Spawning

Locations in game worlds where avatars, units, or enemies appear.

This pattern is a still a stub.

All games where new game elements appear during game play must provide means by which these game elements are introduced. Spawning is one of the common ways of doing this besides letting game elements appear from factories, buildings, and cities which all act as a kind of producer. When Spawning occurs, it simply places the game elements in the game environment and lets it be able to do actions and be affected by actions in the game world.

Examples

Example: Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory moves which spawn points are used in certain levels after major events have taken place, such as blowing up a cave or bank door or blowing up a wall in an old city.

Example: Battlefield 1942 allows players to choose where to spawn after being killed from a number of spawn points, where the exact set of points that can be chosen from depends on the teams position in the game.

Example: spawning in the same position as another player in Quake killed that player's avatar in what is called a telefrag.

Example: The arcade game Gauntlet let players enter ongoing games by being spawned into locations near the other players.

Left 4 Dead series Torchlight

Using the pattern

Spawning of game elements controlled by players, most often Avatars, are either used to effect the initial set up of a game environment, to let them enter new Levels, or to revive their game elements as part of Death Consequences. Spawning can also be used to introduce Enemies, Resources, and Game Items such as Installations and Vehicles into Game Worlds during gameplay. A general choice regarding Spawning which is independent of these reasons are if the Spawning can occur anywhere or if it is restricted to specific Spawn Points.

Spawn Points are commonly used to support Spawning, and besides this designing Spawning is most often a question of Player Balance. One issue related to this is that players typically are disadvantaged when Spawning. This may be from other Penalties due to the same Death Consequences that caused the Spawning or due to players simply lacking a proper Game State Overview directly after Spawning.

Several design options exist that can help Spawning players through providing Balancing Effects: letting them have have Invulnerabilities as Temporary Abilities, making Camping around Spawn Points impossible (for example through Safe Havens), or letting them purchase or otherwise receive Tools to ensure a certain level of preparedness. Letting players have several Spawn Points to choose from is another possibility, and gives players a Freedom of Choice to make Risk/Reward of where to spawn as well as take into consideration nearby Strategic Locations.

The design choices may of course also be appropriate for other types of Spawning besides that of Spawning players' Avatars.

Besides choosing whether or not to use Balancing Effects, the design of Spawning can explicitly force Downtime which also affects Player Balance as well as Team Balance. Spawning can make Team Elimination impossible, but may also be designed to separate it form the individual deaths, for example by letting every players have a number of lives or letting the team as a whole have a limited number of times players can respawn. The setting of the time players have to wait, if any, can be used to create reasonable waiting times in games with Early Elimination but also affect the Risk/Reward decisions of performing actions in the game which may lead to a lost of the Life of one's Avatar.

The location where Avatars respawns can be the point of death, which provides continuation but may have Player Balance problems since the cause of death may still be present. Avatars may also spawn in random locations in the Game Worlds or by randomly choosing one point from a small set of Spawn Points. Even if Avatars are not respawned where they died, this location can still be interesting to return to if the Equipment lost when dying can be found there.

The action is caused by the beginning of game play when all players perform the action or when one player's Avatar reenters the game after having lost a Life, either as part of normal game play or the effect of Save-Load Cycles.

Can Be Instantiated By

Lives,

Can Be Modulated By

Irreversible Events,

Can Modulate

Grind Achievements, Persistent Game Worlds,

Narrative Aspects

Spawning can be used to move the focus of gameplay so that it advances Predetermined Story Structures. This is mainly done after major Irreversible Actions such as completing important goals or Quests have led to Cut Scenes and players after this need to be positioned in new places in the Game Worlds. Another example of how Spawning can focus players attention as part of telling a story is the appearance of new Boss Monsters - due to the nature of Spawning this is typically in the form of summoning some unearthly creature.

Consequences

Spawning can most often be seen as Game Element Insertion by abstract Producers at specific Spawn Points. It gives game designs a way of avoiding Player Elimination (and Early Elimination from entire game sessions) while having still having Player Killing in Multiplayer Games, and also allowing an easy solution to introduce Late Arriving Players. Spawning are often associated with Ability Losses and Downtime from the players' perspective when they occur as part of Death Consequences since players can first notice the Ability Losses and the lost gameplay opportunities when they have spawned.

Except for Alternative Realities which have teleportation as a feature, Spawning is rarely easy to explain within a Thematic Consistency. A weak solution is arrivals from Inaccessible Areas but for this case the question why one cannot enter the Inaccessible Areas if one can leave them may instead break the Thematic Consistency.

Relations

Can Instantiate

Ability Losses, Downtime, Game Element Insertion

Can Modulate

Avatars, Enemies, Game Items, Grind Achievements, Inaccessible Areas, Installations, Late Arriving Players, Levels, Multiplayer Games, Persistent Game Worlds, Player Balance, Player Killing, Predetermined Story Structures, Resources, Spawn Points, Vehicles

Can Be Instantiated By

Death Consequences, Lives, Producers, Spawn Points

Can Be Modulated By

Balancing Effects, Freedom of Choice, Invulnerabilities, Irreversible Events, Strategic Locations, Temporary Abilities

Possible Closure Effects

-

Potentially Conflicting With

Thematic Consistency

History

An updated version of the pattern Spawning that was part of the original collection in the book Patterns in Game Design.