On Game Design - Game Design Theory - page 24

art—whether painting, clothing, architecture, theater, or anything else—
should be no more complex than it needed to be. I feel that this is true for
all art, and that minimalism is almost a synonym for grace or elegance.
Good design is always minimalist: even if you're painting a picture of a
crowd, you should paint only as many strokes as are needed to express
that idea. Everything should contain as few words, strokes, gestures, or
rules as possible—that is design.
Keep in mind that minimalism doesn't mean a lack of ornamentation
or complexity. A game's rule book can be as thick as a phone book, as
long as it contains the fewest number of rules that make it possible for
you to express what's important about your game.
Although I believe the principle of minimalism applies to all arts, I
think that it may be even more applicable to games. As I mentioned in
Chapter 1 , playing a game is an art form. Game designers are providing a
way for players to express themselves, and in the same way a designer of a
guitar needs to consider ergonomics or the designer of a theater needs to
consider acoustics, game designers need to make sure that there are as few
obstacles as possible between players and their self expression. It's hard
enough trying to express yourself—we don't need to make it any harder.
Core Mechanism
When you start designing your game, you should begin with a core
mechanism . Often, you'll want this to be something rather simple—al-
most abstract. Examples of core mechanisms include jumping , bidding ,
deduction , pushing , or aiming .
A game design should always start with a core mechanism, and from
there you can figure out how many interesting interactions will sur-
round that mechanism. Ideally, every single thing that's inside the game
should be in direct support of the core mechanism—and anything that
has nothing to do with the core mechanism can probably be removed
from the game. Keep in mind that there are plenty of games whose core
mechanism isn't easily labeled, particularly some of the more interest-
ing abstract games. For instance, what's the core mechanism of Tetris ?
Is it placing ? Rotating ? Filling ? I can't really think of a specific word that
defines it, and it would even be hard to describe using a whole sentence.
Regardless, it's clear what the core mechanism of Tetris is and how it ties
into all the supporting mechanisms. Conversely, some games either have
no core mechanism or supporting mechanisms that have almost nothing
to do with the core mechanism. For example, what's the core mechanism
of the popular board game Cranium — rolling and moving ? What does
that have to do with answering trivia questions?