Part

Competing parts

You might say: counter-pressure

Competing parts use, deny or constrain the same opportunities, spaces or resources.

What it does
Creates counterplay and prevents a single subsystem from dominating every situation.
Ask
What does each part make harder for the others?

What to look for

  1. Parts contesting the same space
  2. Resources denied or constrained

Sources

  1. Michael Sellers, Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach, ch. 7, p. 249The deer eat the plants, balancing their growth, and the wolves eat the deer, balancing theirs.
  2. Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans, Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design, ch. 6, pp. 113–117: positive and negative feedback between competing teamsThe losing, rather than the leading, team can field an extra player for every N points of difference.
  3. Michael Sellers, Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach, ch. 7, p. 249Combat can also be considered an ecology: two or more sides (player character versus monster, for example) attempt to “balance” each other by their actions—a nice way of saying that they each try to kill the other.
  4. Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans, Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design, ch. 4, pp. 66–71They also need to spend resources to build military units, to expand their bases, and to develop new technology.
  5. Tynan Sylvester, The Simulation Dream, opening ecology example; “Story-Richness”There were three parts to it. Splicers would hunt Gatherers, who were in turn guarded by Protectors.
  6. Tynan Sylvester, The Simulation Dream, opening ecology example; Drowning in Complexity: interacting relationships and constraintsThere were three parts to it. Splicers would hunt Gatherers, who were in turn guarded by Protectors.

Use it on your project

teardown-apply: hold "Competing parts" (competing-parts) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/game-design/ against my project

Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.

An AI agent wrote this map with the teardown skill. It can contain errors: check the sources before you rely on a part. About and legal