Emergent gameplay
Encyclopedia
Emergent gameplay refers to complex situations in video games, board game
s, or table top role-playing game
s that emerge
from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics.
More recently game designers have attempted to encourage emergent play by providing tools to players such as placing web browser
s within the game engine (such as in EVE Online
, The Matrix Online
), providing XML
integration tools and programming language
s (Second Life
), fixing exchange rates (Entropia Universe
), and allowing a player to spawn any object that they desire to solve a puzzle (Scribblenauts
).
or Dungeons & Dragons
have featured intentional emergence as a primary game function by supplying players with relatively simple rules or frameworks for play that intentionally encourage them to explore creative strategies or interactions and exploit them toward victory or goal achievement.
is often cited as a game responsible for promoting the idea of emergent gameplay, with players developing interesting solutions such as using wall-mounted mines as piton
s for climbing walls.
Such emergence may also occur in games through open-ended gameplay and sheer weight of simulated content, in Dwarf Fortress
for example. The Nintendo DS
game Scribblenauts
allows the player to write the name of tens of thousands of nouns within its database to bring that object into a game's level and have it behave realistically within the game's engine; the game challenges the player to find as many ways to complete puzzles or reach a goal by using such objects in any combination, and is considered by its developers 5TH Cell to promote emergent gameplay.
In The Sims
, a story may emerge from the actions of the player. But the player is given so much control that they are more creating a story than interacting with a story. Emergent narrative would only partially be created by the player. Warren Spector
, the designer of Deus Ex
, has argued that emergent narrative lacks the emotional impact of linear storytelling.
Left 4 Dead
features a dynamic system for game dramatics, pacing, and difficulty called the Director. The way the Director works is called "Procedural narrative": instead of having a difficulty which increases to a constant level, the A.I. analyzes how the players fared in the game so far, and tries to add subsequent events that would give them a sense of narrative.
series.
s, game glitches or physics quirks can become viable strategies, or even spawn their own game types. In id Software
's Quake series, rocket jumping
and strafe-jumping
are two such examples. In the game Halo 2
, pressing the melee attack button (B) quickly followed by the reload button (X) and the primary fire button (R trigger) would result in the player not having to wait for the gun to be back in position to shoot after a melée attack. Doing this has become known as "BXR-ing". Starsiege: Tribes
had a glitch in the physics engine which allowed players to "ski" up and down steep slopes by rapidly pressing the jump key, gaining substantial speed in the process. The exploitation of this glitch became central to the gameplay, supplanting the vehicles that had been originally envisioned by the designers as the primary means of traversing large maps.
Thanks to a programming oversight by Capcom
, the combo (or 2-1 combo) notion was introduced with the fighting game Street Fighter II
, when skilled players learned that they could combine several attacks that left no time for their opponents to recover, as long as they were timed correctly.
car racing game
s, particularly Project Gotham Racing
, players came up with this variation. The racers play on teams of at least two cars. Each team picks one very slow car as the mouse, and their goal is to have their slow car cross the finish line first. Thus the team members in faster cars aim to push their slow car into the lead and ram their opposing teams' slow cars off the road.
Completing games without getting certain items or by skipping seemingly required portions of gameplay result in sequence breaking
, a technique that has developed its own dedicated community. Often, speed of completion and/or minimalist use of items are respectable achievements. This technique has long been used in the Metroid
game series and has developed into a community devoted to speed runs
. NetHack
has over time codified many such challenges as "conduct" and acknowledges players who manage to finish characters with unbroken pacifist or vegetarian disciplines, for example.
Machinima
, the use of computer animation
from video game engines to create films, began in 1996. The practice of recording deathmatch
es in id Software
's 1996 computer game Quake was extended by adding a narrative, thus changing the objective from winning to creating a film. Later, game developers provided increased support for creating machinima; for example, Lionhead Studios
' 2005 game The Movies
, is tailored for it.
s with economic systems play purely to acquire virtual game objects or avatars which they then sell for real-world money on auction
websites or game currency exchange sites. This results in the trader's play objective to make real money regardless of the original game designer's objectives.
Many games prohibit currency trading in the end user license agreement (EULA), but it is still a common practice.
