Temporal Consistency
That the sequence of gameplay events that make up game instances match a sequence of diegetic events in the game world in which they are initiated.
The events that take place in games form a temporal sequence that when the games are finished can be seen as stories. While they may not exactly match up to how player played them since they may have taken pauses
This pattern is a still a stub.
Examples
Early Category:Arcade Games such as Asteroids, Pac-Man, and Space Invaders had Temporal Consistency since gameplay continued without pause (except for short cutscenes) until players had lost all their lives.
Using the pattern
Events Timed to the Real World
Diegetic Aspects
Interface Aspects
Narrative Aspects
Having Temporal Consistency does not force Predetermined Story Structures to be linear in how time progresses in them. Cutscenes and even gameplay can let some of the gameplay be in the form of flashbacks, but this does not break that there is a constant mapping of gameplay activity (even in it is in the form of Downtime) and development of a narration.
Consequences
Temporal Consistency affects how Predetermined Story Structures in games can be constructed. It can be seen as a necessary but not sufficient component for games to have a Detective Structure since the point of view also needs to be restricted.
Since planned gameplay events can cause Surprises even if a game does not have Temporal Consistency, this pattern does not help create Surprises in games. However, it does modulate it since it can avoid that players easily can negate the Surprises by for example saving regularly and reloading before Surprises that negatively affected their gameplay performance; Temporal Consistency cannot in this way affect cases where players play a game several times but in long games, or those using Randomess, the intended Surprises can still continue to be surprising.
Relations
Can Instantiate
with ...
Can Modulate
Predetermined Story Structures, Surprises
Can Be Instantiated By
Can Be Modulated By
Possible Closure Effects
Potentially Conflicting With
History
New pattern created in this wiki.
References
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