me all the time when I was multitasking playing the game and making the map as I went along.

[Felan]

That's very cool Robotacon, but I have to point out that it's not the same thing. You've crossed the line from player to "user" of the software- you've changed the game on the level of its programming, rather than using the programming from within to create new ways of playing. It's an important distinction.

[Xion]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned going through any Zelda game with just three hearts.  Unless I missed something. Also, in OOT and TP getting the wooden shield, having it burned, and going through the game shieldless.

Inversely, there's also the striving for all 20 hearts and all 4 bottles. Placed in the game for being done, I guess, but not really a ruleset or requirement that it be done.

But in almost every game I play, I make it a point to try getting somewhere I'm not supposed to be. Sometimes it turns out to be a secret area, sometimes unreachable, and sometimes an abyss or just an empty, small spot. But still...I dunno if that counts though.

[shinygerbil]

Edge magazine - at least I think it was Edge magazine - did an excellent feature on the various ins and outs of speedrunning, which has already been mentioned in this thread. Speedrunning of any kind often uses exploits/bugs/that sort of thing to get through the levels as quickly as possible, often missing out large, supposedly mandatory chunks of the game.

Which brings me onto something else which hasn't been mentioned yet; good ol' rocket jumps. (Actually, I was brought up on concjumps, because I'm a TFC nut, but the principle is the same.) I don't know how far this crosses into modding, because you're only adding levels, but there are plenty of extra maps for those sorts of games which are designed with nothing in mind but getting from one side to the other using rocket/conc/grenjumps. I guess it is modding, really, but still, it *can* be considered outside the rules of the game when you use it in a regular match.

TFC....Good times

[GP Lackey]

There's a few other Halo 2 game types that rely on voluntary rule obeyance.  Zombies, Tremors, Braveheart...those are the ones I've seen.

When me and my friends played Worms we used to have voluntary truces where we'd just go about digging homes for ourselves in the terrain and only actually fighting when we were absolutely bored.

[Felan]

Rocketjumping, like Jeepjumping (you know, planting grenades under the jeep in Halo and watching it fly) crosses the line into what I'm talking about when it's formalized as a contest- who can get the jeep/corpse furthest/fastest/to a specific location.

Lackey, could you elaborate on the rules to Zombies, Tremors and Braveheart?

[GP Lackey]

Lets see, in Zombies everyone starts with a shotgun and a plasma sword.  The zombie is the one player on green team (everyone else switches to red) and is the only player allowed to use the sword.  Everyone else must use the shotgun.  If the zombie player kills another they are honour-bound to switch to green team and to start using the sword as well.  The game ends when either every player is a zombie or if one or more human players survive until the end of the round.

Tremors is...well I'm a little unclear on the rules of this one.  One team all drives banshees around (you have to play this on a certain map: Blood Gulch) while the other team is allowed only to use grenades and has to survive by jumping from rock to rock.

Braveheart is played usually with a very large number of players (also on Blood Gulch).  Every player is on one of two teams and starts at their respective base.  At the beginning of the match everyone is required to fire off all of their grenades at the enemy base (this volley looks quite impressive) before charging to the middle for close combat.  No shooting or grenades are allowed here, just the melee attack.  Additionally there are no re-spawns during the match so the stakes are quite high.

Anyway you can see how these require people to voluntarily follow the rules.  You can break them at any time, but people will stop playing with you.

[Pacian]

I think there are some kinds of "emergent gameplay" that are so obviously good/bad, we don't think about them.

Real world morality is one example.  In games which don't give any reward or disincentive for killing civilians, if I accidentally kill an innocent person, especially one with a name that you can talk to, I'll still reload my last save, even if I've actually made a lot of progress. I bet I'm not the only one.

The other one is not cheating. Let me put it this way: when I'm playing Deus Ex, there's a certain combination of key presses that will make me draw a shotgun and load it with sabot rounds. There's also another set of key presses that will make me impervious to damage. But while any number of people will use the first set of key presses, most people will choose to play without using the second. Why? Both are allowed by the game program itself. But the second one breaks the fourth wall and makes the game less fun.

[Stij]

Some stuff me and my friends used to do:

"Take The Building" on FPS games. Play on teams, set the other team to have a bunch of smart bots, and then hole up in a building on the map and see how long you can survive.

Finishing off your opponent in a fighting game with the weakest/goofiest move possible.

Boxing matches in Halo. (use the Plasma Pistol only, its melee attack is a punch)

"Darksiding" in Worms is a good example. For those of you who don't know, Darksiding is basically the technique of digging tunnels deep into the level and then hiding like a sissy little coward while everone else fights it out. Surprisingly, it works. There are other "sides" (playing styles) too, like Lightside, Greyside, Brightside, etc.

Worms also had a bunch of made-up gametypes people played, like Shopper, Forts, Race, etc. Also, since there was nothing in the game stopping people from breaking the self-imposed rules of these gametypes, a sort of marital law emerged. People who cheated were called "cows" and were killed on sight by everyone else.  :D

[Xander]

*facepalm*

I forgot Hero Race! Back when Warcraft II came out with the editor, me and my brothers made a map where the hero characters in the game were all assembled as passive in the centre of the map, so if one of your guys touched them they became part of your army. The objective was still Warcraft 'Kill everyone else' style, but there was also a race to see who could get the centre fastest (surrounded by boulders that need to be blown up, trees that need to be chopped... or blown up. Moats to be traversed etc) and procure the heroes. But if it took them too long the heroes might have nothing to return to, or the other teams could focus on defense and build up fortifications enough to take on the heroes. It was fun, but I think I recall the heroes being a little -too- powerful for that.