Some players provide real world services (like website design, web hosting) paid for with in-game currency. This can influence the economy of the game, as players gain wealth/power in the game unrelated to game events. For example, this strategy is used in Blizzard Entertainment
's World of Warcraft
.
s, event betting, or any number of other variations, most often at least loosely based on established real-world games. Players typically establish a betting facility, lottery etc. Players typically create a website for executing the gambling, then accept payment from gamblers using in-game currency to credit the gambler's website account. Winnings are then paid back to the gambler's account.
Other forms of gambling are commonly used in Massively Multiplayer Online Games, such as betting on who will win a duel.
, typically based purely on trust.
The world's first MMORPG
IPO was ISS Marginis by the Interstellar Starbase Syndicate (ISS) in Eve-Online, on 29 September 2005. This was for a dividend based on profitability. The ISS followed up with a series of IPOs, culminating in an IPO of the player guild itself promising a fixed return, like a bond
. Eve Online has no game-mechanism for financial law.
In games with rough economies like World of Warcraft
's Auction House system, some players make a living by buying items that are unusually low priced and reselling them at high prices, or by buying out all competition and creating a monopoly
. In the MMO Runescape, players can purchase many thousand units of an item then sell them later for a profit just like a normal commodity market. This game includes price data on all items for the last 180 days.
according to Peter Molyneux
, creator of Populous
and other games. Simulated worlds allow players to play around the world and should respond realistically to player’s actions. This is what made SimCity
and The Sims
compelling to people. Similarly, being able to freely interact with the city’s inhabitants in the Grand Theft Auto
series adds an extra dimension to the games.
The following is an example of emergent gameplay Molyneux gave with his game, Fable
:
Molyneux also claims that emergence (or emergent gameplay) is where video game development is headed in the future.
Board game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
s, or table top role-playing game
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
s that emerge
Emergence
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems....
from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics.
More recently game designers have attempted to encourage emergent play by providing tools to players such as placing web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
s within the game engine (such as in EVE Online
EVE Online
Eve Online is a video game by CCP Games. It is a player-driven, persistent-world MMORPG set in a science fiction space setting. Characters pilot customizable ships through a galaxy of over 7,500 star systems. Most star systems are connected to one or more other star systems by means of stargates...
, The Matrix Online
The Matrix Online
The Matrix Online was a massively multiplayer online game developed by Monolith Productions created by Richard Carroll. It was the official continuation of the storyline of the Matrix series of films. The game began closed beta-testing in June 2004 which was then opened for people who pre-ordered...
), providing XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
integration tools and programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
s (Second Life
Second Life
Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...
), fixing exchange rates (Entropia Universe
Entropia Universe
Entropia Universe is a massively multiplayer online virtual universe designed by the Swedish software company MindArk, based in Gothenburg. Entropia uses a micropayment business model, in which players may buy in-game currency with real money that can be redeemed back into real world funds at a...
), and allowing a player to spawn any object that they desire to solve a puzzle (Scribblenauts
Scribblenauts
Scribblenauts is an emergent puzzle action video game developed by 5th Cell for the Nintendo DS published by WB Games. The game was released September 15, 2009 in North America, September 30, 2009 in Australia, and October 9, 2009 in Europe. Konami released the game in Japan under the name on...
).
Intentional emergence
Intentional emergence occurs when some creative uses of the game are intended by the game designers. Since the 1970s and 1980s board games and table top role playing games such as Cosmic EncounterCosmic Encounter
Cosmic Encounter is a science fiction-themed strategy board game, designed by "Future Pastimes" and originally published by Eon Games in 1977...
or Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...
have featured intentional emergence as a primary game function by supplying players with relatively simple rules or frameworks for play that intentionally encourage them to explore creative strategies or interactions and exploit them toward victory or goal achievement.
Creative solutions
In games with complex physics and flexible object interaction it may be possible to complete in-game problems using solutions that the game designers did not foresee. Deus ExDeus Ex
Deus Ex is an action role-playing game developed by Ion Storm Inc. and published by Eidos Interactive in 2000, which combines gameplay elements of first-person shooters with those of role-playing video games...
is often cited as a game responsible for promoting the idea of emergent gameplay, with players developing interesting solutions such as using wall-mounted mines as piton
Piton
In climbing, a piton is a metal spike that is driven into a crack or seam in the rock with a hammer, and which acts as an anchor to protect the climber against the consequences of a fall, or to assist progress in aid climbing...
s for climbing walls.
