So lets just get the very obvious out of the way, gameplay is the way we play the game. However, gameplay is not about going from point A to point B, but things that you do in the process. Like I have mentioned in my previous posts, that a game is about solving a problem, it does not mean that a game is only solving 'a problem'. What gameplay really means is to have an experience while you are trying to solve the problem. Best example, to explain gameplay, is car racing. What makes car racing, in real life, fun? Is it the fact that you are driving a car from point A to point B? Or is it the speed? The adrenaline rush, the sound of the engine, the way your body is pushed when you turn your car at a high speed, your heart pumping like nothing else before. That's the experience which makes you wanna do that again and again. But as soon as you go inside a game, puff!! Everything vanishes. Now what you are left with is a car, running at a speed of 300 mph going from point A to point B. Gameplay is about having that adrenaline rush inside the game, which is more than just racing cars trying to win over the other.
So what do I mean by experience? Experience, for me, would be information that is thrown at the player. It can be in form of audio, visual, narration or tasks. These elements give you an experience that leads to a 'feeling'. A game has to 'feel' right more than just being right. What I mean by that is, it does not have to have correct physics, or photo-realistic objects or actors, or perfectly correct set of rules. Gameplay can come out of a bug, or a cheat, or from an imbalance. Till the time it feels right, gameplay can come from any place.
Gameplay can be divided into many categories. You are told a story, you are challenged by a friend, you have to team up to defeat a boss and so on. All these would make a game, hence they define gameplay. Gameplay is also about game commerce, the balancing and the understanding of it. How much should you reward, when should you punish, is it too easy, eventually making it boring, or is it too hard for anyone to build an interest on the first place. It's the balance between all of these factors that would define gameplay.
Lets not forget the 'social element'! These days that is the buzz word. It is quite fascinating to see how dominating social element has been in today's games. I don't think I can point out all the reasons why it works out so well these days but as we are densely getting connected to the world, social gaming are becoming more prominent. This is a great example of how technology plays a great role in gameplay. Facebook, Xbox kinect, game-boy, iPhone, Wii all these changed the way we play games.
Lastly, gameplay can be prominently divided into two major parts. They are parallel to the above categories and they are, logical and psychological elements of the game. They both co-exist in the game world and its the combination of these two that makes a perfect gameplay. Logical designs would be based on formulae and calculations and the psychological aspect would be the fun and the choices we would make in the game. Just like Sid Meier famously defined gameplay as "a series of interesting choices."
So lets define gameplay now. A gameplay would consist of logical and psychological elements that would give you an experience, would provide you with choices for you to manage the game flow, and would be led by technology to accentuate your experience.
