Temporal Consistency

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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.


Braid

Using the pattern

Game Time Manipulation

Events Timed to the Real World

Game Pauses

Save/Load Cycles


Extra Chances

Diegetic Consistency

Thematic Consistency

Cutscenes

Downtime

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

Detective Structure

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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