Such emergence may also occur in games through open-ended gameplay and sheer weight of simulated content, in Dwarf Fortress
Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress
Slaves to Armok: God of Blood, Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress, also called Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress, but most commonly known simply as Dwarf Fortress, is a freeware computer game by Bay 12 Games for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X set in a high fantasy universe that combines aspects of...
for example. The Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
game Scribblenauts
Scribblenauts
Scribblenauts is an emergent puzzle action video game developed by 5th Cell for the Nintendo DS published by WB Games. The game was released September 15, 2009 in North America, September 30, 2009 in Australia, and October 9, 2009 in Europe. Konami released the game in Japan under the name on...
allows the player to write the name of tens of thousands of nouns within its database to bring that object into a game's level and have it behave realistically within the game's engine; the game challenges the player to find as many ways to complete puzzles or reach a goal by using such objects in any combination, and is considered by its developers 5TH Cell to promote emergent gameplay.
Emergent narrative
Some rare games don't use a pre-planned story structure, even non linear.In The Sims
The Sims
The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...
, a story may emerge from the actions of the player. But the player is given so much control that they are more creating a story than interacting with a story. Emergent narrative would only partially be created by the player. Warren Spector
Warren Spector
Warren Spector is a role-playing game designer and a video game designer. He is known for having worked to merge elements of role-playing games and first-person shooters. He currently resides in Austin, Texas with his wife, fantasy writer Caroline L. Spector...
, the designer of Deus Ex
Deus Ex
Deus Ex is an action role-playing game developed by Ion Storm Inc. and published by Eidos Interactive in 2000, which combines gameplay elements of first-person shooters with those of role-playing video games...
, has argued that emergent narrative lacks the emotional impact of linear storytelling.
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead is a cooperative first-person shooter video game. It was developed by Turtle Rock Studios, which was purchased by Valve Corporation during development. The game uses Valve's proprietary Source engine, and is available for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and Mac OS X...
features a dynamic system for game dramatics, pacing, and difficulty called the Director. The way the Director works is called "Procedural narrative": instead of having a difficulty which increases to a constant level, the A.I. analyzes how the players fared in the game so far, and tries to add subsequent events that would give them a sense of narrative.
Unintentional emergence
Unintentional emergence occur when creative uses of the video game were not intended by the game designers.Using game glitches
Emergent gameplay can arise from a game's AI performing actions or creating effects unexpected by even the software developers. This may be by either a software glitch, the game working normally but producing unexpected results when played in an abnormal way or software that allows for AI development; for example the unplanned genetic diseases that can occur in the CreaturesCreatures (artificial life program)
Creatures is an artificial life computer program series, created in the mid-1990s by English computer scientist Steve Grand whilst working for the Cambridge computer games developer Millennium Interactive...
series.
Glitch or quirk-based strategies
In several games, especially first-person shooterFirst-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
s, game glitches or physics quirks can become viable strategies, or even spawn their own game types. In id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
's Quake series, rocket jumping
Rocket jumping
In first-person shooter computer and video games, rocket jumping is the technique of pointing a rocket launcher or other similar explosive weapon at the ground or at a wall then firing and jumping at the same time. The rocket's explosion propels the player to greater heights and distances than...
and strafe-jumping
Strafe-jumping
Strafe-jumping is a form of trickjump used to increase a player's speed in computer games based on the Quake engine and now the Doom 3 engine...
are two such examples. In the game Halo 2
Halo 2
Halo 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie Studios. Released for the Xbox video game console on November 9, 2004, the game is the second installment in the Halo franchise and the sequel to 2001's critically acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved...
