puzzle or a combat situation and then having it actually work. The more complex sys-
tems work correctly and concurrently with each other, the more interesting and varied
the solutions to situations become. Consider the gameCivilization, with its numerous
systems running in parallel. These systems work together to create some of the most
compelling gameplay ever pressed to disk.
At the same time, many designers fear players discovering emergent strategies
they can use as exploits: tactics that will allow players to finish a game too easily, skip-
ping a lot of the fun. With its complex systems design,Civilizationwas a prime
candidate for player exploitation. In the original game, players were able to exploit a
rush strategy where they would never build cities of a size larger than two while stay-
ing in the most primitive form of government, quickly sweeping over the world and
winning the game prematurely. This strategy was so effective it was clearly the best
strategy to use and allowed players to miss 90 percent of the game. Sid Meier ended up
patching the game to increase the citizens’ unhappiness when this strategy was used,
fixing the exploit. In this case the emergent tactic revealed a shortcut through the game
that needed to be fixed.
Another example of this sort of emergent strategy that might be regarded as an
exploit can be found in the originalCentipede. Anyone who has ever played the game
knows that the piling up of mushrooms is one of the greatest impediments to a long
game, and many players understand the importance of keeping the play-field as clear as
possible. As the devotees of the game pumped quarter after quarter into the game, they
began to notice some patterns. First, they recognized that the flea is responsible for
dropping most of the problematic mushrooms, though destroyed centipede segments
also drop them. Second, they saw that the flea does not come out on the game’s first
wave. Third, it was observed that the flea is triggered by the absence of mushrooms in
the bottom half of the screen. Thus the famous “blob” strategy was developed, one that
the game’s designer, Ed Logg, never anticipated. To use the blob strategy, players
would clear all of the mushrooms from the board on the first wave, and then allow
mushrooms to survive only on the bottom-right quadrant of the screen. If, through
careful destruction of the centipede, the players only allow mushrooms to be created in
that section of the screen, the flea will never come out, making the game much simpler
indeed. This is an emergent solution to racking up a high score atCentipede, one which
players no doubt felt quite proud of when it was discovered. It was a tactic that Logg, as
the game’s creator, did not even know was there to be found. Unlike theCivilization
rush strategy described above, the blob strategy was so hard to pull off that it was not
truly an exploit, merely an alternate tactic that required a good deal of player skill.
Though some designers become distressed whenever an unanticipated strategy
emerges in their game, it is important to look at the given tactic and determine if it
ruins the player’s experience or if it is a technique equally or even more fun than what
the designer had planned. If such emergent strategies do not completely break the
game, they need to be viewed as a boon to the game’s depth and the direct result of good
game design.
118 Chapter 7: The Elements of Gameplay