Exercise 8 games of progression and emergence

Jesper Juul distinguishes between games of emergence, where a game is specified as a small number of rules that combine and yield a large number of game variations, and games of progression, where a game presents the player with a series of puzzles or challenges which must be accomplished in a certain order. Discuss whether games of progression, which often attempt to combine a narrative structure with gameplay, are unique to computer-based games

According to Jesper Juul, games of progression are those which “directly set up each consecutive challenge in a game”, whereas games of emergence are those which “set up challenges indirectly because the rules of the game interact”. Progression could be considered as a characteristic of a narrative, as it essentially encompasses sequence and chronology. Emergence, on the other hand, would be a derivative of play: things emerge in games as the players interact with the rules of the game to achieve a specific goal.

Both progression and emergence are present in computer games. Most role playing games are progression orientated while most strategy games are emergence oriented, although frequently they would intertwine with each other to game a game some partial characters of each genre. Nevertheless, when I look at non-computer based games, surprisingly, I could not conveniently find any examples of progression games. In fact almost all of the non-computer games are emergent, from chess, card games, board games and even to recreational sports. Adventure books may be progressive; however, the lack of goal and struggle could only qualify them as ‘interactive narratives’, but not games.

It would be arbitrary to immediately conclude that games of progression, which attempt to combine a narrative structure with game play, are unique to the computer medium; however, real-life example and experience would make it undeniable that the component of progression only exists in computer games so far, and the other games are generally emergent.

It is, in fact, difficult to give an abstract rational to this observation. However, we could imagine superimposing a game of progression on computer medium to the normal games, let’s say board games, and examine whether it works or why it does not work. Take the example of a progressive role playing game such as Final Fantasy. The setting up of the game itself would be very difficult: too many roles or characters, complicated battles, lack of immersion into the game space and etc. And playing the game would be tiresome and boring too, maybe except the component of cosplay. In fact, it may be easy to translate the narrative/progression structure, but difficult to translate the narrative details, which are essential to computer based progression games: the multimedia environment, the graphic and sound effects, the animations and so on. Furthermore, if such a game is played among several person, there could be only a few person playing the game, while the majority of others have to take on the roles of computer generated NPCs, i.e. no room of play for them.

To abstract the idea, games of progression requires a big storage of information, and complicated processes which could only be handled on a computer platform. Non-computer games could only survive and propagate given that they interesting and easy to play, i.e. with simple rules and easy setting-up. The complicity of rules and processes of progression would, therefore, most like to restrict such games on a computer media, or to be scrapped off the gaming component to become a narrative instead. Furthermore, games of progression would require a ‘hidden hand’ to push the progression forward. Such a consistent latent driving force is difficult to be achieved in usual games.