---
name: game-participation-design
description: Design or revise shared play, player authority, matchmaking, access, assistance, intensity, departure, return and paid or timed rights. Use when who can know, choose, act, pay or continue changes the game. Skip developer-team coordination, generic account administration, clinical advice, legal compliance and financial forecasting.
license: MIT
---

# Game participation design

Create an executable path for particular people to take part in the intended
game. A shared score, access toggle or written right is only one part of that
path. The designed procedure must reach a next meaningful action.

## Start with a participant and a decision

Use the established [consumer and Assay binding](../game-design/references/consumer-and-assay-contract.md).
For a direct invocation, establish it before a dependent operation. Obtain the
relevant rules, current roster, devices or material, rights and observations.
Do not infer a person's requirements from a broad audience label alone.

1. **Reconstruct one participation path.** Identify who receives necessary
   information, chooses, expresses intent, executes, pays and learns the result.
   Include another affected participant when the action depends on them.
   State which part is the chosen game challenge and which barrier is open to
   revision; consent, comfort, access and mastery are different questions.
2. **Create the actual procedure and material.** Write usable role cards,
   signals, approval rules, accessible channels, queue constraints or offer
   terms. Give a starting state and a next action. For a settled local change,
   make that change without redesigning every social relationship.
3. **Exercise the consequential branch.** Keep views separate; enact a refusal,
   authority dispute, missing role, inaccessible channel, interruption, absent
   owner or expiry where relevant. Resolve who may act and what happens to
   costs, history and unfinished commitments. Do not quietly supply a missing
   participant or disclose omniscient facts to make the episode work.
4. **Revise the relation that failed.** Change the information path, authority,
   action, roster policy, state transition or right. A larger shared reward
   does not restore a player's decision; lower damage does not expose a
   warning that the participant cannot perceive.
5. **Deliver the playable result and its limits.** Include the rules/material,
   before/after roles and state, a replay through the disputed branch, and
   the evidence supporting any claim about actual participation. Mark synthetic
   enactment, physical observation and human agreement distinctly.

## Select the procedure before the relevant choice

| Decision | Read |
| --- | --- |
| Cooperation, rivalry, information distribution, spending authority, dispute, team composition or queue policy | [Shared play](references/shared-play.md) |
| Sensory/motor/material access, execution assistance, pause, skip, cancel, absence or return | [Access and return](references/access-and-return.md) |
| Paid access, acceleration, shared entitlement, expiry, schedule or paid time | [Paid and timed rights](references/paid-and-timed-rights.md) |

Use more than one when needed: a host's departure may change paid access,
group authority and the next scene at once. The examples are complete invented
situations, not a claim that a group of people already accepted their rules.

## Keep shared rules with their owner

Use [actor knowledge](../gameplay-design/references/entities.md) for observation
and private facts. Use [learning and help](../game-information-design/references/learning-and-help.md)
for inference, memory or learning work delegated to an aid. This skill owns
who participates and how a channel or helper affects their decision.

Use [game state transfer](../game-systems-design/references/game-state-transfer.md)
for preserving or changing owners, rights, knowledge and history at a boundary.
Use [conditional story](../game-world-narrative-design/references/conditional-story.md)
when omission or cancellation changes narrative canon and future conditions.
Use the shared [environment contracts](../game-design/references/environment-contracts.md)
to choose an operation that can actually observe a physical, runtime or human
claim. A role simulation can expose an impossible rule; it does not establish
consent, comfort, trust or the absence of social pressure.

Preserve legitimate leadership, unequal roles, permanent assistance, agreed
shared control, an intense scene and a decision to leave. Equal turns, complete
independence and compulsory return are not universal design goals.