The game that I chose for this assignment is the mobile/tablet game “2048”. It was created in 2014 by a 19-year old in a single weekend as a test to see if he could make a game from scratch.

2048 is a single player sliding block puzzle game. The game-board has a square grid with tiles. The player can choose the size of this grid before starting the game. The original game had only one option for the grid size (4×4) however several versions have been developed now and the possible sizes in the version that I played were 3×3, 4×4, 5×5, 6×6 and 8×8. The game starts with the player being given two tiles at random positions in the grid. Both these tiles have a value of 2. By swiping through the screen, the player can move the tiles and when two tiles land on the same grid, they merge together. On merging, their values are added up and they are replaced by a single tile with the sum as it’s value. This new tile takes the place where the other two tiles had collided in the grid. The objective of the game is to keep adding up these tiles and reaching the number of 2048 on one of the tiles. Once the player reaches 2048, they have achieved the objective of the game and won. But they can still continue the game and go further than 2048. There is also a scoreboard at the top that keeps the score for the player. The score increases by the value of the new tile whenever a new tile is created. An interesting point is that even though there is a score tracker, I had never given any attention to it till now. So one could say that from the creator’s perspective, the objective of the game is to get the highest score. But from the player’s perspective, the objective is to get a tile that has a value of 2048.

Some more specifics about the game play are that the tiles also change colour with a change in their value. As the number on the tile increases, the shade of the tile gets darker which makes it easier for the player to get a sense of the values of tiles that they have in the game instead of having to read the number on the tiles again and again. A tile can only increase in value and not decrease. Only two tiles with the same number/value can get added up to form a new tile with a higher value on collision. The player simply uses a finger to swipe in the direction that he wants the tiles to move. However, the player cannot move single tiles in isolation. If the player swipes left, all the tiles will move towards the left is there is any empty space towards their left. There is no minimum or maximum number of spaces that the tile can move; as long as there is space in the adjacent square, the tile will occupy it if the player has swiped in that direction. The tiles, however, cannot go out of the grid. The player is also allowed to swipe in all four directions- up, down, left and right.

Even though the game has such structured rules and procedures, it still does not limit the players movements in terms of the number of swipes or direction of swipes, I had a lot of opportunity to be able to go astray from the actual objective. For instance, since the game does not actually stop you from swiping in a direction that would harm your play, I would sometimes just swipe in any direction without thinking of how it would affect my ability to reach 2048. Another instance is building games within the game like swiping in just one direction to see where that leads. The game’s structure and nature is such that once you start swiping, you start swiping at a very fast speed unconsciously and you only realise it when you lose the game because of that speed. This means that the player is swiping at such a fast speed that they do not estimate the outcome of their next move and end up getting an outcome that is not the most efficient one which, a lot of times, also ends up with the player losing the game without reaching the objective of 2048.

This ability to modify the procedure of the game brings the focus on the player. Originally, the game is controlling the user by giving them random tiles to achieve an objective defined by the game. However, now it is the user that is deciding the objective. For instance, if the user is only swiping in one direction, the objective of the game has changed. The new objective is: observe what will happen to the tiles and get a tile-value as high as possible by only swiping left. So here, even though the game is restricting the user in terms of which tiles they get and the limited number of spaces in the grid, the player has now modified the game and the focus is on the player and his new objective rather than the game’s original objective which I thought was very interesting, considering how often it happens because it is so easy to do.

A possible reason for this happening so often could be the fact that the game does not control how the player is using his unlimited moves. There is no inherent-rule in the game that you cannot swipe in only one direction. Or that you only have a limited number of moves for each direction. The flexible and open nature of the game makes this modification possible. Therefore, even though the game has a very well-defined structure, it is still very prone to being used to create a whole new structure within.