We are finally ready to learn about the most exciting creative challenge for game designers: creating the gameplay.
There are many formal definitions of what gameplay is and what it means, and we can say the same about mechanics. Our goal with this book is not to try to give new definitions. We want to stay practical, therefore we'll go with the most intuitive definitions and leave it to you to discover all the studies and implications of those words. For the sake of simplicity, by gameplay, we mean how all the mechanics of your game contribute to creating the final experience played by the players.
We're going to have a quick look at more specific definitions of what game mechanics are later in this chapter. Again, we're going to learn from other game designers and scholars who have already done an excellent job on this, with no pretense...
