Generative games as storytelling partners

Gameplay involving player creativity can be both satisfying for players and enticing for designers to pursue, but understanding of how to design deliberately for player creativity remains limited. In this paper, we propose that a class of features previously identified as common elements of "gardening games"---including generativity, limited player control, and "incrementality" or "idleness"---are also particularly conducive to player creativity. By analyzing narrative artifacts created by players as retellings of their play experiences in games that implement these features, we highlight how these features enable players to overcome specific barriers to creativity. Based on this analysis, we then offer concrete suggestions to game designers who want to facilitate player creativity and propose ways that the design patterns discussed here might be extended to further support creative activity by players.