Ghosts

The use of actions from earlier game sessions in a game session to let players have challenges against other people's earlier attempts, including their own.

This pattern is a still a stub.

Examples

Racing games such as Gran Turismo 3 make use of Ghosts to let players compare their current play session with earlier ones, or to practice against the optimal path.

ESP Game

Cursor*10 is a [[:Category

Using the pattern

Ghosts are mainly used in Races or other games where the player has a limited overview of the whole game world and where there is little outside influence on players' performance.

The main design choice affecting player influence on the game's use of Ghosts is whether players should be allowed to select which game sessions are saved and used as Ghosts or if this is determined by the game mechanically, i. e. by Score. Further, the use of Ghosts can be chosen to only be possible within the same save file, i. e. defining a closed game world, or be shared to other save files as Trans-Game Information.

Consequences

Ghosts can be seen as a form of Highscore List that contains the whole game sessions instead of only the Score. As such, Ghosts can be used to make a Single-Player Game into a form of mixture between an Asynchronous Game and Multiplayer Games where the whole play sessions are played before comparing results. Ghosts naturally create Competition even though the players are not playing at the same time.

Relations

High Score Lists Massively Single-Player Online Games Avatars AI Players Multiplayer Games Single-Player Games Game Worlds Speed Runs Geospatial Game Widgets Replays Races

History

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

Acknowledgements

-