Gameplay and Game Mechanics Design
Gameplay and Game Mechanics Design
Gameplay and Game Mechanics Design
When playing a game, players seek challenge, mastery and reward, all packed in
entailing and
motivating activities.
When asked to analyze a game, players usually focus their attention on three key
elements
that can safely be considered the key determinants of the quality of a game :
- the context of the game;
- the activities that must be carried out in order to win the game;
- how well the game allows understanding what must be done, and to actually
accomplish
it.
Gamers do have a well-defined implicit notion of what gameplay is, and, when
talking about gameplay and their play experiences, they always refer to what can
be done in the game, focusing on:
-
Interactivity and activity are two key concepts underlying the former definition
of gameplay.
When playing a game, players want to be challenged, control what surround them,
develop a sense of mastership and achievement, and be rewarded
As for game mechanics, challenge and reward come from three mechanics-related
activities:
how can we sustain and enhance players motivation in learning and using game
mechanics? By balancing the effort and time required by learning processes, the
effort and time spent on using what has been learned, and the payoffs of the usage
of the mechanics.
When analyzing gameplay, players implicitly expect to see some sort of hierarchy
between game mechanics, based on their importance
Core gameplay can be used to build the so-called core meta-gameplay activities. To
the player, these are apparently new activities which share much with the core
gameplay activities
There are three kinds of satellite mechanics: enhancement, alternate and opposition
mechanics
The architecture hints that good gameplay can be completely built based on a
handful of good core mechanics. In fact, a thoughtful design can lead to a simple
but yet rich gameplay, consisting of few core activities based on a limited set of
chore mechanics, but with very many variations introduced through all kinds of
satellite mechanics
From the analysis presented in the previous section stems the following set of
gameplay design guidelines:
1) Minimize the learning time required to master core mechanics features.
2) Minimize the number of core mechanics, and the amount of features for each
one of them.
3) Make sure that all core mechanics are relevant throughout most of the game,
and that there are no functional redundancies amongst them.
4) Exploit polyvalence in game mechanics design.
5) Exploit satellite mechanics in order to sustain and enhance players motivation
in using core mechanics.
6) Suspend temporarily the use of specific mechanics in order to renew players
interest in them.
7) Build the gameplay mostly based on core gameplay and core meta-gameplay
activities, providing through them the doses of challenge, mastership and
reward that players seek.
8) Minimize the use of peripheral gameplay.
game designers should be in first place skilled and sensitive toy-makers, capable of
building a comprehensive but yet parsimonious set of core and satellite mechanics.
And then, they should be architects capable of building apparently complex
gameplay structures with as few toys as possible.