State-of-the-Art: Design of the Semantics Acquisition Games - Semantic Acquisition Games: Harnessing Manpower for Creating Semantics - page 94

other problems (e.g. cold start issues) which we cover later. Nevertheless, Ahn and
Dabbish left us with a far most “complete” attempt for SAG design methodology?
7.1.3 Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics
If there is an ambition of creating a SAG design methodology, how is it with “com-
mon” games design methodologies? One attempt to formulate a formal framework
for game design was made by Hunicke et al. and is called Mechanics Dynamics and
Aesthetics (MDA). It looks at the games from perspectives of three different layers
of abstraction [ 10 ]:
1. Aesthetics. The authors state that the game design should be entertainment driven,
and the most abstract layer, the aesthetics describe what emotion would generate
the fun (e.g. competition, discovery, self-challenge).
2. Dynamics. Contains concepts of how the aesthetics will be realized. It determines
what features the game will have (e.g. mercantile system, destruction system,
player possessing virtual things, avatar).
3. Mechanics. These are the atomic actions of the game that realize the dynamics
(shuffling the cards, obstacles on the road, avatar visual properties).
When designing a game, the designer goes simply top-down: he firstly designs the
aesthetics level, then dynamics and lastlymechanics. The proposed frameworkmakes
sense, but is also very abstract. Its formal model can potentially be used to describe
a game, but it cannot guide during the design process in sufficient details.
7.1.4 Design Lenses
Some researchers argue that in classical computer game design or game design in
general, there is no existing holistic design methodology yet. Jesse Schell expresses
this in his book The art of game design: the topic of lenses almost anecdotally: there
is not even an universally accepted definition of a game, how can a methodology for
its creation exist then [ 16 ]? Accepting that, how can we possibly hope for an SAG
design methodology, which would definitely need to satisfy even more requirements
than regular game design methodology.
As Schell continues, he tells us that the situation is not that grim. We just do not
have an universal recipe for making a game—no “algorithm-like” solution which
would make design decisions for us. Mainly because of this, the game design is
considered not only as engineering challenge, but also as art.
Instead of a recipe, Schell suggests we should use a set of recommendations for
designing a good game, because these we are able to formulate. He proposes a wide
set (a hundred) of such recommendations called lenses . Each of his lenses focuses
on one specific aspect of a game design, stating what conditions should a good game