Identify the basic elements in a game of your choice (actions, goals, rules, objects, playspace, players).
I’m interested in dissecting Tag, because it has such a porous magic circle, and so many of the rules are unstated.
- Actions: Tagging, which changes who is It. An unstated norm of the game is that running and hiding are appropriate actions a player may take to avoid whoever is It, but actions like shoving and punching are not.
- Goals: 1. Avoid being It, 2. Run around. A lot.
- Rules: If you are It, you can make someone else it by touching them with your hand i.e. tagging them. If you are tagged by the player who is It, then you become It.
- Objects: Hands and bodies.
- Playspace: Whatever terrain players decide to play on. This could be explicitly or implicitly agreed upon ahead of time e.g. a backyard may naturally imply a boundary. However, players might not agree ahead of time and this may cause a break in the magic circle if a player exits the playspace imagined by another player.
- Players: There is one player who begins as It and there’s everyone else.
As a thought experiment, swap one element between two games: a single rule, one action, the goal, or the playspace. For example, what if you applied the playspace of chess to basketball? Imagine how the play experience would change based on this swap.
If you were to take Go Fish and swap out the playspace for Hide and Seek, perhaps you’d end up with a game where players try to hide cards from other players and look for cards other players have hidden that match with cards in your hand. In this case, the game would be much more about finding clever hiding spots in the space around you than the raw luck of guessing a card the other player might have. Furthermore, it would significantly slow down the game as each player’s turn would involve getting up and looking around your environment for a card instead of just picking one up from a pile in front of you.
Pick a simple game you played as a child. Try to map out its space of possibility, taking into account the goals, actions, objects, rules, and playspace as the parameters inside of which you played the game. The map might be a visual flowchart or a drawing trying to show the space of possibility on a single screen or a moment in the game.
I used to play the Peg Game pretty frequently, since it was a fun and simple brain-teaser. Y’know, this thing:
The possibility space of the game are all the possible arrangements of pegs that can be derived from a starting state. This is a smaller set of states than “all possible arrangements of 14 or fewer pegs on a 15-hole triangle”, because there are some arrangements of the game pieces that you can only arrive at by making invalid moves. For example:
In this drawing, empty circles are pegs and black circles are holes. This game state is impossible to reach by following the rules of the game. The possibility space looks something like this:
First, the player chooses a starting state. Depending on which starting state they choose, they may have between 1 and 4 possible first jumps available to them. As they open up more holes, there are more and more valid moves possible. The final outcome of the game is qualified in terms of remaining pegs, and the fewer the better.
Pick a real-time game and a turn-based game. Observe people playing each. Make a log of all the game states for each game. After you have created the game state logs, review them to see how they show the game’s space of possibility and how the basic elements interact.
Real-time game: Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom (TOTK). Fire Temple.
- Player opens a chest. They gain 10 arrows.
- The player throws a weapon then picks up a new one to replace it. The weapon that was previously on the ground gets added to their inventory and equipped
- The player gets in a minecart and turns it on. The minecart begins moving and they are carried with it. They attempt to hit a button that switches the tracks but miss and are launched off the minecart tracks and into the lava below. They die and respawn on the last bit of stable ground they were standing on. They lose one heart.
- The player accidentally falls into the lava again and respawns. They have only one heart remaining. They eat food to replenish their hearts.
- The player stops attempting to solve the puzzle from the temple and jumps off of the platform they’re standing on. They open their glider to slow their descent and land safely on the ground.
- The player begins exploring the area around the temple and encounters some monsters. The monsters see the player and begin attacking them. The player runs from the monster and falls in lava. They respawn but lose a heart.
- The player runs to safety away from the monsters and opens their map. They find a checkpoint area they know is safe and teleport there to replenish their health.
- The player teleports back to the Fire Temple and attempts to solve a different puzzle than they were trying to solve previously.
Turn-based game: Video of a person playing Chess online. White player is on camera and mic, black player is not.
- The two players make several opening movies in quick succession. White player quickly takes control of the center of the board with his pawns, as well as getting as many pieces out of rank as they can quickly.
- White pawn moves to take control of the center of the board.
- Black player moves their pawn to block the white pawn
- White player move their horse out onto the board
- Black player does the same
- White player moves their bishop to the center of the board.
- The black player moves their pieces to contest the white player’s control of the center of the board. The two players battle for control. The white player largely maintains control of the center.
- Black payer moves their bishop to threaten the center of the board
- The white player castles to protect their king
- The black player develops their second knight
- White player moves their pawn to create an opening for their bishop to move
- Black player moves their pawn to threaten the space the white player would eventually move their bishop
- White player moves their knight to the center of the board
- The black player castles to protect their king
- The white player moves their second bishop to the center of the board.
- The black player takes the white player’s bishop with their bishop
- The white player takes the black player’s bishop with their pawn.
- The black player moves their pawn to create an opening for their second bishop
- The white player moves a pawn to control the center of the board
- The black player takes the white player’s pawn with their pawn
- White player takes black player’s pawn with their pawn.
- Black player moves their bishop to threaten the white player’s knight.
- white player moves their pawn to threaten the black player’s biship
- Black player retreats their bishop to their side of the board, while still threatening the white player’s knight
- White player moves their queen up to start getting it in play
- Black player moves their rook to threaten the center of the board while remaining on their side of the board.
- White player moves their rook to match the black player’s rook.
- The black player starts to take more and more of the white player’s pieces as the white player loses track of all of the pieces they have in play.
- Black player takes the opportunity created by the white player moving their rook to take the white knight the white rook was previously defending. The white player expresses frustration at their mistake.
- The white player moves their pawn to take the black player’s bishop. This leaves the king relatively open
- The black player moves their knight to the outside of the board.
- The white player moves their king behind another pawn. Their king is in the corner of the board.
- The black player moves their queen out closer to the center of the board. White player says “He’s low-key threatening to eat me alive right now”
- White player moves their queen up closer to the center of the board, behind some if their pawns
- Black player takes a pawn protecting the white player’s queen using their knight.
- White player expects the black player to start dividing their forces. They calculate that they might be able to take the black player’s queen if the black player does this. They say “let’s take a big risk” and moves their knight to threaten the black player’s queen while allowing the white player a chance to divide the white player’s forces. They say “I’m hoping he goes for this fork. If he does that would be my dream … I’m a genius at chess. He’s done.”
TOTK is a quite complex game with many interlocking systems. The player moves fluidly between puzzle-solving, exploration, and combat. Because there are so many systems overlapping at once, the player has a lot of resources and game states to keep track of e.g. the state of particular puzzles, whether enemies have noticed them or not, their health, the amount of resources in their inventory, etc. Additionally, the game has quite a large possibility space because it is an open-world game. The player has some agency in choosing which goals they would like to pursue. If a puzzle is too hard, they can leave, fight some enemies, and come back later.
Chess has quite a large possibility space, but not nearly as big as TOTK’s. Because chess is turn-based, the player only really has one decision to make at a time (which piece to move where) and they have a quite substantial amount of time to make it. In a real-time game like TOTK, the player is making an immense amount of micro-decisions in very rapid succession e.g. how to move their character, which items to pick up, whether to use items in their inventory or not, whether to run fast or sneak., etc. However, because there are so many decisions to be made at once, each individual decision has a comparatively small effect on the outcome of the game e.g. whether the player succeeds or not. In chess, on the other hand, each individual decision has huge implications for the final outcome of the game. A single move in chess can decide who wins and who loses.
