Rule-making as a Game Mechanism: Exploring the Design Principles of Gnomik

The essence of a game is essentially a set of rules. Many games are actually composed solely of rules. Changing the rules to play may seem contradictory, but it is this contradiction that creates an interesting and potential-rich game mechanism. This article will explore the original gameplay of rule-making, highlighting the unique design principles of this model, and how to explore it through the Gnomik game.

Background Motivation

Gnomik is directly inspired by Nomic, a game created by philosopher Peter Suber in 1982. In this game, players can propose and vote on rules and modifications to the rules that they design.

Suber's original intention was to develop Nomic as a model of the "self-amending paradox," which arises when rules are set to allow self-modification. He primarily focuses on the implications of this paradox for constitutions, but his thought experiment also applies to the challenges that composable autonomous worlds pose to game design principles. These principles are typically guided by fixed, discrete sets of rules.

The autonomous world allows for open interoperability in the gaming world. This means that any specific game has the potential to connect to a new set of rules. Rule-making as gameplay is a very suitable mechanism for experimenting with this possibility, as it encourages players to design ways to extend the game rules in order to continuously provide the tension and novelty needed to engage players.

A composable world with an open rule set can easily become unpredictable, leaving participants feeling confused. Making rule formulation a core part of the world game loop can prevent this from happening, as rule changes are less arbitrary and more aligned with player interests. Experimenting with this primitive is essentially exploring what design conditions can sustain a minimally viable game world, or why it is worth continuing to play the game.

Game Mechanics

A viable rule-making system requires a simple base game for players to try new rules, while also needing a certain speed of rule addition to maintain player interest. The mechanisms of Gnomik were developed with these factors in mind.

Gnomik starts from a minimal viable game world composed of a matrix of simple rules, which can adapt to players modifying and adding rules within its initially limited rule set, as well as modifying and adding game paths that were completely unrecognized at the time of the game's initial deployment.

The Gnomik world instance is deployed as a click game, where users obtain resources by pressing a button, and then they can spend these resources as a cost to acquire other resources. Since the templates for producing and consuming resources are self-similar, it is controlled by a unified "action system".

The modification or addition of rules is achieved through the use of two special resources: one is the "Small Rule Spark", which allows players to modify the internal mechanism of resource production according to the template structure of the action system; the other is the "Large Rule Spark", which enables players to add external smart contract systems to the world.

Contract Structure

The action system processes well-formatted local rules, which adhere to specific forms including multiple parameters such as name, cost, target, result, etc. Each resource has a static resource amount and an ever-updating rate. Each time this resource is referenced in a contract call, the player's resource rate will be updated with a delay.

For example, the "Harvest" function requires no fees and only needs a click of a button to generate a mushroom resource. The "Consume" function, on the other hand, requires the user to spend 10 mushrooms, thereby increasing the mushroom rate by 1. By referencing resources in the rules, they can be added to the game. Any previously unregistered resources referenced when adding new rules will automatically create new references in a single resource table, allowing Gnomik to dynamically create and handle new functions and types of resources within this clearly defined resource economy.

Application Prospects

Gnomik's simple architecture encourages players to create new instances of worlds with different rule configurations. Its main application is as a catalyst for player experimentation. The many rule sets derived from the game can form the basis for future design primitives. Gnomik's iterations can also serve as a foundation for more complex governance simulators, echoing the spirit of Suber's original game.

Future Expansion

Despite current technological support for adding new systems and tables at the blockchain layer, efforts are still needed to achieve seamless integration at the middleware and user interface layers. This may involve rule creators integrating their own visualization and interactive components with the rules they add.

Adding hooks to the small rule sparks is another way to expand the Gnomik narrative structure while respecting its original rule set. This will allow for the addition of rules within the initial structure and provide extra preconditions and postconditions for executing these rules. For example, it may be necessary to own a specific NFT to obtain a certain resource or perform an action that leads to the mining of an NFT.

The action system can be further abstracted to support more possible action configurations. For example, increasing the number of cost resources and opening the cost function to accommodate the calculations of arbitrary resource operations.

This rule-making game mechanism provides a unique platform for exploring autonomous worlds and composable game design. It not only challenges the boundaries of traditional game design but also offers valuable insights for future governance systems and social experiments.