Emergent behaviour = Existential fufilment???

So I play this RTS game Warcraft III (please don't laugh) and one of the features of it is a sort of 'custom scenario' program. On this program they give you the tools to basically create any scenario/game you desire, from tower defence maps to pokemon battles and so forth. One of the most popular custom maps spawned from this sub-culture is the Defence of the Ancients map, or DotA for short. The map is based on the premise of destroying the opposing team's (either Sentinels or Scourge) main structure.

I think DotA is a good example of a game company embracing, and perhaps more importantly expecting emergent behaviour in the gaming community. The custom map program blizzard developed gave gamers the resource to twist their gaming experience into something the games developers had no explicit intention of doing themselves. The mod map DotA has more players than the entire online battle.net (the online server Warcraft uses), aswell as having multiple 'graphically upgraded' versions/inspired the developement of other industry produced games such as HON and LOL. There is also a sequel to DotA, called DotA 2 (naturally) which has completely abandon the world edit software, in favor of being produced by the company VALVE, a seperate game developer in the industry. This can be seen as a testament to emergent behaviour aswell as a really good window into the industries relationship and interactions with gaming culture.

Personally I think this reflects one of gamings core principles, agency, and applies it to gaming on the macro level. When I playing I usually don't give a sh*t about why I play games, or think about what makes it 'fun'. But after the first lecture and dwelling on the bits and pieces of the course that Kevin oh so cruelly dangled infront of me, I've come to the conclusion that for me personally games reflect the inner escapist in me. I think its f*ckin awesome that I control alien dudes who 'shoot fire balls out of their eyes and lightning out of their arses' because it gives me an extra medium to exercise my agency, and to extend my limitations (at least imaginatively) and allow me to be the one who's 'shoot fire balls out of their eyes and lightning out of their arses'. And I think emergent behaviour is a symptom of peeps like me simply trying to satisfy that desire.

Joshua-Dean