Understanding Game Mechanics
In the next two chapters, we are going to learn about the most exciting creative challenge for game designers: creating the gameplay.
If you are wondering what gameplay actually means, here’s a warning for you: you will find many different definitions of gameplay, as well as game mechanics, dynamics, features, systems, fun, and every other game design term you can think of.
The trick is to understand that they are all valid, so our best advice is for you to read and learn as much as possible from all kinds of source material and adopt the definition that you like best. For the sake of simplicity, by gameplay, we mean how all the game mechanics in a game contribute to creating the final experience for the players.
In this chapter, we’re going to learn what a game mechanic is and how to use familiar game mechanics as a starting point to create your own, and we will develop a useful framework that, once mastered, will allow you to tackle...
