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Multi-Purposing Game Mechanics [1]
By Corvus | November 20, 2008
With regards to video games–what, exactly, is the primary function, or purpose, of game mechanics?
This question is an interesting one and it is almost certain to spark a heated debate if you were to ask it while out for pints with a bunch of game developers. In fact, it’s one I’ll be asking at the next local IGDA meeting. Likely, I’ll be asking it a lot at GDC next year as well. I’m going to ask it again here, too, just to give you a little extra time to think about your answer.
With regards to video games–what, exactly, is the primary function, or purpose, of game mechanics?
Is the answer too obvious? Did you immediately come up with a solid answer that encapsulates the core purpose of game mechanics video games? If so, please jump immediately to the comments and share your answer before continuing to read. You can always leave a second comment if you’ve more to say once you’re done with the post.
I’m guessing that you, the audience of this blog, aren’t quite able to settle on a pat answer. Instead you are likely thinking, “well, it’s complicated,” or, “it depends on the game, doesn’t it,” or even, “it totally depends on the game mechanic in question!” But there seems to be an impression among much of the industry, and much of its audience, that the answer has something to do with challenge–either a challenge of skillz, or a challenge of wits.
I’ve written in the past about punitive gameplay (mechanics designed to aggressively challenge and block progress) and forgiving gameplay (mechanics designed to facilitate continued play). So called “casual” games tends to fall into the latter camp while “hardcore” games fall into the former. We are, however, seeing more and more forgiving gameplay elements in games once believed to be the playground of the hardcore audience–Bioshock, Portal, and Fable 2 are all excellent examples of games that incorporate elements of forgiving gameplay into traditionally punitive genres–the first person shooter and the role playing game.
I wonder if a game can have both, challenge and consequences but still be able to offer a retry-less experience.
–kimari
Of those three titles, however, Portal is the only one that comes remotely close to also abandoning the traditionally violent themes of punitive games. Both Bioshock and Fable 2 utilize forgiving game mechanics when your avatar dies, a decision for which Bioshock caught a lot of flak. Fable 2 goes much further in this regard, with practically every single game mechanic being far more forgiving than punitive, while still providing a deeply rich gameplay experience and a rich story experience. A tangential thread of this post is the question, “What would happen if you completely divorced the violently competitive nature of punitive games and utilized their mechanics for non-violent means?”
Regardless of how forgiving or punitive these games might be, they still rely upon the game mechanics to provide challenge, or resistance. Although I have written in the past that video games are the only narrative medium that seemingly seeks to actively impede the audience’s progress, I want to stress that I am in no way saying that this is terrible, bad, misguided, or the wrong approach. The entire history of games, long predating the advent of video games, is about challenging the player, most often with other players. Sometimes, however, the challenge comes from a closed system of rules (in other words–a bounded space [2]), such as with the multitude of solitaire card games, crossword puzzles, word finds, anagrams, sudoku, etc.
Video games, in their youth, had to deal with two severe platform restrictions–a lack of high-speed networks and a lack of high-quality graphics. To compensate for these restrictions, video game designers took a strongly narrative route, emulating a community of players by assigning personality to the game mechanics and creating back story to engage the player emotionally. Now, board games had been doing this for ages–albeit on a more humble scale. But board games couldn’t effectively utilize voice actors or sound effects (please do not bring up Dark Tower) and therefore relied on tightly contained story elements and allowed the board’s design to enforce linearity. Video games have gone on to evolve the narrative approach to game design considerably.
The result of this is that game mechanics actually serve multiple purposes. They serve the original purpose of providing challenge to the audience, but they they also serve as elements of the narrative. By using elements associated with other narrative mediums (dialog, animation, sound design, etc.) to provide context for the underlying game mechanics, each mechanic’s presentation is used to communicate something about the game dynamics, i.e. the relationships between the game mechanics. And if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ll know that I believe good stories are made of good relationships.
And that brings me to my second (set of) question(s), with which I’ll end the post:
What would happen if every mechanic used in a video game was there specifically to describe a relationship and didn’t introduce challenge? What if every mechanic was, instead, designed to assist the player in completing the narrative? What if every game mechanic was entirely forgiving? Would it still be a game, or would it be something else? And if it is something else, is the difference important enough to qualify it as something entirely other?
