Understanding Games Through Complexity Thinking Approach

The complexity theory and the concept of emergence is a theoretical framework that offers a vocabulary and tool for analyzing games as systems. Rather than dealing with a game as one complex adaptive system, this article uses the complexity thinking approach to study a game as a complex system composed of different levels of subsystems. Each level can be considered a complex system in itself; moreover, the interaction between a game's subsystems creates complex, dynamic, and often unpredictable behavior. For a detailed understanding of a game system and how complex it is, this article focuses on the concepts of complexity and emergence at three levels of a game system: the design level, play level and metagame level. This explanation is meant to guide game designers in incorporating the various emergent consequences of game play from the beginning of the design process.