Time Limited Game Instances
Games that by their design limit the time of any given game instance.
Playing a game is a commitment to participate in an activity. For those games played with other people or controlled by machines this may be a commitment on when to play and how much time will be spent on the game. To make it easier for players to make these commitments it can be good know in advance how long the game instance will be. Games can support this through being designed to have Time Limited Game Instances.
Contents
Examples
Tournaments in board games such as Go and Chess often have fixed amount of time each individual game can take in order to be able to guarantee an end time for the whole event.
Space Alert is a weak example of a board game having Time Limited Game Instances. This since the first phase of the game has a strictly limited duration through the use of an audio track to dictate gameplay. The time needed to complete the second, evaluation, phase can differ but this is pretty much up to the players and they cannot affect the outcome by varying this. Stronger examples are found in the Atmosfear series which uses VHS cassettes and DVDs to time the gameplay.
Deathmatch modes in first-person shooters such as the Quake series typically let the game facilitators to choose a time limit or frag (kill) limit to determine the winner. Those using the former of these are examples of Time Limited Game Instances.
The experimental game 4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness is won and finished by being the sole player running the game for 4 minutes and 33 seconds.
Using the pattern
The basic requirement for Time Limited Game Instances is quite easy to achieve, one must simply decide upon a Time Limit for a game instance. If one wishes to provide players with Freedom of Choice, a simple modification is to allow the players to set the Time Limits before gameplay starts. Another alternative is to make use of Speedruns which encompass the whole game instance.
An indirect way of creating Time Limited Game Instances can be achieved through Predictable Gameplay Time. This since Predictable Gameplay Time makes it possible to approximate or know the number of turns or actions in a game instance, and this combined with an estimate of how long time each of these takes can provide an upper bound for the time needed to play the game.
Meta Games such as Tournaments quite often use Time Limited Game Instances for the inner games to easy synchronization between different parts of the game. Games built this way can quite easily support Negotiable Game Instance Duration on the meta level by simply letting players decide if they wish to play another round or not. This assumes that the games are Self-Facilitated Games; if the Meta Games are being run by Dedicated Game Facilitators the effect is instead to provide Drop-In/Drop-Out gameplay . Examples of games having these properties include Poker and Team Fortress 2. When an exact Time Limit for the Meta Games are wanted this can of course easily be achieved through fixing the number of games played.
The ability for players to perform Save-Load Cycles can destroy the presence of Time Limited Game Instances since it requires them to not make use of the saving and loading functionality (and thereby quite likely improve their results).
Diegetic Aspects
While actually a Time Limit in disguise, having Shrinking Game Worlds can give games Time Limited Game Instances (e.g. Greed Corp) if the shrinking continues until the whole Game World is destroyed or removed.
Interface Aspects
It is quite likely that players need or want to know for how long more they can or need to play, and for this reason the time played is likely to be a candidate for being a Game State Indicator in games with Time Limited Game Instances.
Consequences
Quite naturally, Time Limited Game Instances based upon measuring time flow can lead to Time Pressure. Games with Never Ending Stories or those that are Unwinnable Games due to not having an end are not compatible with those having Time Limited Game Instances. They limit how long time players have to acquire their Scores and this puts a Time Pressure on this activity where there might not have been before and shift the competences needed to acquire as high Score as possible.
Relations
Can Instantiate
with Meta Games and Self-Facilitated Games
Negotiable Game Instance Duration
with Dedicated Game Facilitators and Meta Games
Can Modulate
Meta Games, Scores, Tournaments
Can Be Instantiated By
Predictable Gameplay Time, Shrinking Game Worlds, Speedruns, Time Limits
Can Be Modulated By
Freedom of Choice, Game State Indicators
Possible Closure Effects
Potentially Conflicting With
Never Ending Stories, Save-Load Cycles, Unwinnable Games
History
New pattern created in this wiki.
References
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Acknowledgments
Sus Lundgren
