Singel and multiplayer games explained!

Having come to the realization that a multi-player and singel-player session of a game are two different experiences, dealing in different frames as well as motivational factors, I found this article by our friend Jesper Juul. (It's not access restricted).

Here Jesper explains this difference in that, what we call, multipayer games are games of Emergence whilst singel-player games are games of Progression.

Jesper summarizes like this: "As a rule of thumb, the simplest way to tell games of emergence from games of progression is to find guides for them on the net. Progression games have walkthroughs: lists of actions to perform to complete the game. Emergence games have strategy guides: rules of thumb, general tricks."

And here is how I think this ties into our hypothesis concerning Hud elements:

- In any given situation in a game that leans more towards emergence there are so many more choices for the player make than in any given situation in a progression based game. I can win a game of counterstrike in a million and one ways, but I can only complete a dungeon in Zelda by doing certain things in a certain order.

This difference in freedom of choice creates a need for more and clearer information to base these choices on when playing emergent games. Since this information is so crucial to the players performance he/she is not too bothered by the the way it is presented. This will therefore, in general, tend to generate more Hud elements.

- I'd bet that all of the games in our HUDless list are games of progression!