Dedicated Game Facilitators

Programs, machines, or people who perform book-keeping actions and/or control various agents to provide gameplay to players.

All games require some effort to maintain and update the game state. This may be as easy as tallying scores but may also require extensive preparing, the management of information that should be hidden from all players, the impartial judging or performing of actions, and resolving complex algorithms during gameplay. Since letting players perform these may distract from the gameplay and may be difficult or impossible to do (e.g. managing secret information) a common solution is to assign these activities to other people, giving them roles as umpires, referees, judges, or game masters. With the advent of computers, these have also been

Examples

The umpire or referees of sports are all examples of people acting as Dedicated Game Facilitators. In many cases (e.g. Soccer and Ice Hockey) these referees are supposed to ensure that the rules are being followed, but for others (e.g. Boxing and Figure Skating) the referees also have to grade performances to determine winners.

All computer or console based games have the computer as a Dedicated Game Facilitators.

For computerized versions of existing card or board games, these Dedicated Game Facilitators show the trans-medial nature of games.

The work load is shared between many computers in the case of online games, typically with one server in control of maintaining and updating the game state and many clients showing the game state to the players and collecting input from them to pass on to the server. Although this seems to put the main workload on the server (except for the graphical presentation), clients used for real-time online games such as the Counter-Strike series, the Quake series, and the Left 4 Dead series include advance prediction systems to be able to show where opponents are predicted to be in order to avoid having lag. The AI and Music directors used in the Left 4 Dead series can be seen as a Dedicated Game Facilitators distinct from the game system itself even if it is part of the same code since it acts upon the game system as if it is another system.

Game masters in roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS, Basic Role-Playing, and the Storytelling System are another type of human Dedicated Game Facilitators. These need to be knowledgeable in both the rules of the game and the fictive world in which the gameplay occurs, as well as handle all characters and monsters not under the players' control. Computer-based roleplaying games such as The Witcher or the Fallout series replace humans with computers (quite logical since the computer already needs to be a Dedicated Game Facilitator for the underlying support such as maintaining the game state). For the complex events that can occur in massively multiplayer online games such as Ultima Online or World of Warcraft, it is typical to have both computers and humans involved in the game facilitation so their are human game masters to help handle rare exceptions or social conflicts.

Magic the Gathering

Pokémon

Using the pattern

Surprises, Tick-Based Games, Unknown Goals, Smooth Learning Curves, Ultra-Powerful Events, Narrative Structures, Imperfect Information, Asynchronous Games, Persistent Game Worlds, Communication Channels, Balancing Effects, Cut Scenes, Turn Taking, The Show Must Go On, Save-Load Cycles, Enemies, Storytelling, Agents

Conflict, Combat, Turn-Based Games, Never Ending Stories, Multiplayer Games, Experimenting, Downtime, Game World, Synchronous Games, Betting, Characters, Single-Player Games, Replayability

Game Masters

Downtime, Self-Facilitated Games, Public Information

Zero-Player Games

Real-Time Games

Left 4 Dead series

Randomness

Agents

Turn-Based Games

Excise

History

A revised version of the pattern Dedicated Game Facilitators that was part of the original collection in the book Patterns in Game Design.

Acknowledgements

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