VDP2016 - Lecture 08 Game mechanics

Prof. Pier Luca Lanzi

Game MechanicsVideogame 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

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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 coreof 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 Hothttps://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 havewhat attributes and what states

There are often multiple ways torepresent the same thing.

The “right” way to think about something iswhichever 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 attributesand 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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Shoot!


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


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


explore/combat

collect

spend

improve


Physics as a Mechanic


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


Interesting emergent actions arethe hallmark of a good game

The ratio of meaningful strategic actionsto basic actions is a good measure ofhow much emergent behavior your

game features.

Elegant games allow a player few basic actionsand 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 beconcrete, 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 humanpleasure 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 & 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

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core mechanics indicate mechanicsthat are the most influential

for example, the mechanics that implementgravity in a platform game are core mechanics

in fact, gravity affects almost all movingobjects in the game and interact


Game mechanics are media independent

They can be implemented throughmany different media

Thus, game scholars don’t distinguishbetween 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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Discrete Mechanics vsContinuous Mechanics


Mixing Physical Mechanics with Strategic Gameplay


progression mechanics creategames of progression

the other mechanics creategame of emergence


game of emergence have relativelysimple rules but much variations

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

they emerge during gameplay


player’s trajectorythe path players take throughthe possible states of a game

games that allows many, different, interestingtrajectories 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 Hitshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptk93AyICH0

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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 cropswill 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 constraintswithout 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/polimigamecollectivehttps://twitter.com/@POLIMIGC

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

VDP2016 - Lecture 08 Game mechanics

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