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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9097959" data-attributes="member: 71699">On reading my comments, it could seem that I don't think game designers can do a better or worse job of suspensions of agency. Rather, I think in terms of how well the designers have wielded those suspensions for the exact purpose of creating the distinct play they intend. So Alan Calhamer - designer of the boardgame Diplomacy - made some initial errors when he thought that players should be allowed to ignore the written rules if they can get away with it. He later relented of that position and realised that the game succeeded best when the exact agency he'd intended was in fact adhered to.The designers of Advanced Squad Leader wrestled for a long time with a community notorious for finding any loophole. The principle they and the community eventually settled on was COWTRA - concentrate on what the rules allow. This was evidence of the vast suspension of agency required to play a game, let alone a tightly ruled, competitive game like ASL. Some players had argued that where an agency wasn't explicitly suspended, then it was allowed. The principle of COWTRA established that almost all general agency is suspended when playing ASL except for what the rules allow.Does Diplomacy offer more agency than ASL? It's imponderable. They're different games. But does each game do an equally solid job of designing in the correct suspensions of agency (once COWTRA was accepted by the community)? Absolutely. A game with poor agency is one that does not design in the ludic-agency to achieve the intended goals of play, or fails to exclude general agency that is destructive to those goals (in the context of videogames, these are called exploits.)</blockquote>

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