The basic elements of a game: game mechanic, story, aesthetics, and technology. From most to least visible, they are aesthetics, mechanics & story, and technology. The left-brained elements are technology & mechanics, while the right-brained elements are story & aesthetics. None are more important than the others, but each powerfully influences each of the others and the player's experience.
(The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008. Page 42)
Game Design: The Lens of the Elemental Tetrad
Take stock of what your game is truly made of. Consider each element separately, and then all of them together as a whole.
- Is my game design using elements of all four types?
- Could my design by improved by enhancing elements in one or more of the categories?
- Are the four elements in harmony, reinforcing each other, and working together toward a common theme?
(The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008. Page 43)
Example - Space Invaders
- Technology: The first videogame that allowed a player to fight an advancing army. An entirely new set of gameplay mechanics was made possible with the custom motherboard created for it.
- Mechanics: The mechanic was new, interesting, and well-balanced. Players can shoot at advancing aliens that shoot back at him, the player can hide behind shields that the aliens can destroy, the nearest aliens are worth the fewest points while distant aliens are worth more points, the aliens' speed increases as more are destroyed to build excitement, and there are bonus points available for shooting a mysterious flying saucer. There is no need for a time limit since games can end two ways: the player's ships destroyed by alien bombs or the advancing aliens eventually reach the player's home planet.
- Story: The story makes the game more exciting and easier to understand. The story was originally firing upon advancing human soldiers, but Taito changed it, allegedly due to a bad message. This is convenient because several war games had already been released (like Sea Wolf, 1976) so a space battle was novel at the time, violence is controversial (Death Race, 1976 made violence in videogames a sensitive issue), and the high tech computer graphics lent themselves well to a game with a futuristic theme. The story of aliens approaching downwards allows for a dramatic camera perspective.
- Aesthetics: The aliens are not all identical: three different designs, worth different amounts of points, each performing a simple two-frame "marching" animation. Since the player was confined to the bottom, the aliens to the middle, and the saucer to the top, colored strips of translucent plastic were glued to the screen so that your ship and shields were green, the aliens were white, and the saucer was red. The marching invaders made a heartbeat noise which sped up as the aliens sped up, having a visceral effect on the player. When hit, there was a punishing, buzzing crunch noise when the ship is hit with an alien missile. The cabinet for Space Invaders had a design that was attractive and eye-catching that helped tell the story of the evil alien invaders.
(The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008. Page 44-45)