Too often do I find myself playing a game that hasn’t been thoroughly thought out. The whole experience, from the time I enter the game and see the main menu, through the main game, to the end screen, has no meaning or I can see the meaning the designer was going for fall flat in his execution. It leaves me empty. These are the types of game that, once you get through to the credits, will not be remembered. I will probably not share this game with anyone (other than to get some laughs), and the game will not be handed on to new players that could enjoy the experience. It is not memorable, it lacks a message.
I feel like it is very possible to play through many games in a certain genre, and have each one be a very different experience. Even though all these game have a common element (be it the perspective, style of play, etc), they all have a different meaning and the player gets a distinct feedback from them. I have played many, many (that was an understatement) side-scrollers, for example, but every time I pick up a Konjak game I know it will be a very different experience than if I was playing a Jonathan Blow game. Even though I am just pressing buttons to get my character to perform actions on the screen, the message (visual, audio and gameplay feedback) that the game gives back to me is very different: one I am trying to destroy all the enemies before they get to hurt my player, and in the other I am trying to bend time and solve a puzzle.
What marks the difference between these games? How can we quantify the feedback a game gives us? This is what I call the “message” of the game. The reason why we do things, the feedback the game gives and the way we are going to feel after we have taken an action. We recently attended a talk entitled “Games as Art and What to do About it” by Randy Smith at the Montreal International Game Summit, and apart from giving me a superb vision of how the industry is being limited and where we should lead our efforts to change it, I learned something very important:
© Randy Smith, MIGS 2008
The elements here are:
- Mechanics: describe the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms.
- Dynamics: describe the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each other’s outputs over time.
- Aesthetics: describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system.
What does this mean? Citing Randy Smith’s example: imagine you have a game where the player gets attacked by packs of enemies and each of these packs has a leader. One Mechanic could be that once the leader dies, the rest of the pack scatters. The Dynamic would be that the player tries to take out the leader first to disband the group. The resulting Aesthetic or meaning that the game gives is that the player feels like he is a calculating hunter trying to identify and take out the leader in a quick surgical strike.
However, what if we want to change this message, the aesthetic of the game, to reflect something else? Say we change the mechanic to be that the leader is not distinguishable from the rest of the pack. What would be the underlying aesthetic to the player? Since the player cannot recognize which one of the enemies is the leader, he might feel like he flails is desperation, and when he eliminates the leader, he feels a flood of relief.
This is a very simple example of how a well thought out mechanic can induce a particular dynamic to give the player a certain aesthetic.
Defining the MDA Process
This approach to game design, coined MDA (for “mechanic, dynamic and aesthetic”) was first introduced at the GDC as one of the Game Design and Tuning Workshops and is formally explained in the article entitled “MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research” by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek. It is a great read for anybody interested in game design and how the designers can fine tune the player experience with this simple model.
From here on, when we design games, after we have had the chance to explore all our creativity and brought all the great game ideas to the table for a new game, I think it is a designer’s responsibility to ensure that the play experience he has imagined in his head gets properly transmitted to the game. If there is player death in your game, how is the player going to get punished for it and how will it affect the player’s feel for the game? If the game has enemies, what must the player feel when he sees them: does he feel scared because failing to defeat them would result in a huge loss (XP, gold, etc), or does he feel empowered because he gets to try his new weapons? All these experiences must be in the designer’s plan to create the interactive medium.
The MDA method for designing player experience, or aesthetics, is a very interesting approach to something so embedded in video games, and is something more developers should give thought to. I certainly try to tailor my gameplay experience to the message I want to give, and invite all readers to do the same.
Good article.
Made me look at games in a way that I haven’t before.