Week 4 Reading Notes - MDA (formal approach to Games Design)

Hunicke et al (2004) describe games as 'systems that build behaviour via interaction'

From your reading of the article, how does this system work and what kinds of controls does the games designer have at their disposal?

MDA framework:

Mechanics: The components of the game, data representation, play location, dice, rules of the game. When playing a digital game, the player will never need to understand these mechanics, they can play the game and never see what happens behind the scenes. However, when they are playing a board game, they have to understand the rules and mechanics or they won't be able to get the game in motion.

Dynamics: What happens when you interact with the game, such as how the rules might interact with each other -> choices. How the board interacts with the player. For example, you can choose how much money you want to put in during a round of Texas hold em poker, you can play how you like.

Aesthetics: It's what the player sees in most cases, but in gaming it means what the player sees and how they feel whilst playing the game. Emotional responses to their interactions (Emotional Interactions during gameplay). Games can make us feel a vast majority of strong emotions, sometimes for the better and for a lot of the time for worst.

My Thoughts:

I think this formal approach is a very good start for Games Designers, and I think if implemented correctly, can really help one understand how the players are interacting with their game. 

Working from the bottom and then up, it allows the designer to ask "I want my players to feel scared, what should I do?", and then from there, they can work on the dynamics needed to create a sense of fear in their game, followed by the mechanics to create these dynamics.