May 2010: Emergence

May 2010's topic was submitted by game designer Pascal Belanger.

I heard the most troubling thing from a narrative designer last year, which went like this: "If we are going to make art, we can't make emergence". I must say I was shocked about this. I could not believe that he would have that narrow a view about art and/or emergence. The first thought that came to mind was: What about Emergent Art?

I thought the statement was nonsense but some people around me seem to think otherwise, except that when asked about it they seem to take sophistic approaches to the question.

• What is emergence to you? 
• How do you deal with it? 
• What place do you let it take in your games/design? 
• And in your opinion, can we make emergent games that would still be art? 
• Or even better, are there any valid existing examples of such games?

Reference:
Jesper Juul on Emergence vs progression: http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/openandtheclosed.html