Emergence and Progression

Jesper Juul explains that games have categories. They are not your traditional categories you would assume from looking at a box cover like FPS, MMO, or RPG. The categories Jesper talks about are Emergence and Progression. “Progression games have walkthroughs: lists of actions to perform to complete the game. Emergence games have strategy guides: rules of thumb, general tricks.” That fact is one of the differences discussed about the two game categories, but that isn’t enough for us naturally. Emergent games are games that have no goals; that we can do whatever the heck we want. The best examples for such games are Sims and Minecraft. Progression games are games that have an ultimate goal. The best examples for those are like Mario or Pacman. Both categories have their own charm recognized by individual people. Although doing whatever we like sounds nice, there are some who are straight forward enough to enjoy reaching the final goal. In short, that is an explanation of the game categories from me.