Dansey, Neil

Eglin, Roger

English

Name not available

2008 UK Systems Society International Conference-  Building Resilience: Responding to a Turbulent World 
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A Systems Approach to Play for Game De-
sign 
Dansey, Neil; Eglin, Roger 
Advanced Games Research Group 
School of Creative Technologies, University of Portsmouth, Eldon West Wing, 
Winston Churchill Avenue, Portsmouth, Hampshire, PO1 2DJ. 
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A Systems Approach to Play for Game Design 
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A Systems Approach to Play for Game De-
sign 
 
Abstract 
A systems perspective is taken to describe a game in which play involves generating 
game designs. Players are encouraged to consider assumptions, biases and over-
sights in their thinking, and as play continues better game ideas are expected to 
emerge. Generated ideas are copyright free, enabling them to be used elsewhere. 
Players decide which ideas are considered ‘good’ by voting for the ideas they would 
most like to play. This paper will outline the purpose and rules of the proposed game, 
illustrating from the point of view of human activity systems, group support systems 
and on scales of complexity of restrictions and number of interactions. 
Key words: Group Support Systems, Emergence, Idea generation, Games, Game design. 
Outline of Game 
It is believed that both interpersonal and intrapersonal ideas can help promote a productive learning 
cycle (Bednar, Eglin and Welch, 2007). The critical appraisal of individual assumptions, by compar-
ing personal experiences with those of a group, may promote a deeper ‘double-loop’ type of learning. 
The proposed game is a collaborative idea generation game. Players generate and submit game design 
ideas individually, before viewing the collective ‘idea pool’ in order to compare their ideas with oth-
ers. After this reflection stage the process is repeated, and it is expected that after several iterations a 
higher standard of game designs will emerge. The questioning of previously held assumptions, and 
subsequent expansion of thinking, is expected to make the players better at designing games in future. 
It could be argued that the proposed game has characteristics in common with group support systems 
(GSS). Differences between the two will therefore be discussed. 
The instructions of the game are as follows. Play happens over a number of sessions, each of which 
involves a period of idea generation and a short review and rest period. During each idea generation 
period players are required to submit as many game ideas as possible, scoring a point for each idea 
submitted. Ideas must consist of between 3 and 5 rules, and do not have to be good, serious or feasi-
ble, as long as they are theoretically possible. Players can submit as many or as few ideas as they 
wish, but are encouraged to submit at least one idea per idea generation period. Rules should not in-
volve action which could be deemed illegal, immoral, or harmful to others. Ideas can be submitted in 
any format (i.e. written list, drawing, sound file) supported by the organisers. To avoid copyright is-
sues, ideas are not allowed to copy existing games, but can be inspired by existing games or ideas 
which are already in the pool. For the benefit of game design, ideas which are submitted are done so 
as ‘public domain’ – that is, they are freely available to the public. Players have the option to with-
draw from play at any time if they do not agree with the instructions or do not want to play.
Once the idea generation period is complete, the ideas are collected up and presented to the players. 
The players then have some time to rest and browse the pool of ideas. After this time, a new idea 
Dansey, Neil; Eglin, Roger 
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generation period begins, and so on. After a predetermined number of iterations, players vote for the 
game ideas they would actually play. Two winners are declared: the person(s) who submitted the 
most ideas and the person(s) whose idea received the most ‘good game’ votes. 
Play happens both at a lower level – as the players engage with the rules and produce game ideas – 
and at a higher level – as players view the results of other players and have the opportunity to ques-
tion previously held assumptions about what is possible. 
Systems Perspective 
In terms of systems, the game could be represented as in figure 1: 
Figure 1: Conceptual model of the game as a human activity system. 
Ackoff (1962, cited in Wilson, 1991, p.11) described iconic, analogic and analytic forms of 
modelling systems. Wilson (1991, p.12) states that these forms mainly cover physical and formulaic 
systems, and argues for a further category of model to be included, which could be used to describe a 
more qualitative type of system. This conceptual model is the one which will be used to describe our 
idea generation process, as concepts such as ‘fun’ and ‘good ideas’ could be difficult to quantify. 
Using the summary of Checkland’s system classification (cited in Wilson, 1991, p.25) it would 
appear that our system is a human activity system – a group of humans undertaking a purposeful 
activity – rather than a social or cultural system which implies focus on relationships between 
humans. It is for this reason that the system is defined in terms of verbs (Ibid., p.27). 
Players enter the game by deciding to play, and in conjunction with reading the instructions they gen-
erate ideas. The idea generation process scores a point for the player and perhaps provides some fun 
too. However, fun can also be had without participating in idea generation: observation of the idea 
Have fun
Score 
points
Decide to
play Generate
ideas
Want to 
