In this post we'll get down and dirty with game mechanics explained in a fast forward manner. It touches some core game mechanics but are explained briefly. As always internet can provide you with these core mechanics in depth.
Games, in general, are a series of events that respond to a change. So it is this flow of changes that guides the game. Based on this idea, what becomes the most important element in the equation is the connectivity. How well the events are connected with each other. Once you figure that out, you have a solid base to work with. So what do I mean by connectivity? The game design should be a chain of reaction. To get more army you need more money, which would require some resource, lets say, wood. To get more wood, you need more people. More people need more defense. More defense comes from more army. It is this loop that makes the game. So as a game designer, the job then is to find out the loopholes that are breaking the connectivity and fix the design to close the loop.
So we just proved that the games, with respect to core game mechanics, are a system of loops. The idea is very simple, the game stops you from moving forward and you fight against the resistance. This kind of behavior is called feedback loop. There are two kinds of feedback loops, positive feedback loops and negative feedback loops. Let me break it down for you, feedback are basically reactions. Once you perform an action, you are given a feedback. Positive feedback will give you gain, like an amplifier. Sound goes into the amplifier, the amplifier makes the sound louder, that's positive feedback. This process happens in a loop. So if in any loop the action is amplified, the loop is considered as positive feedback loop. The Negative feedback loop is just the opposite of it. Good example of a negative feedback loop is thermo-stat. When the water boils to a certain temperature, the thermo-stat shuts down the power. And when the temperate drops down to a certain degree, the thermo-stat turns on the power. The other way of looking at the feedback loops is that, the negative feedback loops help stabilize a system and the positive feedback loops destabilizes the system.
Game mechanics can also be defined as a complex system. A complex system can be defined as a system consisting of many, relatively easy to understand, rules that forms into a complex system that can display unpredictable behaviors.
British scientist Stephan Wolfram extensive study has revealed 3 critical qualities of systems that exhibit dynamic behavior:
- They must consist of simple cells whose rules are defined locally. This means the system must consist of parts that can be describe relatively easily in isolation.
- The system must allow for long-range communication. Changes in the state of a single part of the complex system must be able to cause changes in parts distant in space or time.
- The level of activity of the cells is a good indicator for the complexity of the behavior of the system. In a system that has only a very few active cells, complex behavior is unlikely to emerge.
- A cell in Wolfram's study is from his system called automaton. You can Google to know more about Wolfram's automaton. In Wolfram's automaton, a cell is active when it changes from black to white or visa-versa. These three qualities are what you have to keep in kind when designing a complex system,ie, games.
So these are the two main part of game mechanics that are essential while making a game design. Now, some people out there are just coping an exiting game design. If the game design of those referenced games have these core mechanics working properly then ofcourse one won't have to worry about the mechanics. However, to know why a certain feature is there in the game and why they are behaving in a certain way, having a certain value etc, is what these game mechanics help you to understand.
