Overall
The fundamental of the theory is that GAMES are more like artifacts than media. That is to say, the content of a game is its behavior, not the media that streams out of it towards the player. Giving the fundamental, it is more natrual to regard games as systems that build behavior via interactions.
Games, like other goods, are purchased, used and then cast away. However, there is a huge difference between games and other goods. That is, game's consumption is unpredictable, since the string of events that occur during gameplay and the outcome of those events are unknown at the time the product is finished.
The relationship between players and designers is like:
Players ==consume==> GAMES <==design== Designers
The consumption part can be regarded as 3 orderly distinct elements:
Rules ==> Systems ==> "Fun"
And the design part is constructed in the same way:
Mechanics => Dynamics => Aesthetics
Rules and Mechanics are just 2 faces of the same thing and this is also true for Systems and Dynamics, "Fun" and Aesthetics.
Two directions to understand
Each component of MDA can be thought of as a view of the game, separated but causally linked:
- From the designer's perspective, the mechanics lead to dynamic system behavior, which results particular aesthetic experiences
- From the player's perspective, aesthetic set the tone, which is out of observable dynamics and eventually operable mechanics
I personally think there is no need to differentiate designer's perspective and player's perspective. When we, as designers, are working with games, we think both sides intuitively.
Background info before Aesthetics part
Since players encourage experience-driven design, this article begins with the investigation of aesthetics. However, before that, some background information was needed to mention. As we said before, the end of consumption of game is "Fun" which can be thought as the final goal of aesthetics, though in both perspectives "Fun" is so vague.
To talk about the aesthetics of a game, we have to dissolve "Fun" into more direct vocabularies. Here, I will introduce a method about game classification as a patch to the original MDA essay. The method points out 12 motivations making games fun in 6 categories:
- Action
- Destruction
- Excitement
- Social
- Competition
- Community
- Mastery
- Challenge
- Strategy
- Achievement
- Completion
- Power
- Immersion
- Fantasy
- Story
- Creativity
- Design
- Discovery
The above are 12 kinds of "Fun"s that can be embedded in different games. For instance, The Sims series and Final Fantasy series can both be fun but fun in their own right. Even though we haven't discovered an universal formula to produce fun certainly, those 12 aesthetic goals help us to describe games and their Aesthetics.
For more information about the exact definition of those "Fun"s, I may upload another article to talk about it casually.
Aesthetic Models
Aesthetics in MDA is desired experiential results of gameplay. It describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when s/he interacts with the game system. Using those 12 motivations (above), we can now define Aesthetic Models. For example, CS: GO or PUBG are in the competition category. Players in each game are emotionally invested in defeating adversaries.
Thus, obviously, to achieve this kind of fun in competition, it is essential to support adversarial play and clarify the winning condition. In other words, If the player doesn’t see a clear winning condition, or feels like they can’t possibly win, the game is suddenly a lot less interesting.
Should notice that the above example is very simplified. In real situation, a game can fall into many categories at the same time with various levels. But I still think the simple example is clear enough for the idea of building an Aesthetic Model for both players and designers.
Dynamic Models
Dynamics is the overarching (dominating) design goals. It describes the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each others’ outputs over time.
Dynamics work to create aesthetic experiences (or aesthetic fun). For example, to make people feel challenge (1/12), the designer can add a racing feature in the game. Following the aesthetics we desire to achieve above, developing models that predict and describe gameplay dynamics can help us avoid some common design pitfalls.
There are some very common Dynamic Models I've found in my game life:
- Area Controlling: GO, Splatoon, "King of the Hill" mode...
- Predicting or Guessing: "Scissors, paper, rock", Poker...
- Spatial Imagination: Tetris...
- Surviving: Minecraft, 7 Days to Die...
- Destroying: so many...
- Building: Minecraft, Sims series, character buildings in RPG...
- Collecting: THIS IS JUST HUMAN NATURE
- Chasing or Dodging: sport games, Pac-Man...
- Exchanging or Trading: Pokemon series, Animal Crossing series...
- Racing: including speed of transportation and even speed of finishing something...
- ...
Mechanics
Mechanics are base mechanisms of game system. It describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms.
Mechanics are the various actions, behaviors and controll mechanisms that player can use within a game context. With the game context, mechanics can support overall gameplay dynamics.
Adjusting the mechanics of a game helps us fine-tune the game's overall dynamics. But designers should notice that mechanics may automatically produce some undesired dynamics. For instance, a card game often has mechanics like shuffling, trick-taking and betting. When those mechanics were introduced in, however, dynamics like bluffing may automatically emerge when multiple players are in. Therefore, a designer should take care of every mechanics s/he introducing in the game to maintain his ideal dynamics and thus the intended aesthetics. Moreover, a designer should notice that the same dynamics may be achieved by different mechanics.
Tuning
After stereotyping a game, we should do testing and tuning to iteratively refine each part of the game, especially the mechanics, such as how much number should be added to a variable.
In tuning phase, our Aesthetic Model and Dynamic Model will be the lighthouse:
- The Aesthetic Models help us articulate design goals, discuss game flaws, and measure our progress as we tune
- The Dynamic Models help us pinpoint where problems may be coming from
Conclusion
MDA supports a formal, iterative approach to design and tuning. Using the MDA framework, we can reason explicitly about aesthetic goals, draw out dynamics that support those goals, then scope the range of our mechanics accordingly, and anticipate how changes will impact each aspect of the framework and the resulting designs/implementations.
By moving between MDA’s three levels of abstraction, we can conceptualize the dynamic behavior of game systems. Understanding games as dynamic systems helps us develop techniques for iterative design and improvement – allowing us to control for undesired outcomes, and tune for desired behavior.
In addition, by understanding how formal decisions about gameplay impact the end user experience, we are able to better decompose that experience and use it to fuel new designs, research and criticism respectively.