play
Read 
instructions
Output best
ideas
Game
A Systems Approach to Play for Game Design 
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generation process could be fun, as players compare ideas and laugh at the more obscure efforts pro-
vided. This meta-level play could result in players competing to design with self-imposed motives – 
to produce the most annoying or humorous game, for example. A formal test run will be undertaken 
in due course, potentially with the cooperation of some UK universities which run games design 
courses.
Achieving the internal goal of point-scoring and the external goal of having fun feeds back into the 
decision to continue playing, and so a feedback loop is established. A by-product of this loop, as 
mentioned earlier, is the emergence of particularly good ideas which have been voted for by the play-
ers. The ideas are also copyright free and publicly available, therefore allowing them to be used else-
where. 
Emergence 
The generation of good game ideas is influenced by emergence. From the appearance of slums in Sim 
City, to bluffing in poker, to the evolution of ‘combos’ in fighting games, emergence can often be 
observed. According to Salen and Zimmerman (2004, p.165), emergent systems in games can provide 
variety, novelty and surprise. “A successfully emergent game system will continue to offer new ex-
periences, as players explore the permutations of the system’s behaviour”. Johnson (2001, p.94) 
states that emergence relies on “the right kind and right number” of interactions. For this purpose it is 
better to build a densely interconnected system with simple elements than a sparse system with com-
plex elements. Rose (2008) states that “game designs are usually most notable for what they don't in-
clude”. 
The proposed game takes the above advice, minimising the number of rules and maximising the op-
portunity for interaction. Here, ‘interaction’ takes two forms: First, the mental interaction between 
the player’s mind and the allowed game space provides most of the opportunity. It could be said that 
emergence through mental interaction is synonymous with creativity. The game space is deliberately 
unobstructed by rules to allow for as many different game states (i.e. designs) as possible. However, 
there need to be a few restrictive rules in place, mainly to comply with ethical research procedures 
but also to prevent the game from breaking down completely. Second, there is the social interaction 
between players and the game as they submit ideas, compare them with those of other players and 
comment on assumptions, oversights and biases. Simply allowing repeated iterations of this cycle 
increases the number of potential interactions. It is also intended that rather than spending a consider-
able amount of time on each idea, players should submit frequent, brainstorming-style ideas, in order 
to keep the number of interactions up.  
The number of both mental and social interactions can be further increased by running the game over 
a longer period of time, or by placing the idea pool in a widely accessible location such as the inter-
net. This would allow more ideas, more iterations and hopefully a greater amount of emergence. Fig-
ure 2 shows how the proposed game stands on the spectra of complexity of restrictions and number of 
interactions. 
Dansey, Neil; Eglin, Roger 
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Figure 2: Position of the game on the spectra of interaction abundance and restriction complexity. 
Everyday life contains a large amount of potential interactions, but there are also many complex re-
strictions which govern the way people behave and interact with things. Living in confinement is 
similar in terms of what is theoretically possible, but the number of opportunities for interaction is 
greatly reduced. At the opposite end of the scale, being dead involves no complexity of restrictions 
and no amount of interactions. Freedom, in this case, implies omnipresence and omnipotence: per-
haps the idea of ‘godlike’ behaviour.  
Traditional games (e.g. most board, dice, card and computer games), although they might seem to 
contain many rules, have a less complex restrictive nature than the social etiquette and laws of every-
day life. They allow more godlike behaviour, in the form of fantasy or play. The number of interac-
tions in traditional games is also more restricted: one is only allowed to interact with certain players 
and the game environment in a limited number of ways.  
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) feature a similar complexity of re-
strictions to traditional games, but allow for a larger number of interactions by adding more players 
and a larger game world. Because of this, phenomena such as player-created law systems emerge 
(Mnookin, 1996). 
Ideation games, such as those described by Kultima et al (2008), are designed to facilitate ideas. 
These games also have a larger number of interactions than traditional games, but unlike in 
MMORPGs this comes from the greater freedom allowed by the rules, and therefore an increased 
number of valid game interactions. Games in which gameplay involves changing the game, such as 
Nomic (Suber, 1990), and contests in which the best game idea wins, such as the Nordic Game Jam 
2008 (Højsted, 2008) could also be seen as related to ideation games.  
The game proposed in this paper allows an even greater level of freedom: the players do not have to 
actually make or play the games (unlike the Nordic Game Jam), rule creation does not entail a 
lengthy democratic process (unlike Nomic) and the flow of ideas is not as obstructed by turn-taking 
and other gameplay mechanisms as the games described by Kultima et al. The open-endedness of the 
Complexity of restrictions
N
u
m
be
r 
of
 
