Way too many books and guides I read about game design read like an instructional manual on how to make a game.
"You should do this," "imagine your game as that," how to write code and think about player feedback. However I am finding
it incredibly hard to find places that say what game mechanics... are. Like - how does having one player play my game
change as opposed to having two players play my game? What about three? What impact does luck have on skill expression?
What do "table politics" actually create in a game? What makes a game "easy to pick up" from a mechanical perspective?
It is often said that if you cannot explain an idea to someone, it's likely you do not understand it that well yourself,
so in an effort to both improve my own understanding of game design and to give others like me an easy resource on game mechanics,
I decided to write this wiki about the mechanical aspect of game design.
All Pages:
Abstract Game: An Abstract Game is an abstract description of a game, which is used to analyze non-abstract games and their function.
Atom: An Atom is the smallest posssible unit of gameplay which is still considered "playing the game".
The Chip Taking Game: The Chip Taking Game is an abstract game which manifests in any many-player game which does not take action to prevent it.
A Deck of Cards: A Deck of Cards is a collection of cards that is used in games as a source of luck.
Downtime: Downtime is any time during the game where a given player is not playing.
Griefing: Griefing is the term for when a player sours a different player's experience for no in-game reward.
Kingmaking: Kingmaking is the term for situations when a player who cannot win can decide who does end up winning the game.
Luck: Luck is the name given to events with an unpredictable nature, such as arbitrarily selecting an outcome.
Many-Player Game: A Many-Player Game is a game with three or more competing factions.
Player Elimination: Player Elimination is the term for a collection of mechanics which remove a player's ability to participate in a match.
Poker: Poker is the collective name for a family of gambling games played with card decks.
Politics: Political games are games where players can target other arbitrary players and significantly affect their gamestate.
Race Game: Race Games are games where there is low or zero interaction between participants.
Slots: A Slot Machine Game is an abstract game involving the activation of a randomized mechanism.
Snakes and Ladders: Snakes and Ladders is a luck-based many-player race game.