VDP2016 - Lecture 08 Game mechanics

Prof. Pier Luca Lanzi
Game Mechanics
Videogame Design and Programming

grokDynamicMechanics Aesthetic
player
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
7

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
8

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
9

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.
10

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
13

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
14

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?
25

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
29

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
36

Unfinished Swan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9YaFY8S75M

Splatoon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L54s2m1dPs

explore/combat
collect
spend
improve

Physics as a Mechanic

Angry Birds Official Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNNzRyd1xz0

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

• 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).

• 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)
57

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
63

Game Mechanics & Rules
• Game mechanics are the rules, processes, and data at the heart
of a game
• Rules and mechanics are related concepts, but mechanics are
more detailed and concrete
• For example, the rules of Monopoly consist of only a few pages,
but the mechanics of Monopoly include the prices of all the
properties and the text of all the Chance and Community Chest
66

core mechanics indicate mechanics
that are the most influential
for example, the mechanics that implement
gravity in a platform game are core mechanics
in fact, gravity affects almost all moving
objects in the game and interact

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
69

Discrete Mechanics vs
Continuous Mechanics

Mixing Physical Mechanics with Strategic Gameplay

progression mechanics create
games of progression
the other mechanics create
game of emergence

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

player’s trajectory
the path players take through
the possible states of a game
games that allows many, different, interesting
trajectories arguably have more gameplay than
games that generate fewer less interesting trajectories

Tic-tac-toe vs Connect4

http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Civilization_V

Procedural Rethoric

Procedural Rhetoric
• Concept developed by Ian Bogost in the book “Persuasive
Games” (MIT Press 2007)
• Videogames are part of a new form of rhetoric since their
“procedurality” involves interaction
• Procedural Rhetoric is defined as “the practice of using processes
persuasively.”

http://unmanned.molleindustria.org

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3510712/

The Best Amendment - http://www.molleindustria.org/the-best-amendment/

Let’s Play “The Best Amendment”!

Unfolding

Extra Credits - The Waiting Game - Why Weird Games Become Cult Hits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptk93AyICH0
86

Energy Mechanic

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.king.candycrushsaga

“pay money to keep trying to solve puzzles
or stop playing and come back later”

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zynga.FarmVille2CountryEscape

harvest crops after they finish growing
wait minutes or hours …
miss out the proper time and crops
will wither

come back later or pay for continued play
balance between indulgence and restraint

Limited-turns constraint becomes and
energy mechanic when each turn consumes
a resources that will refill over time

Energy mechanics force a rhythm onto the
player who cannot get things her way
They don’t have permission to indulge
Gamers and casual gamers manage their
desire to indulge differently

How to design constraints
without causing frustration?
By providing alternative activities
By designing the waiting mechanics on
familiar concepts (waiting for the crops)

Energy mechanics has moral issues…

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

Extra Credits

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

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

Match Game Mechanics:
An exhaustive survey
Jonathan Bailey with contributions by Christopher Floyd,
Robert Wahler, Lars Bull and Kevin Ryan
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JonathanBailey/20150227/237544/Match_Game_Mechanics.php

http://www.facebook.com/polimigamecollective
https://twitter.com/@POLIMIGC
http://www.youtube.com/PierLucaLanzi
http://www.polimigamecollective.org

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