The Two Schools of Game Design

Over the years, with my work at Game-Wisdom, and through studying for the books I’ve written on game design, I have covered a lot of ground in terms of game design philosophy. In this piece, I’m going to go right back to basics and discuss how every game ever made falls into one of two broad schools of game design. <h1>Mechanical gameplay</h1> This term is best used to describe a more curated game experience — where the developer wants the player to experience a specifically-crafted event or handle a particular challenge. Older video games — especially early console and arcade titles — were more strictly centered around the idea of mechanical gameplay design. Classic games would frequently make use of event triggers and timers in order to make sure that everything would happen the same way every time. In the past I’ve spoken about “Kaizo” games (“Kaizo” literally meaning “Rebuilt” in Japanese), and how these are examples of mechanical gameplay taken to the extreme. But what I haven’t yet touched on is how this trend still exists in modern titles; albeit in smaller doses. Whenever you come across a scripted event or a situation with a fixed outcome, this would be an example of mechanical gameplay. Many triple-A games today feature bombastic set pieces — the Tomb Raider or Uncharted series, for example — where everything is happening around the player, and all they are doing (in terms of mechanics) is moving forward and jumping. <a href="https://medium.com/super-jump/the-two-schools-of-game-design-25420aa65373">Visit Now</a>