Tools For Emergent Design

Jason Shankel, Maxis Corp., Walnut Creek

Stevenson Hall 1300
11:00 AM - 11:50 AM

Most modern computer games are highly linear experiences. Players attempt toachieve goals in detail-rich, authored worlds. Other games, such as SimCity and Railroad Tycoon, allow players to discover the rich complexity that can emerge from simple rules. This second category of game is more difficult to design, as the tools of emergence are not as well understood as the tools of linear storytelling. In this talk, I will describe some of the efforts we have made to formalize the design of emergent games.