Game Mechanics Introduction

General Blog
#1

Game mechanics, in game design study (also called Ludology), are defined as "methods invoked by agents for interacting with the game world." Simply put, a mechanic is a set of rules governing the players input and the game's response in order to produce one coherent concept. For example, most shooters have an ammo mechanic governing how much a player can shoot, how long it takes to reload, and when a player can begin shooting again.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://blog.pbbg.com/game-mechanics-introduction/
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#3

That’s a great way to describe it. It’s easy to want to throw everything into a game experience, but it’s just as easy for it to end up an unfocused mess as a result. That doesn’t mean complex is bad, but it’s definitely more difficult to pull off.

Either way, a great game should be strong enough mechanically that you can strip everything else away and it’s still engaging.

I’m excited for future posts in this series!

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#4

Talibri had a number of shortcomings when it came to coherent mechanics. It was a slew of good ideas that were poorly implemented. One issue that I created for us was an overload of the scope of the mechanics. I kept adding more items without thinking through how many of those things could have distinct and valuable purposes. A good example of this was the stats for gear. I tried to come up with unique ideas for stats but wound up with 2-3 useful/strong stats and the rest were fluff that went largely unused. This led to a heavy market skew and invalidating the gathering/refining/crafting of entire trees of items. Big oof on my part.

In hindsight its so much better to start small and add more content as the mechanics grow. Nice article!

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