[1] Yes, I went there. I verbed a noun. And look–I just did it again.
[2] See my posts Defining Play and More on Defining Play [return]
Tagged:forgiving, game mechanics, punitive, storytelling. |
November 20th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Have you read Jesper Juul’s Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds? I actually just read it, and your point “[game mechanics] serve the original purpose of providing challenge to the audience, but they they also serve as elements of the narrative” hits directly on the thesis of that book. Juul basically explains that game rules and fiction reinforce each other, for instance, the fiction lets the player intuit the rules, and vice versa. Okay, that’s not the best summary of the book, but it’s an idea. If you haven’t read it yet, I would highly recommend it!
As for entirely assistive and forgiving mechanics (i.e. rules), wouldn’t that transform the “game” into a “toy”? Juul defines a game as including valorized outcomes, that is, you can win a game or you can lose it. I’m trying to think of video games you can’t “lose” (The Sims, Spore, Guitar Hero), but they lack real narratives—and are just as often considered toys. Portal or Half-Life 2 assist the player in completing the narrative: well-placed lights, blocked paths, a crate with a grenade when you need a grenade. Thanks to quick saves, you can’t *really* lose those games either, in the sense that “Game Over” has any real meaning. But they are challenging, and progression through the narrative can certainly be stumped, such that you could be running around a room at full health, under no threat, with no idea where to go and therefore feel that you’ve lost.
I guess a narrative that assists the audience in reaching the conclusion with no challenge would be… a movie?
November 20th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Pre-read response to “what are game mechanics?”: Game mechanics are the rules by which the player interacts with the content. They are the underlying algorithms that transform player inputs to audiovisual outputs. Okay, now I’m off to finish reading…
November 20th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I find a lot of game mechanics that really feel like the designer was trying to guide the player down the same path of logic that he wanted them to use to solve the scenario, or conversely, just make it easier for them to do so. Sure, you could just as easily climb over the rubble thats blocking your path, but it looks like the designer wants you to call in an airstrike on it. As often as not it seems like the designer just wants to lead you by the hand through the game, experience it as glowingly as he did in his mind through “clever” little diversions but the question is “is it worth it?” So yes, I guess, mechanics like morality are on a case by case basis.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Okay, so post-read comments: I dont’ think you can separate games, and by extension game mechanics, from the concept of challenging the player. That’s because I believe that games are defined by their goals, without which the player has no incentive to interact with them. Thoughts?
November 20th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
What constitutes failure? Well, that’s easy, a “game over” screen, a playable character’s death and any other moment where the developers say to the player “You fail, try again”.
….
There’s more to it than that isn’t it? The player may fail at something even though the game is throwing reward after reward at her. Every single player will have a personal challenge to overcome, no matter the context or design of the game.
So I think the answer here is this: Yes, you can make a game that doesn’t challenge the player directly, but at some point she’s going to challenge herself anyways, making up her own rules and goals as she goes.
Even in a game only focused about player choice, where there’s no fail state and every choice has a consequence… there are still going to be fail and win states defined by the player.
November 20th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
@Kimari: Even if a movie requires that we only watch it, or a book only continue reading it to advance the narrative and reward the audience, I still impose my own outside rule/challenge: finish it. There are people who will endeavour to finish books even if they don’t like them, and I’m one of those. If I ultimately put a book down and never return to it, I do feel like I “failed” it. Or them, as the case may be.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
>>With regards to video games–what, exactly, is the primary function, or purpose, of game mechanics?
To link cause with effect. Such as in, [physics] “if the player is in the air, apply downward acceleration”, or [behavior] “if the player is close to the evil samurai, the samurai will attempt to kill the player”, or [abstract] “if the player takes the ribbon, increase the game score by 2 points”.
Almost all game mechanics are neither punitive or helpful. That would be like saying the theory of relativity is punitive, or helpful.