[idiotmeat]

I guess the whole tower defense gametypes and DOTA (or whatever the acronym is) from WC3 count, but then again, tower defense is only available since the map's ruleset is designed for that type of game.

Now Super Mario Bros for the NES, that was a game where I'd try to limit myself as much as possible.  No mushrooms? check.  no stars? check.  Move through the entire game while jumping backwards? check.
Honestly, at times I wonder if the emergent gameplay is usually more fun than the intended gameplay.

[Felan]

I guess the whole tower defense gametypes and DOTA (or whatever the acronym is) from WC3 count, but then again, tower defense is only available since the map's ruleset is designed for that type of game.

That's right, and it sort of precludes most kinds of RTS custom gametypes- if you're adding the rules using an in-game editor of some kind, it's not what I'm looking at specifically.

[Tr00jg]

Honestly, at times I wonder if the emergent gameplay is usually more fun than the intended gameplay.

It is actually. You create your own rules within a much more finite rule set. I guess it can labeled as expressing your "freedom". You create your own world. There is a better explanation (im sure) for it though.

[Xander]

I think part of what makes it fun is that it's your own creation. If someone gives you a bunch of gametypes, that's fun, but there's something so much more fun about them -not- existing and you creating them yourself. I mean how much fun must the Warthog Jumping guys have had when they first found out about it? Rocket Tag in Crackdown was fun too, but only because of the spontaneous thing of it.

That's an interesting angle I think. Basically when me and my brother started playing, at any point one of us would yell "ROCKET TAG!" into the microphone and shooting a rocket in the direction of the other person. If the force of the shockwave ragdoll'd your character, you were then tagged and had to do the same. It generally carried on until we got a kill or we just grew tired of it. But they also introduced this in an update as an actual gametype, which is fine... but it ruined how much fun it was to just break into like that. There's a difference between choosing what to play and deciding at any given moment how to play it. Or, something or other...

[Bezzy]

It's interesting that when one of these alternate uses for gaming becomes popular enough, it sometimes becomes formalized... adapted so that the altered gameplay is the focus, rather than just agreed "folk rules".

The Defrag mod for quake 3, for example, takes quake 3's awesome, involved, high-skill-ceiling movement (strafe jumping, rocket jumping, plasma climbing etc.) and refocusses levels and game rules around navigation and speed, rather than killing others.

...

One folk game we tried at a lan party once was "Beat the Bullies" in quake 3. Everyone got on the red team (bullies), except 1 guy, designated "the victim" was on the other team. We took turns being "the victim", and everyone who was a bully was only allowed to use the gauntlet, and not allowed to pick up any weapons. It was fantastic on Q3DM0. It turned the game into some kinda serious sam clone, but where every enemy was as intelligent as the player... so people would hide in cover, waiting for team mates to join so that they could bum rush the victim. Or one person would run from cover as a distraction so that the rest could flank the victim without him noticing. So, this was a case where all players had to work with an agreed rule set to get the most out of the folk game. As with Defrag, there have been countless mods which fixed this rule set, but normally they'd augment the "victim" rather than restrict the "bullies".

While playing UT2k4 at my last office in evenings, I was *almost* the best player there (two notable exceptions), but because I don't like UT quite as much as Quake 3, I couldn't take it seriously, and ran around using the impact hammer exclusively. I ended up winning quite a lot of matches by running from the good players and killing the bad ones - people weren't used to enemy charging straight at them with some dash-double-jumps. They just weren't used to my "human rocket" tactics, so I did surprisingly well. My point here is that you don't NEED universal acceptance of folk-rules to alter the game in your own little way.

I managed an 11 knife kill streak in BattleField 2, just trying to get the knife combat achievements.

And in Soldier of Fortune 2, the knifes were actually the only weapons which had a consistent path - everything else had random aim offset, so straight 1 on 1 firefights could be a bit of a crap shoot. So me, I always ran from anyone who saw me, and hid in difficult to reach spots, waiting until I could get the drop unsuspecting victims. So yeah. When I get bored in FPS games, I try playing hand-to-hand/gimmick weapons exclusively. It's easier than you think, once you adopt the mindset, and realize that other people aren't thinking the same way as you, and having that kind of lateral view of the game can be very disruptive to players who are fixed in their strategy. Very Jeet Kun Do in that respect. It's like looking at any game with fresh eyes.

[Tr00jg]

That Quake 3 twist sounds sweet. I'm lanning tonight. I might suggest that!

Another "twist" I remember came from playing Need for Speed 3 on PS1. We all just stopped driving and "assumed" roles in the map. ie, the house on the road by intersection was mine. We "rode" to town, "bought" stuff. It sounds all Sims-like.

[Felan]

Woah, insanely old post ressurection! But I think it's for a good reason.

So many months later, the article is complete and published in Loading... Journal, a peer-reviewed journal put out by the Canadian Game Studies Association. If you're so inclined, you can open a free account and read it here:

http://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/issue/current

Thanks again for your input, TIGSource. Very much appreciated!