Comparing Emergence and Progression

In his original article, Juul expresses a preference for games that include emergence: “On a theoretical level, emergence is the more interesting structure” (2002, p. 328). He regards emergence as an approach that allows designers to create games in which the freedom of the player is balanced with the control of the designer. In a game of emergence, designers do not specify every event in detail before the game is published, though the rules may make certain events very likely. In practice, however, a game with an emergent structure often still follows fairly regular patterns. Juul discusses the gun fights that almost always erupt in a game of Counter-Strike (p. 327). Another example can be found in Risk, in which the players’ territories are initially scattered all over the map, but over the course of play their ownership changes, and the players generally end up controlling one or a few areas of neighboring territories.