Games - Game mechanic

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	Games - Game mechanic

A game mechanic is a rule or set of rules intended to produce an enjoyable set of outcomes in a game. Complex games, such as role-playing games, are built using a large number of interlocking game mechanisms. The entirety of the game experience or set of game mechanics is called game play.

The interaction of the various game mechanics in a game determines the complexity and level of player interaction in the game. Designing a system of mechanics that interact well to produce a satisfying game is a challenging task, even for professional game designers. Some forms of game mechanic have been used in games for centuries, while others are relatively new, some having been invented within the past decade. The creation of new game mechanics, and ways in which existing ones can interact, is the ongoing goal of game designers.

Game mechanics fall into several more or less well-defined categories.

Game play mechanics

These are mechanics that control how the players play the game.

Action points

These control what players may do on their turns in the game by allocating each player a budget of action points each turn. These points may be spent performing various actions according to the game rules, such as moving pieces, drawing cards, collecting money, etc. This type of mechanic is common in many German-style board games.

Auction or bidding

Some games use an auction or bidding system in which the players make competitive bids to determine which player gets the right to perform particular actions. Such an auction can be based on different forms of "payment":

The winning bidder must pay for the won privilege with some form of game resource (game money, points, etc) (e.g.: RA).
The winning bidder does not pay upon winning the auction, but the auction is a form of promise that the winner will achieve some outcome in the near future. If this outcome is not achieved, the bidder pays some form of penalty. Such a system is used in many trick-taking games, such as contract bridge.

In some games the auction determines a unique player who gains the privilege; in others the auction orders all players into a sequence, often the sequence in which they take turns during the current round of game play.

Cards

These involve the use of cards similar to playing cards to act as a randomiser and/or to act as tokens to keep track of states in the game.

A common use is for a deck of cards to be shuffled and placed face down on or near the game playing area. When a random result is called for, a player draws a card and what is printed on the card determines the outcome of the result.

Another use of cards occurs when players draw cards and retain them for later use in the game, without revealing them to other players. When used in this fashion, cards form a game resource.

Capture

In some games, the number of tokens a player has on the playing surface is related to his current strength in the game. In such games, it can be an important goal to capture opponent's tokens, meaning to remove them from the playing surface.

Captures can be achieved in a number of ways:

Moving one of one's own tokens into a space occupied by an opposing token (e.g. chess).
Jumping a token over the space occupied by an opposing token (e.g. draughts).
Declaring an "attack" on an opposing token, and then determining the outcome of the attack, either in a deterministic way by the game rules, or by using a randomising method.
Surrounding a token with one's own tokens in some manner (e.g. go).
Playing cards or other resources that the game allows to be used to capture tokens.

In some games, captured tokens are simply removed and play no further part in the game (e.g. chess). In others, captured tokens are removed but can return to play later in the game under various rules (e.g. backgammon). Less common is the case in which the capturing player takes possession of the captured tokens and can use them himself later in the game (e.g. shogi).

Dice

These involve the use of dice, usually as randomisers. Most dice used in games are the standard cubical dice numbered from 1 to 6, but increasing numbers of games make use of polyhedral dice or dice marked with symbols other than numbers.

The most common use of dice is to randomly determine the outcome of an interection in a game. An example is a player rolling dice to determine how many board spaces to move a game token.

Dice also often determine the outcomes of in-game conflict between players, with different outcomes of the dice roll of different benefit (or adverse effect) to each player involved. This is useful in games that simulate direct conflicts of interest.

Movement

Many board games involve the movement of playing tokens. How these tokens are allowed to move, and when, is governed by movement mechanics.

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