The ones that are punitive are so only because they take the player further away from the goal. Without a goal, the game comes across as toyware or a slice-of-life: full of mechanics, but nothing is punishment because nothing is reward.
Even if we define all mechanics ‘positively’, as in “if the player stays away from the samurai, the samurai will leave him alone” or “if the player asks Smokey for help, Smokey will help”, we still risk the player missing the triggers for all these great mechanics, and the player wanders aimlessly, endlessly, as a result.
Perhaps you’re just taking issue with mechanics that end the game prematurely, or, enforce a rewind of time (and subsequent do-overs)? If so, your issue isn’t with punitive mechanics themselves so much as which punitive measures are appropriate. I.e., the samurai attacks the player with words rather than murders him.
Interesting food for thought.
-R, a rec.arts.int-fiction reader
November 20th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Something that I’ve taken away from the some of the “Serious Play” stuff that I’ve seen (and hopefully Jane McGonigal shall forgive me if my understanding is wildly divergent from it) is that really gameplay mechanics themselves are devoid of punitivity/forgiveness… What binds gameplay mechanics to a player’s experience is more often than not the feedback on the gameplay mechanics and it is that feedback that can be punitive or forgiving or practically nonexistant (as is the case with most of the “blackbox games” that life consists of).
I am inclined to think that just about every gameplay mechanic can be made almost entirely forgiving, at least in “feel”, simply by changing the feedback. “Restart the puzzle/level from the beginning” and “Achievement unlocked” are entirely different sorts of feedback, and I think a deep understanding of that spectra of possibilities is almost crucial to understanding how to make any gameplay mechanic standout.
I don’t think there is any coincidence in the fact that two of the mentioned games (Portal and Fable 2) are notorious for being two of the most market-tested games in history, each going through hundreds of “kleenex testers” (use briefly, throw away) and thoroughly vetted through market surveys at nearly every step in the games’ development. Lo and behold that the majority of gamers prefer forgiving feedback to punitive feedback and that games are “more fun” when the game seems more forgiving…
November 21st, 2008 at 5:16 am
Great responses everyone, thanks! I’m going to keep mum a bit longer and perhaps peel off my own replies into another post.
November 21st, 2008 at 8:50 am
This Gamastra article on Blow’s talk at MIGS is required reading. (-.0)
November 21st, 2008 at 9:03 am
I’m taking the egoist route and attempting to answer the question, because something did pop into my mind in answer to the question. So I’m going to post it here, read the blog and comments, and then post something again.
“With regards to video games–what, exactly, is the primary function, or purpose, of game mechanics?”
If you accept the idea that a video game mechanic is represented by the verbs available in the game, then game mechanics are the player’s means of expression within the game itself. This, I think, works with a broader definition of a game mechanic, more inline with the idea that the sum total of mechanics == game rules. Here the rules define how the player expresses themselves, as well as assessing the success, quality, and scope or the expression.
So, a video-game expression can include killing badguys (or saving little girls), conversing with NPCs (or other players as that is implemented in a game), running, jumping, or so forth. Anything the player does changes the world — even if a simple jump in Mario only causes a sound a temporary movement of the player’s avatar. That would be a mechanic with simple success, perhaps irrelevant quality, and a very minor scope.
The purpose of a mechanic then, to my mind, is to mediate between the game world (using this term loosely) and the player. The player does something physical (like pressing buttons on a control) the mechanic defines what happens, and according to the rules it embodies, modifies the game world in some way. This should, probably, be reflected back to the player, but that doesn’t seem /necessary/, whereas if a mechanic doesn’t change the game world, even ephemerally, then I’d question whether it was a mechanic at all.
Whether the mechanic is fun or annoying, evocative or boring, or easy or hard isn’t key to the purpose of a mechanic. It is key, IMNSHO, to the aesthetic of the game, and its success as entertainment or art.
November 21st, 2008 at 9:26 am
When I think of “game mechanics” I think more about the way the player interacts with the game, leaving the consequences as a design exercise. Admittedly, the two are inseparable. As an extreme example, take the whack-a-mole game mechanic, which revolves around the player hitting a button at the right time and location. The design aspect governs the tolerances used to determine whether the timing and placement are counted as a success or a failure.
