Game mechanics

Game mechanics

Game mechanics are a construct of elements and rules intended to produce an enjoyable game, such as

Turns: a segment of the game set aside for certain actions to happen before moving on to the next turn
Action points: what players may do on their turns is influenced by a budget of “action points” they get.
Bidding: players make competitive bids to determine who may perform particular actions
Capture/Eliminate: the number of tokens a player owns is related to his current strength in the game
Movement: governs how tokens are allowed to move, and when

Gaming-specific(?) guidelines

Game Mechanics should feel natural and have correct weight (Desurvire 2004)
Game should react in a consistent, challenging, and exciting way to the player’s actions, e.g., have appropriate music with the action (Desurvire 2004)
Make effects of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) clearly visible to the player by ensuring they are consistent with the player’s reasonable expectations of the AI actor (Desurvire 2004)

Instantiations of more general HCI guidelines

Feedback should be given immediately to display user control (Bickford 1997, Malone 1982, Sanchez-Crespo 1999)
Get the player involved quickly and easily (Bickford, 1997)
Mechanics/controller actions have consistently mapped and learnable responses (Desurvire 2004)
Shorten the learning curve by following the trends set by the gaming industry to meet users' expectations (Desurvire 2004)
Controls should be intuitive and mapped in a natural way. They should be customizable and default to industry standard settings. They should be basic enough to learn quickly yet expandable for advanced options (Desurvire 2004)