Emergent Gameplay…
… though not in the traditional sense. My copy of Multimedia Fusion 2 has arrived. I plan to be using this to make full versions of Triwing and [insert new game title here]. Speaking of that, I’ve been having a lot of fun writing it, but I’m going to pretend I’m under NDA, which I probably will be in a month’s time. That means no spoiling from me. I can say, though, that I’m trying some things that I’m not entirely sure have been done before, but as every post is a repost of a repost, don’t hold me to that.
I will say was that I was strangely inspired by Chris Crawford’s speech at GDX. Not so much about the storyworlds aspect of the speech, but about non-violent gameplay. I’ve been approaching this game from the perspective of, “Can one make a game with a good amount of player choice, where one of those choices is to approach the entire game non-violently?” Yes, the entire game. It’s been a bit of challenge, coming up with scenarios where the player can take the running and gunning route OR the non-violent route. The other challenge is making sure the non-violent route is equally if not more fun than the violent route. It’s basically taking a step back from what I learned on Stalin’s Stash and asking, “Can one have fun WITHOUT blowing everything up?”
Shades of Silver 
I hope you succeed.
One of my all time favorite runs through a game was my run through Fallout 1 where I never entered combat even once, and beat the game that way.
Good times.
My all-time favorite run-through of a game was recently in Mega Man X4 where I played as Zero and discovered an area in the final fortress I didn’t even know existed, then proceeded to beat Sigma as Zero, something I had never managed to do before. That was pretty epic.
In a game, if I’m given the choice between a stealthy non-violent route and a guns blazing. I’ll tend to choose the stealth. It’s more interesting and unusual. Guns Blazing has just become… cliched now in games.
My design philosophy would be “It’s your game. Play it your way”, so giving options is good in my opinion.
Exactly, and that’s where player choice comes in. Granted, the version of the game I was talking about there was shot down to make room for something much much better, which retained a massive amount of player choice and a consequence/reward system to go along with player choices. Sometimes things work out for the best.