Players

"If you create the choices, then I'll make the choices."

The Player's Role

A Red Knight and a Blue Wizzard meet to go adventuring. The Red Knight wants to meet where there will be lots of weapons and armor to be had, while the Blue Wizzard prefers a place rich in magic scrolls and potions.

Each player chooses a path, and they have their adventure where the two paths intersect.

Blue can guarantee at least one blue ball by playing the middle row. Red is not so fortunate, with a minimum of nothing. Red considers Blue's best move, and plays a center column for two red balls.

This could be called a Good solution to the game, because there are no other solutions that can guarantee a better take for either player.

If we accept the principal axiom that a game is a decision-making process, then the definition of a player follows:

Definition of a Player

A player is an entity that makes decisions within a game.

A Player doesn't have to be one person: A clan of online gamers choose where to move their pieces in order to defend their sector. A driver and a gunner select their next target. Chance can be a player as well, selecting randomly from a set of choices.

Stone Donut Syndrome

And then the patches started rolling out, to fix "game imbalances", because some blasphemous players had the unmitigated gall to thwart the obstacles set before them.

It can be dangerously tempting to force a player response to that Vorpal Frizbee Launcher that took weeks to code. The designer begins thinking in terms of Required Main Storyline vs Optional Side Quest, inadvertantly making the player only a witness to a play. But if that magnificent piece of programming genius is to be worth it's weight, shouldn't it contribute more than mere interactive scenery?

In the illustration, the pink flock is part of the game, while the stone donut is not. This may seem counter-intuitive, and thus bears careful scrutiny:

"Interesting, but it's a longer path. Is the visit worth the cost of the trip? Do I want to make it through in record time, or do I want to see all there is to see?"

Of what value is a carrot or a whip, if it is yours no matter what you do? Could you care about such things, or do they seem somewhat less interesting? Therein lays the tedious monotony of the "Visit everywhere to get the keys" methodology.

Would removing the stone donut alter the player's options? It appears at the end of all the player's choices, so it is factored out of the equation. Thus, the stone donut, no matter how many prizes or hardships the player experiences there, is only a landmark.

Real Rewards and Punishments

Choices are a bifurcation in the universe, that split the unlimited possibilites into mutually exclusive subsets. A decision selects one of these subsets, parting ways with the other possibilities.

Thus the universe was divided, and the people experienced buyer's remorse.
Amen.