Better Games Use Fewer Mechanics?
By Shawn on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 8:46 AM PST In Game Companies, Gamer Life, Games, Games Industry
Programmer John Rose has a mantra: Mechanics get in the way of games, so fewer mechanics should equal better gameplay.
Fundamentally I think he’s right, but just to illustrate his perspective, Rose has authored an interesting piece over on Gamasutra about this dynamic highlighting some of the esoteric qualities of game design like aesthetics and perceived player choice.
We like to imagine that our audience will invest countless hours in our games. We hope that they will pop in the game over and over, playthrough after playthrough, just trying to devour every piece of content. And every game has its own set of die-hard fans that do just that.
But realistically, these devoted players make up a small portion of any game’s audience.
Rose espouses that while mechanics are the core of gameplay too often developers throw in unneeded or overly complex mechanics that draw players away from or fail to add to a games core experience. He suggests that game designers stop looking at systems and mechanics as a solution and pay just as much attention to streamlining these factors of gameplay as they do optimizing the art and story aspects until simplicity is achieved.
via “Fewer Mechanics, Better Games” @ Gamasutra.com
Actually, games with fewer necessary mechanics make better games. I want the ability to craft stuff, I just don’t wanna have to.
I disagree. Mechanics need to be more organic and natural and, most of all, intuitive. Rather than follow some weird function where y = no point where gamers are left to figure out this mysterious zone between x and y where this action is profitable, if games didn’t rely on such steep, leveled mechanics, it might be easier to jump in and play, as even if someone is doing it “wrong”, according to the game developer, the player could still be doing it in a way they find fun.
Games are about interesting choices. If the mechanics make one choice a no-duh option, then the choice, and thus, the interesting part, is gone.
Though, there is something to be said for fewer unnecessary game mechanics. A prime example of unnecessary mechanics is Dark Cloud, where there exist buttons in a dungeon that forces the player to switch to a character just to progress in the dungeon. There is no challenge to be had of any sort, it’s quite literally a hoop for the player to jump through like a trained dog.