in
te
ra
ct
io
n
s
Death
Everyday life
Traditional games
Freedom
Confinement
MMORPGs
Ideation games
Aim here
NOT TO SCALE
A Systems Approach to Play for Game Design 
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rules broadens the definition of a valid game interaction further than in ideation games, so there are 
even more potential interactions between the player and the game system. However, while the aim is 
to provide many interactions with as low restriction as possible, there will need to be a few restrictive 
rules in place, because complete freedom implies the ability to engage in illegal or harmful activity. 
Therefore basic rules restricting certain actions will add a small amount of complexity and slightly 
reduce the amount of permitted interactions. 
Similarities to GSS 
Group support systems (GSS) are believed to have potential for effectiveness and learning in face-to-
face settings (Walsh et al, 1995). Although the proposed idea could be seen as similar to GSS in that 
there is a collective “group memory” of ideas (Satzinger et al, 1999) to which participants contribute 
simultaneously and anonymously using the existing ideas in the knowledge base for inspiration, there 
are areas in which our proposal is different. Stepanek (1999, cited in Garfield et al, 2001) describes 
the use of GSS by “large companies” to produce novel, paradigm-breaking ideas. In research, the 
suitability of an idea is often evaluated externally, based on reductive factors such as levels of crea-
tivity and paradigm-modification (Satzinger et al, 1999; Garfield et al, 2001; Nagasundaram & 
Bostrom, 1995). However, in a practical setting one would not be able to easily control the amount of 
“intuitor-feeler” personality types in the group, and therefore the amount of paradigm-modifying 
ideas generated would vary accordingly (Garfield et al, 2001), potentially rendering the method unre-
liable. Furthermore, it is of our opinion that a game design is more than the sum of its parts, and 
therefore it should be evaluated using criteria of a more holistic nature, such as “would I actually play 
it?”, or “is it fun?”. We are not as interested in whether or not the ideas break paradigms, as long as 
they are ‘good’. Because game participation is voluntary (Huizinga, 1970, p.26) the participants of 
the game proposed in this paper should be people who are interested in designing and playing games. 
To design games, one needs a knowledge of and an interest in games (Colayco, n.d.), so it would 
seem that internal evaluation based on group consensus could be valuable for learning. 
Conclusions: 
Because of the emergent potential of the game system it is difficult to determine at present whether it 
will function best as a vehicle for generating good ideas or as a learning tool for expanding thinking. 
This could be seen as an advantage, because it necessitates a reduced pressure on the generation of 
good ideas in favour of a more general approach to output. Combined with a tactile pen-and-paper 
environment and inclusion of game elements such as point scoring, this will hopefully create a more 
enjoyable, productive session and therefore a more suitable environment for emergence and learning. 
Acknowledgements 
Many thanks to Dan Pinchbeck for his valuable feedback. 
Dansey, Neil; Eglin, Roger 
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A systems approach to play for game design

Portsmouth University Research Portal (Pure)

Bluetooth Planets & Shave my Baby! Breaking the Magic Circle with Idea Generation Games. Paper presented at the Breaking the Magic Circle seminar,

Contextual Inquiry: A Systemic Support for Student Engagement through Reflection.

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software.

Fewer Mechanics, Better Game. Retrieved

from http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/psa/index.htm

Nordic Game Jam 2008: 134 Game Developers, 40.5 Hours and 19 Game Demos. Retrieved

So You Wanna Be a Game Designer? Retrieved

Systems: Concepts, Methodologies and Applications.

The Creative Process: The Effects of Group Memory on Individual Idea Generation.

The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A study of Law, Logic, Omnipotence and Change.

Virtual(ly) Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO.

http://eprints.port.ac.uk/id/document/13334

A systems approach to play for game design

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