Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
n
Tactical maneuvering.
Games can have mechanics that deal with the placement
of game units on a map for offensive or defensive advantages. Tactical maneuvering
is critical in most strategy games but also features in some role-playing and simula-
tion games. The mechanics that govern tactical maneuvering typically specify what
strategic advantages each type of unit may gain from being in each possible location.
Many games restrict the location of units to discrete tiles, as is the case for a classic
board game like chess. Even modern strategy games played on the computer often
implement tiles, although they do a good job of hiding them behind a detailed
visual layer. Tactical maneuvering appears in many board games such as chess and
Go but also in computer strategy games such as
StarCraft
or
Command & Conquer:
Red Alert.
n
Social interaction.
Until recently, most video games did not govern social inter-
action among the players, apart from prohibiting collusion or requiring that players
keep certain knowledge secret. Now, however, many online games include mechan-
ics that reward giving gifts, inviting new friends to join, and participating in other
social interactions. In addition, role-playing games might have rules that govern
the play-acting of a character, and a strategy game might include rules that govern
the forming and breaking of alliances between players. Board games and folk games
played by children have a longer history of game mechanisms that guide the inter-
actions among players.
Mechanics and Game Genres
The game industry categorizes games into genres based on the type of gameplay the
game offers. Some games derive their gameplay mostly from their economy, others
from physics, level progression, tactical maneuvering, or social dynamics. Because
the gameplay is generated by the mechanics, it follows that the genre of a game
has a significant effect on the kinds of rules it implements.
Table 1.1
shows a typi-
cal game classification scheme and how these genres and their associated gameplay
relate to different types of mechanics. The game genres in the table are taken from
Fundamentals of Game Design, Second Edition
and correlate to the five different types
of game rules or structures. The thickness of the outlines indicates relative impor-
tance of those types of rules for most games in that genre.