, pressing the melee attack button (B) quickly followed by the reload button (X) and the primary fire button (R trigger) would result in the player not having to wait for the gun to be back in position to shoot after a melée attack. Doing this has become known as "BXR-ing". Starsiege: Tribes
Starsiege: Tribes
Starsiege: Tribes is a sci-fi first-person shooter video game. It is the first of the Tribes video game series and follows the story from Earthsiege and Starsiege. It was developed by Dynamix and published by the company now known as Sierra Entertainment in 1998.-History:A sequel, Tribes 2, was...
had a glitch in the physics engine which allowed players to "ski" up and down steep slopes by rapidly pressing the jump key, gaining substantial speed in the process. The exploitation of this glitch became central to the gameplay, supplanting the vehicles that had been originally envisioned by the designers as the primary means of traversing large maps.
Thanks to a programming oversight by Capcom
Capcom
is a Japanese developer and publisher of video games, known for creating multi-million-selling franchises such as Devil May Cry, Chaos Legion, Street Fighter, Mega Man and Resident Evil. Capcom developed and published Bionic Commando, Lost Planet and Dark Void too, but they are less known. Its...
, the combo (or 2-1 combo) notion was introduced with the fighting game Street Fighter II
Street Fighter II
is a competitive fighting game originally released for the arcades in . It is the arcade sequel to the original Street Fighter released in and was Capcom's fourteenth title that ran on the CP System arcade hardware...
, when skilled players learned that they could combine several attacks that left no time for their opponents to recover, as long as they were timed correctly.
Changing game objectives
In onlineOnline game
An online game is a game played over some form of computer network. This almost always means the Internet or equivalent technology, but games have always used whatever technology was current: modems before the Internet, and hard wired terminals before modems...
car racing game
Racing game
A racing video game is a genre of video games, either in the first-person or third-person perspective, in which the player partakes in a racing competition with any type of land, air, or sea vehicles. They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to entirely fantastical settings...
s, particularly Project Gotham Racing
Project Gotham Racing
Project Gotham Racing is a racing game, the first in its series, developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox gaming console, and released on 9th November 2001 in North America, and 14th March 2002 in Europe.The first title in the franchise, Project Gotham...
, players came up with this variation. The racers play on teams of at least two cars. Each team picks one very slow car as the mouse, and their goal is to have their slow car cross the finish line first. Thus the team members in faster cars aim to push their slow car into the lead and ram their opposing teams' slow cars off the road.
Completing games without getting certain items or by skipping seemingly required portions of gameplay result in sequence breaking
Sequence breaking
In computer and video games, sequence breaking is the act of performing actions or obtaining items out of the intended linear order, or of skipping “required” actions or items entirely...
, a technique that has developed its own dedicated community. Often, speed of completion and/or minimalist use of items are respectable achievements. This technique has long been used in the Metroid
Metroid
is an action-adventure video game, and the first entry in the Metroid series. It was co-developed by Nintendo's Research and Development 1 division and Intelligent Systems, and was released in Japan in August 1986, in North America in August 1987, and in Europe in January 1988...
game series and has developed into a community devoted to speed runs
Speedrun
A speedrun is a play-through, or recording thereof, of a whole video game or a selected part of it performed with the intent of completing it as fast as possible, optionally under certain prerequisites, mainly for the purposes of entertainment and competition...
. NetHack
NetHack
NetHack is a single-player roguelike video game originally released in 1987. It is a descendant of an earlier game called Hack , which is a descendant of Rogue...
has over time codified many such challenges as "conduct" and acknowledges players who manage to finish characters with unbroken pacifist or vegetarian disciplines, for example.
Machinima
Machinima
Machinima is the use of real-time 3D computer graphics rendering engines to create a cinematic production. Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation...
, the use of computer animation
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
from video game engines to create films, began in 1996. The practice of recording deathmatch
Deathmatch (gaming)
Deathmatch or Player vs All is a widely-used gameplay mode integrated into many shooter and real-time strategy computer games...
es in id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
's 1996 computer game Quake was extended by adding a narrative, thus changing the objective from winning to creating a film. Later, game developers provided increased support for creating machinima; for example, Lionhead Studios
Lionhead Studios
Lionhead Studios is a British computer game development company led by industry veteran Peter Molyneux, and acquired by Microsoft Game Studios in April 2006. Lionhead started as a breakaway from the developer Bullfrog, which was also founded by Molyneux. Lionhead's first game was Black & White, a...
