Sorry this is a little old, but I came a cross this doing a little research for another post.
Note that in the few instances where World of Warcraft develops emergent gameplay, most players are complaining.
~~Tobold
While amusing from the outside, and perhaps in retrospect not dissimilar to the
Corrupted Blood incident, referring to the slaughter of
everyone—PC or NPC—in
all the Capitals through an exploit as "emergent gameplay" is like calling the actions of a person coming along and knocking all the pieces off the board in the middle of someone else's Monopoly game "emergent gameplay." Tobold implies that players should just grin and bear it, as if to say, "Oh look at the piteous WoW players whining about how unfair it all is." He goes on in his own comments to compare this hack to the cesspool of betrayal that is EVE, which also includes a great deal of meta-game intrigue. Sorry, that is not emergent gameplay, that is griefers shitting all over everyone else trying to play an honest game.
I'm in agreement with you. Actually, when I first saw that quote, I thought it was a joke.
ReplyDeleteHis post just prior to that one was about different games with different levels of developer storylines, and included EVE as an example of the devs getting out of the way of players' emergent stories.
DeleteI think Tobold, like most of the people who talk about "emergent" anything, have narry a clue what the word or concept refers too.
ReplyDeleteHeck, I was just reading about it, and am now less sure of what it means. Still sure it doesn't cover hacks and exploits.
DeleteIt depends on the purpose of the hack/exploit in question and whether or not they could be themselves exploited as part of the means to the end. I agree it would be difficult and likely left untried in all cases except those where emergent strategies were already in place (so clearly not in WoW)...but its possible.
DeleteIn my opinion, any hack or exploit would be cheating, which is (also IMO) not emergent gameplay, unless the whole point of the game is hacking. Such is not the case with any commercial MMO of which I am aware.
DeleteWell said! That bugged the heck out of me when he wrote it. Emergent gameplay comes about because of the interaction of systems, not by subverting them!
ReplyDeleteEmergence tends to refer to order where none would be expected from constituent inputs. The chaos actions of a single "mass murderer" is certainly not that.
Delete