Mechanics, How hard can it be?
Game → Rules →Fun
That’s the basic’s of making a fun game for people to play, when building mechanics for a game you truly can tell a story, but the rules don’t restrict the mechanics, because to put it blintly, the mechanics are desgined as what the player interacts with or how they interact with it. Game Mechanics are the user interface
To create compelling mechanics for the player there are a lot of questions that you need to ask before even starting the Rules.
THE QUESTIONS
Is the game Discrete or Continuous? - For silly people like me, Discrete is a finite set of strategy where it goal only goes one way, while being continous just keeps going and going
Is it Emergent or Progressive?
Is it Free or restricted?
Do the mechanisms resitrict or guide the player?
What about Physics? - Irony that Physics is a restriced theory, but can add a lot of freedom to the design process
What about the Economy? if any
Is there a Winning strategy?
Finally which mechanism is the most important?
Thankfully this lecture did give me a while page of written notes where there is no way I could not know what Game Mechanics are anymore. The only time I find the game hard to understand is when mentioning Emergent mechanics, with one example it’s still a very complicated method of creation. I did some research afterwards and found an interesting analogy for it, which did help my overall understanding of emergent game mechanics
“This is where the idea of “tools” vs. “keys” comes into play. A tool has a very specific purpose, but a wide set of applications. A key on the other hand has a specific purpose, but a limited application.” - Josh Bycer
I see this is meant as a method where functions of the mechanics can be used for many different things rather than just one thing so the mechanics can be there but it don’t offer just one solution but a varied amount. One example, I can think of regarding a game I played recently, God Of War, where the combat is emergent, as I can battle against enemies is a set amount of different ways, I don’t have to stick to one particular way or fighting (unless the situation calls for it) but even if I do there is a manner of ways I can attack the enemy.
What I learned :
Rules can be made afterwards, first you need to understand how your game is going to be interacted with from the player’s perspective or least know how you want those interactions to happen and building upon them. Objectives need to be set first of how you would like them to work and what the interactions should be, then rules can be decided later to fully make the experience what it is/