Are Game Mechanics Assumed or Extrapolated?
Are Game Mechanics Assumed or Extrapolated?
Are Game Mechanics Assumed or Extrapolated?
By Kevin Hassall
Summary
A key point is going to come when a player's King is defeated, but again we can assume that we know what happens then: when a medieval king dies, the eldest son inherits, so what we will do in this game is to say that when a King token is lost then on the next turn the eldest Prince is upgraded to become the King.
This is a problem, because if we are creating a game which claims to somehow depict a reality then if we aren't consciously deriving the game's mechanics from that reality then our games suffer.
Now, in comparison with our assumed medieval game above, we could take a real medieval society, and consciously derive out core mechanics from that.
We have selected a society with such an unfamiliar set of assumptions around dynasty and inheritance, that of course the game mechanics to reflect that will be different.
Whether it is a 4x PC strategy game or a worker-placement board game, people will often start constructing the game based on existing mechanics, rather than focusing first of all on the subject.
There may be more elegant or interesting mechanics to be derived from those systems of inheritance, but the examples above do, hopefully, make the point: looking at messy historical realities drives us, as game designers, to imagine more interesting challenges for our players, and then prompts the players to think beyond the easy assumptions that we all naturally make.
There is nothing magical or unique about the societies that we chose to explore: any setting, present or historical, should yield unique elements which, if we choose to push ourselves and our players beyond our assumptions, allow us to construct fresh game mechanics and to look at the world anew.
Reference
Hassall, K. (2022, May 04). Are game mechanics assumed or extrapolated? Retrieved May 10, 2022, from https://ludogogy.co.uk/are-game-mechanics-assumed-or-extrapolated/
Tag
Game mechanics, creating, reality, core mechanics, strategy, board game, news