Example: racing games such as Gran Turismo 3 make use of Ghosts to let players compare their current play session with earlier ones, or to practice against the optimal path.
Ghosts are mainly used in Races or other games where the player has a limited overview of the whole game world and where there is little outside influence on players' performance.
The main design choice affecting player influence on the game's use of Ghosts is whether players should be allowed to select which game sessions are saved and used as Ghosts or if this is determined by the game mechanically, i. e. by Score. Further, the use of Ghosts can be chosen to only be possible within the same save file, i. e. defining a closed game world, or be shared to other save files as Trans-Game Information.
Ghosts can be seen as a form of Highscore List that contains the whole game sessions instead of only the Score. As such, Ghosts can be used to make a Single-Player Game into a form of mixture between an Asynchronous Game and Multiplayer Games where the whole play sessions are played before comparing results. Ghosts naturally create Competition even though the players are not playing at the same time.
Instantiates: Competition, Trans-Game Information, Asynchronous Games
Modulates: Multiplayer Games, Race, Single-Player Games
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