Meccaniche

Player

grok

MDA Model

DynamicsMechanics Aesthetics

Game Designer

http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/pubs/MDA.pdf

Mechanics Story

Aestethics

Technology

The Elemental Tetrad: Mechanics

•  The procedures and rules of your game

•  Describe the goal of your game

•  How players can and cannot try to achieve it

• What happens when they try

•  If a set of mechanics is crucial to the gameplay,

§ These must be supported by the technology

§ Aesthetics must emphasize them clearly to the players

§ They should make sense with respect to the story

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The Elemental Tetrad: Story

•  The sequence of events that unfolds in your game

•  Linear and prescripted, branching and emergent

•  The mechanics should strengthen the story and let it emerge

•  Aesthetics should reinforce the ideas of the story

•  The technology should be the best suited to the story

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The Elemental Tetrad: Aesthetics

•  How your game looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels

•  It has the most direct relationship to a player’s experience

•  Technology should allow and amplify the target aesthetic tone/mood of the game

•  Mechanics should be coherent to the world that the aesthetics have defined

•  The story should have events that let your aesthetics emerge at the right pace and have the most impact

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The Elemental Tetrad: Technology

•  They define the materials and interactions that make your game possible

•  The technology enables players to do certain things and prohibits it from doing other things (e.g., Wii and gamepads)

•  The technology is essentially the medium in which the aesthetics take place, in which the mechanics will occur, and through which the story will be told.

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Space Invaders

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QObneYZIdKI

The Tedrad at Play: Space Invaders

•  Technology § Custom made for this game, no other game had it

•  Mechanics § The gameplay was completely new, with a player against and advancing

army. The player shoots and the aliens shoot back

§ You can hide behind the shields but the enemy can destroy them

§ The more enemy the player shoots down the faster the aliens go

§ Flying saucers give extra points but they are difficult to hit

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The Tedrad at Play: Space Invaders

•  Story § Original story was the players shooting at advancing human soldiers but

Taito changed it because it conveyed a bad message

§ Other war-based games were available (Sea Wolf 1976)

§ People already complained about game in which you kill people (Death Race 1976)

§ Marching soldier would better fit a top-down view, aliens give the feeling that their aim is to touch ground

•  Aesthetics

§ Aliens are not identical and have a two frame (very effective) marching animation and music

§ Colored strips on the screen

§ The arcade cabinet was attractive and eye catching

§ Punishing sound when you get hit

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Skin & Skeleton

Skin “the player’s experience”

Skeleton

“the elements that make up the game”

Designers should focus on both at the same time

Game Themes

“if our games have unifying, resonant themes, the experiences we create will be much, much stronger.”

Jesse Schell

Figure out what your theme is. Use every means possible to reinforce that theme.

Game mechanics are the core of what a game truly is

What remain when all of the aesthetics, technology, and story are stripped away

Mechanic #1: Space

Mechanic #2: Time

Game Time

•  Discrete and Continuous

§ Turn-based, turn-based chess, etc.

•  Clocks and Races

§ Time can have an absolute (Boggle) value or relative (races)

•  Controlling Time

§ We might allow to stop, pause, accelerate, rewind?

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Super Hot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xLYEAclSek

Mechanic #3: Objects, Attributes & States

Objects, Attributes, States

•  Objects

§ Characters, props, tokens, scoreboards, or anything that can be seen or manipulated in a game

§ Objects are the “nouns” of game mechanics

§ Sometimes, space can be considered an object

•  Attributes

§ Define categories of information about an object. In a racing game, a car might have maximum speed and current speed as attributes. Each attribute has a current state.

•  States

§ Each attribute has a current state.

§ The state of the “maximum speed” attribute might be 150 mph, while the state of the “current speed” attribute might be 75 mph

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Game designers decide objects have what attributes and what states

There are often multiple ways to

represent the same thing.

The “right” way to think about something is whichever way is most useful at the moment

Games that force the players to be aware of too many states

(too many game pieces, too many statistics about each character) to play can confuse and overwhelm

Secrets

A very important decision about game attributes and their states is who is aware of which ones.

In many board games, all information is public

In card games, some information is hidden

What about video games?