The danger of divorcing player actions from challenge/rewards/consequences/advancement is that it can make the player choices meaningless. There’s nothing wrong with it per se if there is other value derived from those options. For example, humorous dialog options can provide entertainment value.
From a developer standpoint, there are finite resources that go into development. Adding features necessarily takes resources away from adding other features or polishing existing features. This is the whole argument that developers make about adding cooperative play vs. improving the singleplayer campaign or multiplayer competitive play. (I’m a big proponent of coop, but that’s a separate discussion.)
Alternately, there’s the topic of failure. I’ve got an essay floating around somewhere about the role of failure and how to integrate it into gameplay. On the one hand, success is meaningless without failure, because if the player can never fail, then player actions are irrelevant. Failure must be possible, but only as a consequence of recognized player errors, and preferably only after repeated failures. Ideally, the player would also have a way to recover from those errors without having to leave the game environment.
November 21st, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I’m not a game designer. I’m a interaction/user experience designer who enjoys playing and thinking about games; so the first “definition” that popped into my head was largely constructed out of interaction design concepts. I haven’t read your full post yet.
Game Mechanics connect the player’s Mental Model of a game with the game’s Interaction Model.
The Mental (or “Conceptual”) Model is the player’s understanding of the game environment, narrative structure (e.g. epic journey), actors (e.g. protagonist, friends, bad guys) and rules (e.g. I can kill the bad guys, I can ask for help). The Mental Model is the player’s understanding of what he or she is supposed to work towards and how different game elements assist or hinder the path to that end-game.
The Interaction Model defines how the player directly interacts with and manipulates on-screen game elements. The Interaction Model defines things like the perspective mode (1st-person or 3rd-person), control/button systems, in-game interfaces (tools, weapons, maps, communicators) and all the other ways the player interactively participates in the game.
So the Game Mechanics are the “mechanism” by which the Interaction Model is employed to achieve the goal implied by the Mental Model (I must move as quickly as possible to my destination, if I can no longer move closer I shoot as many bad guys as necessary to do so, if I can’t shoot or move I take cover and ask/wait for help). If the the Interaction Model defines the actions, then Game Mechanics define how those actions must be executed within the Mental Model in order to reach the conceptual end-game.
I don’t know if that makes any sense, but those are my initial, uninfluenced, thoughts.
November 22nd, 2008 at 10:31 am
This conversation is excellent. If anything, it shows I haven’t thought nearly enough about the role of game mechanics in a game. What’s the primary purpose? First thought: to give the player something to do other than watch a movie. Now that I’ve read the entire entry, I don’t yet have a second thought formed. And it’s going to bother me until I do. B-)
Side note: if you disregard Dark Tower, you still have Nightmare (or Atmosphere, as it was known outside of the US): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_(game)
Even then, it seemed to rely on a narrative involving the Gatekeeper. I never did get a chance to play this game, so I’m not sure how effective it was, but it seems that the game series is still around.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Hello corvus… I found a perfect game for you
http://autofish.net/clysm/art/video_games/seiklus/
As far as I can tell this game is perfectly forgiving, yet this aspect does not detract from the feeling of calm that I get while playing the game.
So far collecting anything is my own prerogative and I have not found any reason to collect beyond my own desire to collect.
The music is a fun grab bag reminiscent of 8-bit games and is relaxing just to listen to.
It feels like a nearly perfect game.
(I have not ‘beaten’ this game, and i don’t even know if it HAS an ending yet…)
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Thanks for the link, Cori! I feel I need to defend myself a bit here–while I enjoy experiential, forgiving games, I appreciate the more challenging gameplay and love games that force me to be clever and/or hone my hand-eye coordination too!
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:29 pm
No need to defend… I love this game as well and I rarely play a game unless there’s a challenging gameplay mechanic or some reason to sometimes walk away from it, cursing the gods about the difficulty and wondering why I play it.
For example, another one of my favorite games is http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/
WARNING: If you don’t like pulling your hair out with nearly impossible gameplay, this is NOT the game for you… try the demo version instead.
