I’ll go with TGGP’s domain (video games), since that is what we blog about at Kill Ten Rats. The gaming blogosphere uses the term “emergent gameplay” more or less as TGGP defines it. Going back to my first online game, Asheron’s Call, an example of what is not “emergent” gameplay is characters slaying monsters and leveling up. Monsters have the same code, but rarely win, so they rarely level; an example of emergent play was having characters sacrifice themselves to bunnies, who would gradually level up to a Night of the Lepus situation. Non-emergent was the use of “pyreals” (gold pieces) as currency; emergent was the economy that arose using alternate competing commodities as units of exchange.
As others have stated, I usually see “emergent” used as a shorthand for something like “the whole is not predictable from the parts.” No cell in your brain understands Chinese, and neither does any part of Searle’s Chinese room, but the system as a whole does. Is there a better term akin to the fallacy of composition or ecological fallacy?
“Tell me what it isn’t!”
I’ll go with TGGP’s domain (video games), since that is what we blog about at Kill Ten Rats. The gaming blogosphere uses the term “emergent gameplay” more or less as TGGP defines it. Going back to my first online game, Asheron’s Call, an example of what is not “emergent” gameplay is characters slaying monsters and leveling up. Monsters have the same code, but rarely win, so they rarely level; an example of emergent play was having characters sacrifice themselves to bunnies, who would gradually level up to a Night of the Lepus situation. Non-emergent was the use of “pyreals” (gold pieces) as currency; emergent was the economy that arose using alternate competing commodities as units of exchange.
As others have stated, I usually see “emergent” used as a shorthand for something like “the whole is not predictable from the parts.” No cell in your brain understands Chinese, and neither does any part of Searle’s Chinese room, but the system as a whole does. Is there a better term akin to the fallacy of composition or ecological fallacy?