Designing Game Mechanics - Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design - page 4

prices of all the properties and the text of all the Chance and Community Chest
cards—in other words, everything that affects the operation of the game. Mechanics
need to be detailed enough for game programmers to turn them into code without
confusion; mechanics specify all the required details.
The term core mechanics is often used to indicate mechanics that are the most influ-
ential, affecting many aspects of a game and interacting with mechanics of lesser
importance, such as those that control only a single game element. For example,
the mechanics that implement gravity in a platform game are core mechanics; they
affect almost all moving objects in the game and interact with mechanics for jump-
ing or the mechanics that control damage to falling characters. On the other hand,
a mechanic that merely enables players to move items around in their inventories
would not be a core mechanic. The artificial intelligence routines that control the
behavior of autonomous non-player characters are also considered not core mechanics.
In video games, the core mechanics are mostly hidden, but players will learn to
understand them while playing. Expert players will deduce what the core mechan-
ics must be by watching the behavior of the game many times; they will learn
how to use a game's core mechanics to their advantage. The distinction between
core mechanics and non-core mechanics is not clear-cut; even for the same game,
interpretation of what is core and what is not can vary between designers or even
between different contexts within the game.
mechanic or mechanism
Game designers are perfectly comfortable talking about a game mechanic in the singular
form. They don't mean a person who repairs game engines! instead, they are referring to
a single game mechanism that governs a certain game element. in this topic, we prefer
to use mechanism as the singular form, indicating a single set of game rules associated
with a single game element or interaction. One such mechanism might include several
rules. For example, the mechanic of a moving platform in a side-scrolling platform game
might include the speed of the platform's movement, the fact that creatures can stand on
it, the fact that they are moved along with it when they do, and the fact that the platform's
velocity is reversed when it bounces into other game elements or perhaps after it has
traveled a particular distance.
Mechanics Are Media-Independent
The mechanics of a game can be implemented through many different media. In
the case of a board game, the mechanics are implemented through the medium of
the game's paraphernalia: board, counters, playing pieces, spinners, and so on. The
same game can also be published as a video game. In that case, the same mechanics
will be implemented in software, which is a different medium.