' 2005 game The Movies
The Movies
The Movies is a business simulation game created by Lionhead Studios for Microsoft Windows and subsequently ported to Mac OS X by Feral Interactive. It was released on November 8, 2005 in North America, and November 11, 2005 in Europe after reaching gold status on October 8, 2005...
, is tailored for it.
Real economy interaction
Traders in massively multiplayer online gameMassively multiplayer online game
A massively multiplayer online game is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and usually feature at least one persistent world. They are, however, not necessarily games played on...
s with economic systems play purely to acquire virtual game objects or avatars which they then sell for real-world money on auction
Auction
An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder...
websites or game currency exchange sites. This results in the trader's play objective to make real money regardless of the original game designer's objectives.
Many games prohibit currency trading in the end user license agreement (EULA), but it is still a common practice.
Some players provide real world services (like website design, web hosting) paid for with in-game currency. This can influence the economy of the game, as players gain wealth/power in the game unrelated to game events. For example, this strategy is used in Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher founded on February 8, 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by three graduates of UCLA, Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce and currently owned by French company Activision Blizzard...
's World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
.
Gambling
Gambling and lotteries may occur in online role-playing games such as EVE Online and Dark Age of Camelot. The provision of gambling services in exchange for in-game currency can take the forms of a lottery, card gameCard game
A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games...
s, event betting, or any number of other variations, most often at least loosely based on established real-world games. Players typically establish a betting facility, lottery etc. Players typically create a website for executing the gambling, then accept payment from gamblers using in-game currency to credit the gambler's website account. Winnings are then paid back to the gambler's account.
Other forms of gambling are commonly used in Massively Multiplayer Online Games, such as betting on who will win a duel.
Game financial institutions
In games with no financial law game mechanism, players develop financial institutions. Forms include banks or investment schemes launched with an Initial public offeringInitial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
, typically based purely on trust.
The world's first MMORPG
MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
IPO was ISS Marginis by the Interstellar Starbase Syndicate (ISS) in Eve-Online, on 29 September 2005. This was for a dividend based on profitability. The ISS followed up with a series of IPOs, culminating in an IPO of the player guild itself promising a fixed return, like a bond
Bond (finance)
In finance, a bond is a debt security, in which the authorized issuer owes the holders a debt and, depending on the terms of the bond, is obliged to pay interest to use and/or to repay the principal at a later date, termed maturity...
. Eve Online has no game-mechanism for financial law.
In games with rough economies like World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
's Auction House system, some players make a living by buying items that are unusually low priced and reselling them at high prices, or by buying out all competition and creating a monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
. In the MMO Runescape, players can purchase many thousand units of an item then sell them later for a profit just like a normal commodity market. This game includes price data on all items for the last 180 days.
Simulation
Emergent gameplay appears when there is good game simulationSimulation
Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....
according to Peter Molyneux
Peter Molyneux
Peter Douglas Molyneux OBE is an English computer game designer and game programmer. He created the God games Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and Black & White, among others, as well as business simulation games such as Theme Park and more recently, the RPG series Fable.Despite the success of his games,...
, creator of Populous
Populous
-External links:*...
and other games. Simulated worlds allow players to play around the world and should respond realistically to player’s actions. This is what made SimCity
SimCity
SimCity is a critically acclaimed city-building simulation video game, first released in 1989, and designed by Will Wright. SimCity was Maxis' first product, which has since been ported into various personal computers and game consoles, and spawned several sequels including SimCity 2000 in 1994,...
and The Sims
The Sims
The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...
compelling to people. Similarly, being able to freely interact with the city’s inhabitants in the Grand Theft Auto
Grand Theft Auto (series)
Grand Theft Auto is a multi-award-winning British video game series created in the United Kingdom by Dave Jones, then later by brothers Dan Houser and Sam Houser, and game designer Zachary Clarke. It is primarily developed by Edinburgh based Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games...
series adds an extra dimension to the games.
The following is an example of emergent gameplay Molyneux gave with his game, Fable
Fable (video game)
Fable is an action role-playing video game in the Fable series. It was developed for Xbox, Mac OS X, and Windows platforms, by Big Blue Box, a satellite developer of Lionhead Studios, and was published by Microsoft. The game shipped for Xbox on October 14, 2003...
:
Molyneux also claims that emergence (or emergent gameplay) is where video game development is headed in the future.