Gameplay PatternsWardley Mapping Body of Knowledge
Discover 64 context-specific strategic actions organised across 12 categories from accelerators to user perception.
Accelerators
Open approaches
Whether source, data or practice, making something open reduces barriers to adoption, encourages collaboration and accelerates evolution.
Co-operation
Working with others. Sounds easy, actually it's not.
Exploiting network effects
Techniques which increase the marginal value of something with an increased number of users.
Industrial policy
Government investment in a field.
Market enablement
Encouraging the development of competition in a market.
Attacking
Centre of gravity
Creating a focus of talent to encourage a market focus on your organisation.
Directed investment
VC approach to a specific or identified future change.
Experimentation
Use of specialist groups, hackdays and other mechanisms of experimentation.
Fool's mate
Using a constraint to force industrialisation of a higher order system.
Playing both sides
In any war, there are those that will benefit from the fighting and destruction that it causes.
Press release process
Writing the press release before development starts. The completed offering is judged against the press release, forcing industrialisation of pre-existing acts.
Undermining barriers to entry
Identifying a barrier to entry into a market and reducing it to encourage competition.
Competitor
Ambush
Attacking with surprise, e.g. dropping proprietary features into an open source offering whenever a competitor reaches near feature parity.
Circling and probing
Testing out and understanding needs within a competitor's space by launching experimental offerings.
Fragmentation play
Exploiting pricing effects, constraints and co-opting to fragment a competitor's market.
Misdirection
Sending false signals to competitors or future competitors including investment focused on the wrong direction.
Reinforcing competitor inertia
Identifying inertia within a competitor and forcing market changes that reinforce this.
Restriction of movement
Limiting a competitor's ability to adapt.
Sapping
Opening up multiple fronts on a competitor to weaken their ability to react.
Talent raid
Removing core talent from a competitor either directly or indirectly.
De-accelerators
Exploiting constraint
Finding a constraint and reinforcing it through supply or demand manipulation to fragment a single player.
IPR
Intellectual property rights can be used to slow evolution by limiting competition, even ring fencing a component.
Creating constraints
Supply chain manipulation with a view of creating a new constraint where none existed.
Dealing with Toxicity
Pig in a poke
Dressing up a liability as some form of future business before divesting to a third party.
Sweat and dump
Disposing of legacy liability onto a third party by exploiting their own inertia to change.
Disposal of liability
Overcoming the internal inertia to disposal. Your own organisation is likely to fight you even when trying to get rid of the toxic.
Refactoring
Spending money on development to make a component more efficient.
Defensive
Defensive regulation
Using government to create protection for your market and slow down competitors.
Limitation of competition
Through regulatory or other means including erecting barriers to prevent or limit competitors.
Managing inertia
Identifying the forms of inertia you will face and how to counter them before charging into battle.
Procrastination
Doing nothing and allowing competition to drive a system to a more evolved form.
Raising barriers to entry
Increasing expectations within a market for a range of user needs to be met in order to prevent others entering.
Threat acquisition
Buying up companies that may threaten your market.
Ecosystem
Sensing Engines (ILC)
Being the first mover to industrialise a component, allowing others to build new industries upon it, then using consumption data to determine future candidates for industrialisation.
Two factor markets
Bringing providers and consumers together and exploiting network effects and aggregated data.
Alliances
Working with other companies to drive evolution of a specific activity, practice or data set.
Channel conflicts & disintermediation
Exploiting new channels and conflict within existing channels to create favourable terms.
Co-creation
Working with end users to drive evolution of a specific activity, practice or data set.
Co-opting and intercession
Copying a competitor's move and undermining any ecosystem advantage by interrupting data flows.
Embrace and extend
Capturing an existing ecosystem.
Tower and moat
Dominating a future position and preventing future competitors from creating any differential.
Markets
Buyer / supplier power
Creating a position of strength for yourself.
Differentiation
Creating a visible difference through user needs.
Harvesting
Allowing others to develop upon your offerings and harvesting those that are successful.
Last man standing
When the price is dropping, it's all about last man standing. Economies of scale really tell here.
Pricing policy
Exploiting supply and demand effects including price elasticity, Jevons paradox and constraints including fragmentation plays.
Signal distortion
Exploiting commonly used signals in the market by manipulation of analysts to create a perception of change.
Standards game
Driving a market to a standard to create a cost of transition for others or remove the ability to differentiate.
Trading
Trading of a component between market participants.
Poison
Designed to fail
Removing potential future threats by poisoning a market space before anyone attempts to establish it.
Insertion
Through talent or misdirection, encouraging false moves in a competitor.
Licensing play
Use of licensing to prevent future competitor moves.
Positional
Fast follower
Exploiting fast follower advantage into uncharted spaces.
First mover
Exploiting first mover advantage especially with industrialisation to component services.
Land grab
Identifying and positioning a company to capture a future market space.
Weak signal / horizon
Use of common economic patterns to identify where and when to attack.
User Perception
Fear, uncertainty and doubt
Often used to slow evolution by exploiting inertia to change within customers and forcing new entrants to divert energy into countering accusations.
Artificial competition
Creating two competing bodies to become the focus of competition, driving oxygen out of a market.
Brand and marketing
Manipulating the perception of a component by association of social status or appealing to indirect needs.
Bundling
Hiding a disadvantageous change by bundling it with other needs.
Confusion of choice
Preventing users from making rational decisions by overwhelming them with choice.
Creating artificial needs
Creating and elevating an artificial need through marketing and behavioural influence.
Education
Overcoming user inertia to a change through education. Many of the 16 forms of inertia can be overcome directly with education.
Lobbying / counterplay
Persuading government of a favourable position.
64 of 64 patterns shown
Explore More of the Body of Knowledge
Gameplay patterns are context-specific actions. Explore evolution characteristics, climatic patterns, and universal doctrine principles.