Mechanic #4: Actions

Actions in Games

•  Basic actions

§ Move a piece, jump, shoot

•  Strategic actions

§ Only meaningful on a longer horizon and larger picture

§ Protect a resource, force the opponent to do a certain move

§ The strategic actions often involve subtle interactions within the game and are often very strategic moves

§ They are not part of the rules, but rather actions and strategies that emerge naturally as the game is played

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Interesting emergent actions are the hallmark of a good game

The ratio of meaningful strategic actions

to basic actions is a good measure of how much emergent behavior your

game features.

Elegant games allow a player few basic actions and a large number of strategic actions

planting seeds for emergence

more verbs (basic actions)

verbs act on more objects

more ways to achieve goals

many subjects

side effects that changes constraints

Mechanic #5: Rules

Rules are the most fundamental mechanic.

They define the space, the timing, the objects, the actions, the consequences of the actions, the constraints on the actions, and the goals.

Parlett’s Rule Analysis

Parlett’s Rule Analysis

•  Operational rules

§ Define what the players do to play the game

•  Foundational rules

§ Define the underlying structure of the game.

§ “When pac-man eats a pellet it will become invincible”

•  Behavioral rules

§  Implicit to the gameplay and typically part of “good sportsmanship” (don’t hassle the player when she is thinking a move)

•  Laws

§ Formed when playing in serious competitive settings (e.g., tournament rules for a specific game).

Parlett’s Rule Analysis

•  Official rules

§ They merge game rules and laws

§ They are defined when a game is played “seriously enough” (e.g. check!)

•  Advisory rules

§ Tips and rules of strategy to help playing better

•  House rules

§ Added by the players to make the game more fun, balanced, etc.

§ E.g., “no shotgun, no C4, no campers” in some battlefield servers

Modes

Enforcers

Cheatability

The Most Important Rule

defines the objective/goal of the game

good games goals should be concrete, achievable, rewarding

Mechanic #6: Skill

Skill Mechanics

•  Shifts the focus away from the game and onto the player

•  Game require players to exercise certain skills

•  If the player’s skill level is a good match to the game’s difficulty, the player will feel challenged and stay in the flow channel

•  Games can require

§ Physical skills (dance games, musical instrument based games)

§ Mental skills (memory, observation, problem solving)

§ Social skills (everything that requires reading opponents’ mind, fooling opponents, team working games)

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real vs virtual skills

Mechanic #7: Chance

Surprises are an important source of human pleasure and the secret ingredient of fun

Chance is an essential part of a fun game because chance means uncertainty, and

uncertainty means surprises

Skill and Chance Get Tangled

•  Estimating chance is a skill

•  Skills have a probability of success

•  Estimating an opponent’s skill is a skill

•  Predicting pure chance is an imagined skill

•  Controlling pure chance is an imagined skill

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Game mechanics are media independent

They can be implemented through many different media

Thus, game scholars don’t distinguish

between video/card/board games

Five Different Core Mechanics

•  Physics

§ Plays a large role in modern video games (e.g., FPS, physics-puzzle games)

•  Internal economy

§ Transactions involving game elements that are collected, consumed, and traded constitute a game’s internal economy

§ Can involve abstractions (health, popularity, and magical powers)

•  Progressive mechanisms

§ The progress of the player is tightly controlled by a number of mechanisms that block or unlock access to certain areas

•  Tactical maneuvering

§ Deal with the placement of game units on a map for offensive or defensive advantages

•  Social interactions

§ Reward giving gifts, inviting new friends to join, participating in social interactions

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Mixing Physical Mechanics with Strategic Gameplay

game of emergence have relatively simple rules but much variations

the game’s challenge and its flow of events are not planned in advanced

they emerge during gameplay

Tic-tac-toe vs Connect4

Extra Credits - The Waiting Game - Why Weird Games Become Cult Hits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptk93AyICH0

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http://www.necessarygames.com/my-games/loneliness/flash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QwcI4iQt2Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP_qNm-96Dc

http://www.facebook.com/polimigamecollectivehttps://twitter.com/@POLIMIGC

http://www.youtube.com/PierLucaLanzihttp://www.polimigamecollective.org