To Evade
Entities can move for the purpose of avoiding contact with another entity. The entity must make the decision to move based on the goal of avoiding contact with another entity. Therefore, this element is only available to agents. Usually, this decision is made for the purpose of survival, where contact with the entity would either cause or contribute to the removal of the agent. Other times, it may not cause or contribute to removal, but contact would have another negative effect on the agent. One example of this is in a racing game where contact with some entities would merely slow the agent down. Finally, agents may make the decision to evade with the goal of preventing a positive benefit from the entity colliding with the agent (or entity causing the collision, whether involved in the collision or not). For example, a game might reward a player points for shooting some agent. While shooting the agent has no negative effect on the agent, the agent still tries to avoid the player's shots in order to deny the player points.
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Examples
Strong Examples
Pac-man
In Pac-man, Pac-man must collect all the pellets while evading the ghosts. If Pac-man collides with a ghost, he is removed.
Galaga
In Galaga, the player-controlled ship must evade incoming bullets from the non-player ships. The player-controlled ship is removed if it collides with a bullet.
Border Down
Border down is a modern SHMUP for the Dreamcast that has elements of the manic shooter style of game mechanic. As with most modern SHMUPs, evasion is as important of even more important than attacking enemies. The player must evade endless streams of enemy fire while trying to complete various stages. This is accomplished by skillful mastery of the directional or analog controller inputs and possessing abouve average reflexes in some instances. Incentive for evasion is driven by the gameplay mechanic of forcing the character to always be on edge, due to the fact that collsion with an enemy, enemy fire, or a stage object results in an instant loss of life.
Diablo II
Most of the challenge in the later sections of Diablo II comes from evading enemy attacks. As the game progresses the damage increases much faster than your hit point total, so you are able to take fewer and fewer hits in a given span of time. Physically evading is the only reliable way to avoid hits, so skilled players will evade almost every attack while novices will evade almost nothing.
Weak Examples
Katamari Damacy
In Katamari Damacy you must evade objects that are still too large for you to pick up. Colliding with these obects can cause your Katamri to lose elements, and thus size. (the goal is always to increase the size of your Katamari). Even though later you may come to pick the object up, you still have to navigate around it in order to make your way smoother. This is a weak example because not evading a larger object does not always have negative consequences and when you are large enough you don't have to evade at all.
Final Fantasy Tactics
In final fantasy tactics all actions/ movements are dictated by a characters statistics. In order for a character in one's party to successfully evade an attack from an enemy, the player must rely on the evasion statistic inherent in the character. This statistic is expressed in percentage terms and may be influenced by equipping certain items or abilities to the character. For example, normal evasion rates, which are expressed in percentage terms, lie around the 30% or less area. However if one were to equip the ability "blade grasp", their evasion would then be reliant mainly on their brave statistic instead of the innate evasion statistic. From there the player can indirectly manipulate their evasion statistic by increasing their brave using a brave modifying ability such as "scream".
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