{"id":90,"date":"2004-06-29T10:43:42","date_gmt":"2004-06-29T08:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesperjuul.dk\/ludologist\/?p=90"},"modified":"2004-06-29T10:43:42","modified_gmt":"2004-06-29T08:43:42","slug":"mechanics-dynamics-aesthetics-the-whole-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2004\/06\/29\/mechanics-dynamics-aesthetics-the-whole-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Mechanics – Dynamics – Aesthetics, the whole thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robin Hunicke recently posted<\/a> the Mechanics – Dynamics – Aesthetics: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research paper<\/a> that was used as part of the game tuning workshop at GDC. It’s a co-authored thing by Robin herself, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek.<\/p>\n

It’s a very precise description of a few of the most basic issues with games: The relation between the rules of the game [mechanics] and what actually happens [dynamics] (sometimes even referred to as emergence), and the experience of the player [aesthetics].
\nThis is the kind of thing that people (myself included) have often gotten tangled into – are games open or closed<\/a>? Is a game even interactive<\/a>? Why talk about the game itself when games are really experiences<\/a>? … and so on.
\nThe MDA framework is a pretty good way of escaping such problems:<\/p>\n

Mechanics <\/em>describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms.
\nDynamics <\/em>describes the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each others’ outputs over time.
\nAesthetics <\/em>describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Short and sweet.<\/p>\n

P.S. Ever the ingrate, I do miss two things in the paper: 1) It’s very system-oriented – it would be nice to see how the mechanics connect to fiction. 2) The paper describes the player and the designer as working from opposite ends – the designer creates mechanics that lead to dynamics that lead to aeshetics, the player works the other way. I think the player experiences the game a bit more like a multi-layered package of mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics – the aesthetic experience can even arise from watching the relation between the mechanics and the dynamics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robin Hunicke recently posted the Mechanics – Dynamics – Aesthetics: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research paper that was used as part of the game tuning workshop at GDC. It’s a co-authored thing by Robin herself, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek. It’s a very precise description of a few of the most … Continue reading “Mechanics – Dynamics – Aesthetics, the whole thing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}