- Accompanist (role)
- Ad libitum
- Agenda
- Aleatoricism
- Aspect
- Balance
- Bartle types
- BCG
- (Cognitive) flow
- Conductor (role)
- Constellation
- Constructor (role)
- Co-optionality
- Cue cards
- Dice
- Dimension
- Downbeat
- Downtime
- Elegant Game
- Emergence
- End Condition
- Event (musical event)
- Extended technique
- Facilitator
- Fighting
- Flow
- Found sound
- Gameplay flow
- Genre
- Heteronomous Music
- Horizon of intent
- Improvisation rite
- Insert game
- Inspire cards
- Instrument Preparation
- Judge (role)
- Karaoke
- King-making
- Learning curve
- Ludomusical dissonance
- Meaningful Choice
- Mechanic
- Music game
- Non-idiomatic music
- Notation Cards
- Open work
- Parameter
- Pervasive Game
- Player (role)
- Prompter (role)
- Psychographics
- Quarterbacking
- Rhythm cards
- Rhythm game
- Roles
- RPG
- Rule Cards
- Speedrun
- Stacking
- Trading
- Transition
- Upgrade
- Victory condition
- Xenochrony
- XP
- Yes, and...
This glossary entry is a draft. You can help by editing it or discussing in the comments
A game that has a relatively low amount of rules for what it does.
Usage
Striving for elegance in rules might be just a matter of aesthetics — the game creator achieves a design recognized as beautiful, and rests satisfied. Despite some possible analogies between classical/baroque dichotomy the difference between elegant and non-elegant games are not only the matter of innocent additions and embellishments, but there are clear practical reasons for the need of some elegance too. for example, one of the considerations is that inelegant games have a higher cognitive load.
The way the games are experienced, through playing, means that, at least in titles of relative complexity, players (as the participatory audience) are required to make a non-trivial effort just to enact the game. It's best to let players focus on their decisions, or observation of the in-game situation, than than just on the administrative task of running the game. That's why elegance is a seeked for quality of the game.
The concept of elegance is the most fitting to "old-school", often abstract, emergence-based games, and the game of Go is considered to be one of the most elegant games ever created.
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