
The word "interactivity" isn't just about giving players choices; it pretty much completely defines the game medium.-Warren Spector, RE:PLAY: Game Design + Game Culture
Introducing Interactivity
Play implies interactivity: to play with a game, a toy, a person, an idea, is to interact with it. More specifically, playing a game means making choices within a game system designed to support actions and outcomes in meaningful ways. Every action results in a change affecting the overall system. This process of action and outcome comes about because players interact with the designed system of the game. Interaction takes place across all levels, from the formal interaction of the game's objects and pieces, to the social interaction of players, to the cultural interaction of the game with contexts beyond its space of play. In games, it is the explicit interaction of the player that allows the game to advance. From the interactivity of choosing a path to selecting a target for destruction to collecting magic stars, the player has agency to initiate and perform a whole range of explicit actions. In some sense, it is these moments of explicit action that define the tone and texture of a specific game experience. To understand this particular quality of games- the element of interaction-we must more completely grasp the slippery terms "interactive,"interaction," and "interactivity."