How to Start Designing Games
By: Yvens Serpa
Tags: Game Development, UX, Prototyping, Gaming, Game Design

Aesthetics, Mechanics, Economy, and Narrative

From the various disciplines that a Game Designer can use to trigger CSF, 4 are usually the most significant in the early stages of designing: Aesthetics, Mechanics, Economy, and Narrative.

Aesthetics are the game's audiovisual elements, such as the soundtrack, sound effects, art style, and visual effects. Mechanics define how the player and game interact. Economy defines the relations between the elements, their properties, and balance within a game. The Narrative is how the game dialogues with the player, not necessarily through a story.

Stardew Valley Farm. Source: Yvens Serpa.

Take Stardew Valley as an example. Stardew Valley is an RPG-farm simulator in which players manage a farm while interacting with the townsfolk, animals, and other players (the latter in multi-player games).

The Aesthetics in Stardew Valley is a simple but pretty pixel art style. The game has no advanced rendering effects, which keeps the game's hardware requirements quite low (it is expected to run even on Windows Vista). The sounds and soundtrack are also minimalistic and mostly ambient, with background noises for the game's diverse biomes.

The Mechanics in Stardew Valley are vast. The single-player actions, such as mining, watering crops, planting seeds, gift-giving, and fighting monsters in the mines. The mechanics also include attending the Community Center's request, which requires the player to donate specific items. It also includes the mini-games, such as the Junimo Kart and the Journey of the Prairie King.

The Economy in Stardew Valley is complex. It encompasses the buying and selling items (crops, seeds, metal bars, etc.) to non-monetary resources, such as the friendship/romance relationship with the townsfolk. The economy also dictates how expensive a certain vegetable is and how much profit you can make by converting or trading it.

Finally, the Narrative in Stardew Valley is not intrinsically complex. The main story device is that we, as players, are taking care of our late grandfather's farm. There are not (clear) metaphors beyond the simple escapism and bucolic message of having a relaxed and happy time among animals and plants. The narrative also deals with the game's quests, dialogues, and each of the interesting villagers' backstory.

Starting the Game Design

Given the previous 4 elements, it is also common to see game design authors agreeing (to some extent) that the design process should start with the mechanics. More precisely, by prototyping and testing them.

As the player will spend most of the time performing the same mechanic, it must be fun on its own, regardless of the other aspects of the game.

Furthermore, a mechanic will be likely improved with the addition of other elements, such as aesthetics to give it life, economy to relate it to other objects, and narrative to give it context and meaning.

Mechanics are also flexible. They can be understood as different given a context, even though mechanically they are the same. For example, take the core mechanic of shooting in Firefighting Simulator, Splatoon, and Doom.

Firefighting Simulator, Splatoon, and Doom. Source: Yvens Serpa.

The three games have essentially the same base mechanics: aiming and shooting. But each one of them uses it with a completely different spin.

Heavy weapons, violence, and blood reign supreme in Doom, while the player mercilessly eliminates hordes of demons. The mechanic is meant to be empowering, violent, and gruesome.

Splatoon, on the other hand, is a competitive frenetic paintball experience, in which players cover each other and the level itself with their team's color to win. Even though the player still aims and shoot, the level of perceived violence is very low — low enough to be suggested as a game for young kids.

Alternatively, in Firefighting Simulator, the player controls a firefighter (hence the game's title) "shooting" water to prevent fires. There is no clear competition nor any sense of violence (unless the player can splash people off the streets with the water pressure, which I think is not a feature yet). Still, the core mechanic is the same: aiming and shooting.

By changing the aesthetics and narrative, the same mechanic can be perceived as completely different. As presented before, changing the "aiming and shooting" to look and feel like "aiming and watering," the game feels distinct. In terms of game development, this allows for a great range of creative freedom without compromising technical development.

At the same time, by altering aspects of the economy, the relationship between mechanics and the game change. For example, for the "aiming and watering" mechanic, the economy can determine "how strong the water can extinguish the fire" or "if aiming at specific positions can be more or less effective." These aspects further the strategy elements in the game without compromising the technical and audiovisual aspects.

Mechanics, Goals, and Prototypes

Creating a mechanic is a hard task, though. Even worse when we expect it to be fun and engaging. For that, there are different approaches, but surely no perfect one.

As seen earlier, the same mechanic in various games can be perceived as different. Thus, it is possible (I dare to say recommended) to copy other games' mechanics as an initial step while designing. Many games will share the same core mechanics but will feel different because of their context and economy. Besides, most games will have more than one mechanic, and the combination of mechanics will surely make the game unique.

Super Mario, Megaman, and Castlevania. Source: Yvens Serpa.

Super Mario Bros, Megaman, and Castlevania all share mechanics for walking and jumping, but they have their own individual mechanics besides unique visuals, sounds, and even gameplay. Hardly anyone would point to these games as copies from each other, although some might argue (correctly) that they share common references and inspirations.

As a game designer, it is possible to change an initial mechanic inspiration to make it feel new and unique. Changing the gravity for the jumping or only allowing the characters to move in certain patterns are small variations on the "walking and jumping" mechanic that might spark innovative gameplay experiences. And again, that will not make the game seem poor or uninspired because you "walk and jump" just like other games.

But, inevitably, these experiments need to be prototyped and tested to find out if they trigger CSF.

Build Simple, Build Fast, Build A Lot

The only way to find if a mechanic is fun is by testing it. Build it, as simple as possible, and test it. As stated before, if the mechanic is fun, it should work even with boxes and ugly sketches.

It is hard to stress enough how simple the mechanic needs to be implemented for the testing. Strip it down to its bare minimal aspects. The simpler it is, the easier it will be to increment or change it. Besides, if the mechanic is not fun, less time was spent making it (and it won't hurt that much to delete it).

Given the difficulty of creating new mechanics, it is even more important to focus on simplicity because it also allows for more variation. Hardly the first mechanic will work (trigger CSF). A game designer is likely to implement a dozen before finding a good candidate to carry the game on its shoulder.

Use the Mechanic to Win

Given the chosen mechanic, the game designer needs to define a goal to win the game. The goal is an important and mandatory aspect of games. As presented by Fullerton (2014), games are a rule-based system with a defined goal for one (or more) player(s) to win.

The goal also serves as a closure for the mechanic. It answers if the mechanic is appropriate, balanced, and feasible. Besides that, the goal allows for a planned complete prototype: a prototype that can be played until the end (victory or lose) condition. Without a proper end, it is hard to measure and assess the prototype. Notice, though, that this does not mean the end of a complete game (as in building all levels) or a fixed end (that the final game will necessarily finish at that point).