Uncertainty in Games (Playful Thinking) - El Archivo de Anna

Uncertainty in Games (Playful Thinking) -- Greg Costikyan -- Playful Thinking series, 2013 -- The MIT Press -- 9780262018968 -- dddd867c469b8194c4efb03f691c368a -- Anna’s Archive.pdf

Series Foreword vii 1 Introduction 1 2 Games and Culture 3 3 Uncertainty 9 4 Analyzing Games 17 5 Sources of Uncertainty 71 6 Game Design Considerations 105 7 Conclusion 113

• Performative Uncertainty
  • You don’t know if you’ll be able to perform the activity. Usually based on precission, timing,
• Solver’s Uncertainty
  • You don’t know if you’ll be able to solve the puzzle.
• Player Unpredictability
  • You don’t know what other people are going to do.
• Randomness
  • Actual random elements. Numbers that depend on the roll of a die, the draw of a card
• Analytic Complexity
  • Uncertainty over what is the best choice. In general, analytic complexity is the product of a system that allows a player several options but forces trade-offs.
• Hidden Information
  • States od the game that you don’t know about. Fog of war, the roles or objectives of other players, etc.
• Narrative Anticipation
  • You don’t know how the story will unfold.
• Development Anticipation
  • In live games, you are expecting what will the devs do next.
• Schedule Uncertainty
  • In social games, you don’t know when things are going to be completed or aviable.
• Uncertainty of Perception
  • Hidden object games. You don’t know if you’ll be able to percieve something.
• Malaby’s Semiotic Contingency
  • The unpredictability of meaning that always accompanies attempts to interpret the game’s outcomes
  • The kind of thing that papers please pulls off. I’d argue that Bioshock does this too in a meta level with the would you kindly.

• Recap