• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Intransitive Relationships in Game Designs

To game designers, a triangular tangle of relations is a fundamental structure used to make dynamic systems; it’s called it an intransitive relationship, or while drunk, the “Rock-Paper-Scissors love triangle.” It’s a bread-and-butter sort of structure, our three-pointed ninja star. Many games, both inside and outside the Miyamoto framework, utilize the structure. Fire, Ice, and Lighting magic in Final Fantasy fit the bill; as does Starcraft’s balance between unit power, cost, and deployability; while in Halo, it’s a contest between the aim, power, and maneuverability of the player controlling the personality-less suit of armor.

In addition to designing tangled triangles of systemic factors to make interesting gameplay, every designer working in the Miyamoto framework has been working with a psychological triangle between the player, the game, and the player’s effect on the game. Miyamoto’s framework, with its emphasis on the player-character or avatar’s spatial and internal advancement, treads close to Lacan’s psychological theory. We, as an ego, are put into a dyadic relationship with our avatar; we play with our avatar, we play as our avatar, and it’s fun. The rest of the game then, the places we go and the people we meet, the world we explore, constitutes the social symbolic. We control the avatar, the avatar manipulates the world, the world changes and we adapt, adjusting our control of the avatar. That’s interactivity Miyamoto-style.

Breaking Down the Triforce

Nothing in Miyamoto’s whole ludography (his body of work as a game designer) better explicates this theory than the Zelda series. In interviews, he’s admitted that he gave the avatar the name “Link” not because it’s some Nordic name that’s evocative of swords and sorcery, but because the little guy is literally our link to the system. Playing Zelda is about playing with Link, mastering that dyad, and then exploring more and more of the surrounding gameworld. As you encounter obstacles, you have to master a new aspect of your dyad, so you can explore new areas and encounter further obstacles, and so on until the big pig squeals. Once you’ve completely mastered all dyads and overcome all obstacles, the relations come together perfectly in the Triforce, your ultimate prize.

Nothing in his entire body of work epitomizes Miyamoto’s philosophy better than the Triforce. I’m going to go over each third of the Triforce, point by point, so that you too can feel it’s every corner weighing in your hands. Once you’ve grasped the Triforce, you will possess the golden power.

The Triforce of Courage

The Legend of Zelda—the legend itself, involves a youth born, and apparently from all the sequels, reborn, to the world in a time of crisis, and in his soul is the Triforce of Courage. Link is you, and if he’s the embodiment of courage, that means you, as the player, are similarly emboldened.

The truth, of course, is that you’re sitting on a couch, with jaw slackened and eyes glistened, moving your thumb slightly, just slightly, to march Link hundreds of miles without rest, risking his life repeatedly in the process. It’s easy to be courageous when the Reset button is a few feet away. Link is our embodiment, our envoy and vessel in Hyrule, and he represents the potential for our decisions to manifest into action. Courage, in the sense of being able to kill monsters and explore dungeons at no risk to bodily harm, is what links us to Link. The Triforce of Courage is like the anchor that completes the two-way relationship that puts you in the game in the first place.

When you sit down and commandeer Link’s body, you’re entering into agreement to play the game according to that role—successfully doing so allows you to advance, to get more heart containers and items, and master all of the game’s challenges. When you figure out how to advance Link’s position in the world, you complete the loop of activity that