Fractals, Games, and Life
Their connection and relation is nothing short of magical.
“A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems — the pictures of Chaos. Geometrically, they exist in between our familiar dimensions. Fractal patterns are extremely familiar, since nature is full of fractals. For instance: trees, rivers, coastlines, mountains, clouds, seashells, hurricanes, etc. Abstract fractals — such as the Mandelbrot Set — can be generated by a computer calculating a simple equation over and over.”
Life might seem much more complex and intricate when comparing life and games, especially simple and straightforward games. There are many interruptions and deviations from the rules we have just grasped and got in control of when suddenly the whole “gameplay” changes, and we feel lost.
But avid gamers and game designers will tell you that highly engaging games are often like that. They surprise and challenge the players to keep them engaged.
You could say many games group many other games into bigger ones. I first became aware of that when I observed people playing Candy Crash Saga and similar games. There were candies to sort, treasures to collect, monsters to feed, fight, or tame, and so much more.
Looking at each of these smaller steps in a game, you will see that each is a game on its own. Like its big parent, each of these smaller games has goals, specific rules on how to play them, and feedback informing you whether you performed that step successfully or not. They also mirror your voluntary participation by giving you the impulse to go on to the next bit of the game or leave the big game altogether or just for now.
The tiniest step or mini-game in a larger game has a term, which is sometimes referred to as a gameplay loop.
“A Gameplay Loop is a game design term that is used to describe the repetitive activities that a player will take while playing a game. It, essentially, defines what the player DOES while playing.” — “Video Game Definition of the Week: ‘Gameplay Loop’,” Engaged Family Gaming
This term is also known as compulsion or core loop, both inside and outside of the world of games.
“A compulsion loop, reward loop or core loop is a habitual chain of activities that a user may feel compelled to repeat. Typically, this loop is designed to create a neurochemical reward in the user such as the release of dopamine.” — “Compulsion loop,” Wikipedia
And here is how it plays out in games:
“A core or compulsion loop is any repetitive gameplay cycle that is designed to keep the player engaged with the game. Players perform an action, are rewarded, another possibility opens and the cycle repeats.” — ibid.
As you can see from these definitions, the gameplay loop also has all four core components of games. It contains specific goals (e.g. to let the player make progress, reward them or let them feel rewarded, keep the player engaged in the game), rules (the minimum number and sequence of steps to make progress and stay in the game), feedback system (the evidence of the step made, the rewards earned, etc.), and voluntary participation reflected by the player continuing to or stopping play.
If we go from this little game up to a greater scale, such as level, you will also recognize all four core components of games: goals, rules, feedback system, and voluntary participation.
Whatever scale of a game you choose to consider, you will see at least these four components and often more than that. You will often recognize many other game elements and mechanics that derive from these four core components.
This game feature on any level of any game comes from the fact that games are fractal.
As you can see in the quote at the beginning of this article, fractals are never-ending structures built up from smaller ones having the same structure as the big ones, which the small ones compound. The definition of these patterns might seem confusing and impossible until you become aware of them in nature. The tree trunk structure mirrored in the patterns of the tree’s leaves is one of the most famous examples of fractals in nature.
After this argumentation, one might think that the four core components might be the only repetition between the smallest step in a game and the game’s levels or the game as a whole. But that would not be quite correct. The word “loop” shows differently because it is already present both in the definition of the fractals above and as the term for the smallest step in a game — the gameplay loop.
And here’s more. Caleb Compton, a software engineer, game designer, and writer, has addressed the topic of fractals and games in the example of the game The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. He shares that the game has three different layers and is a fractal. Here is what he says:
“Each of these layers is different, but they strongly resemble one another because they share the same core gameplay. At every level — whether it be individual room, dungeon, or world map — the core loop of the gameplay is collecting new items, experimenting and learning how to use them, and then using those items to solve puzzles that allow you to move onto the next stage.” — Caleb Compton in “Link’s Awakening and Fractal Game Design,” Game Developer
So the gameplay loop can repeat itself both on smaller and larger scales of a game.
“That might be all well and good,” you’ll say, “but how is it supposed to help me master and enjoy my life?”
Here is how. The complexity and intricacy of life also come from the fact that life is fractal, too. The simplest example would be how moments build into seconds, comprising minutes, which continue to make hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, generations, and lives!
But more complex examples of projects, activities, businesses and other endeavors are also fractal. I once wrote an article about the parallels between projects, businesses, and games and how they are fractal.
With this, we come to turning anything in life into fun games, which is nothing other than adjusting the design and the approach to whatever you are up to in your life in such a way that you start experiencing all those things, projects, and activities as if they were fun games in the traditional sense.
Since turning life into games, or in other words, living gamefully, is a part of life, then it is fractal, too. Here is how.
The three components of living life gamefully — anthropology (awareness), kaizen (approaching and mastering anything in the smallest, most effortless, and most easily digestible and manageable bits), and gamification (approaching everything gamefully and playfully) — make up the gameplay loop and also levels or even games on their own.
Each of these games has the same gameplay loop with awareness, small steps, and gamefulness. That applies to games in general, role-playing games in the traditional sense, and all those in your real life, too.
Thus, if you master the smallest step, you can also master the whole game of living your life gamefully, successfully, joyfully, and with ease. You could say that in the spirit of the famous pearl of wisdom by Emily Dickinson:
“If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves.”
About this article:
It is an excerpt from Actual Real-Life Role-Playing Games: A Gamefully Philosophical View on Life and How to Design and Play It.
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