Systemic Design: Adopting a Mechanic and Emergent Uses
Kyle AING
Level Design
Systemic Design: Adopting a Mechanic and Emergent Uses
My Thesis centered on systemic design principles and emergent gameplay. The research was an attempt at establishing a correlation between how a player learns a mechanic and their exploration into emergent gameplay using that mechanic.
In video games, emergent gameplay has always fascinated me. Wanting to understand my limits and capabilities inspired me to explore and experiment with a game’ s mechanics, pushing boundaries and finding new things to enjoy. I also delight in understanding how complex systems are formed, continue to function, and maintain themselves— all fundamental principles in systems thinking and design. That design focus emphasizes creating opportunities for emergent gameplay.
produced and iterated on. The artifact level,“ Firebox,” was developed for VR in Half-Life: Alyx, iterated, and tested.
Developing this thesis project came with several benefits. The core subject of systems design crosses all disciplines and touches all gameplay, resulting in having to dabble in mesh modeling, event scripting, and sound design in addition to general level design during development. Furthermore, I was able to improve my data analysis skillset when it came to crunching survey and gameplay data.
For the broader videogame industry, this study and results can act as a springboard for further research into the impact of systemic design on both player learning and emergent gameplay.
Over the course of 12 months, the thesis topic was researched, a hypothesis was formalized, and a design document was
34 LEVEL DESIGN