Organisational Structure

What it is about

An Organisational Structure orders a domain of a game and answers the question: how does this domain work? The economy, power, combat, survival. It bundles several mechanisms into a whole with feedback: a market connects auction and price formation so that demand drives prices and prices dampen demand. What emerges from it – price bubbles, escalation, a lead that reinforces itself – is suggested by the game but only happens in play. A game has none, one or several such orders; Civilization has several at once.

It differs from a mechanism in three features: something emerges from it that cannot be read off its parts; it has at least one feedback loop in which the outcome of one round changes the conditions of the next; and it orders the interplay of several parts of the game, not a single interaction. Some patterns – exploration, alliance, survival, crafting – are an Organisational Structure only when they are the game’s central ordering principle.

The 19 cards are grouped into six orders, each with its own separator card: economic, political, spatial, conflict, development and social order. Each card names its core mechanisms (without them the structure does not exist) and its dynamic mechanisms, shows its feedback loops as a diagram, names the adjusting screws and a risk profile: how easily does someone pull away beyond reach, does a trailing player decide the winner, does the game stall, does it become too complicated? Two guide cards belong to the stack – what an Organisational Structure is, and how it relates to neighbouring notions – and a reading guide.

How to use it

Method: (1) Lay out all cards – with less experienced groups only the core set of ten: Market, Territory, Hierarchy, Combat System, Faction System, Production Chain, Commons, Technology, Exploration, Survival. (2) Use the separator cards as headings for the six orders. (3) Discuss in the team: which one to three orders does our game need? (4) Pull out the chosen cards and study them. (5) Identify their core mechanisms. (6) Draw the matching cards from the Mechanisms stack.

Notes for facilitation: The feedback diagrams on the back work well as anchors for discussion: “Where do you see the greatest risk?” The line on compatibility and tension helps to plan complexity: “If you choose Market and Territory – what happens then?” For first projects, recommend at most three Organisational Structures; each additional one makes the design considerably more complex.

Time: 10 to 15 minutes for a quick decision with experienced groups, 20 to 30 minutes as a structured discussion in a workshop, 45 to 60 minutes as an in-depth analysis with the feedback diagrams in a seminar.

Sequence: after ideation. First the Organisational Structures, then their mechanisms for each chosen structure (15 to 20 minutes per structure), then sharpen the activities, after that the frame.

Use: for advanced users, students of game design and the professional context; the complexity is high.

Relations

The six orders have their own overview page. The building blocks of every Organisational Structure are mechanisms: mechanisms are the simple, Organisational Structures the composite patterns, and the same pattern can be an Organisational Structure in one game and part of one in another. Organisational Structures lie over the structures that divide a game’s space, community and time: Territory works on the Spatial Structure, Reputation within the Social Structure. A turn order or a phase system, by contrast, is not an Organisational Structure but belongs to the Temporal Structure.

• Organisational Structure - Categories
• Mechanisms
• Spatial Structures
• Social Structure
• Temporal Structure