HINT: Try double jumping immediately after starting the game.
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:08 pm
@Max Battcher
Questions of meaning come before questions of truth… But initially I am confused at your comment.
Portal and Fable 2 in my mind are famous for entirely different reasons.
Portal was a delightfully ironic puzzle game that appealed to a persons morbid sense of humor. In the game you were never actually "respawned" per se, in reality every time you died you actually were a brand new subject who had made it to where you had previously.
In Fable2, and I’m a bit fuzzy on this… because I stopped playing when I found out you had infinite magic and spells killed things if you so much as breathed on them… you just, wake up? You never actually die.
actually… I think ben Yahtzee says it best..
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/346-Fable-2
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/10-The-Orange-Box
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Joe Tortuga
“a video-game expression can include killing badguys (or saving little girls), ”
This is my biggest complaint about vanilla fallout 3.
Why can’t you save bad guys and kill little girls? A game is not truly open unless there’s nothing that you can’t do. It dropped off the map a little while ago but red faction 3 was touted as being a truly open gaming experience, I heard hype about architects and engineers being brought in so that the buildings would collapse realistically if you destroyed them.
One of the most important gameplay mechanics of all these days is linearity vs. openness. Now I’m all for linearity done well (See portal) or semi openness (System shock 2) I have never seen a truly open game. Oblivion did a good job but made plot characters immortal (What if i WANTED to summon Dagon?) but was only fun after a few choice mods were applied… namely oscuro’s oblivion overhaul and pure immersion, which turned oblivion into, well… a murderous, unforgiving game that plotted to stab you in the back repeatedly with a pitchfork. If we’re talking strictly openness then morrowwind did an even better job by not making them immortal, but failed because the game was boring beyond all meaning.
True openness has been most closely emulated by the game “dwarf fortress”
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
In this game there have been stories of a person starting out with only logs and kittens, building a tower and digging a ditch until the maximum allowed difference was reached and then had his dwarves, or dorfs as we call them, fling kittens off the side into the premade death trap.
THAT is openness… next time someone touts a game as open, ask if they can make a death tower and then throw kittens from the top.
November 24th, 2008 at 10:13 am
In my opinion, the game mechanics are the actions the player will be doing (or attempting) in the game. I find it interesting that you split up mechanics that keep the player coming back and those that stop them. As I think for some gamers, punitive and forgiving mechanics can belong to both groups. For example the rogue likes are filled with brutal game mechanics designed to kill the players; the fans wouldn’t have it any other way. Games where the challenge of the game play is the draw, things like narrative and story development are really the punitive mechanics as they keep the players from playing the game in my opinion.
I think a great example of forgiving mechanics in hard core games are those that allow the player to keep some of the progress after defeat. An example would be in God Hand ( a brutally hard action game) when you die you keep all money, and unlocked moves earned allowing the player to make some head way.
November 24th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
I think game mechanics are the method through which we shape the player’s experience within the game. Designing a game is about designing the experience, the game mechanics are just one channel through which we do that.
November 25th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Immediate response: Game mechanics are the means by which a story is converted into a game.
November 29th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Game mechanics are to interactivity, as plot is to narrative: they create linearity.
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:34 am
Post reading: Game mechanics designed to impede progress are something I’d like to see game designers shy away from because they only do just that: Impede progress. Games are supposed to be fun and being slowed down is not fun. Plus, for all the grind and toil of overcoming these punitive challenges, what reward is there? Progression, which can be a momentary victory, but why defeat an exceedingly difficult baddy/obstacle only to be pitted against a bunch of other little baddies/obstacles? The toil/reward scheme is completely unbalanced.
And all too often when the developers implement a mechanic that does balance out for the gamers, they get all excited about it, taut it as the game’s glistening moment, and then it only pops up a few times in gameplay.
Plus, punitive mechanics perpetuates the “but I might need it later” syndrome where in the fun to use skills/guns/whatever are kept back for fear of pulling out all the stops lest there be an even MORE punitive mechanic lurking around the corner.
In summation, its an issue of design and balance and like I said in my first post, its a question of “Is it worth it?”