Reading - Games MDA

 MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research

Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics, these principles help bridge the divide between game developers and game designers by making everyone on a team think about how their efforts affect the game, so that there are no clashing design choices, parts of a game featuring certain mechanics which don't fit the rest of the game, overall to keep a whole game grounded so that all developers and designers work flows together properly to create a functional and aesthetically pleasing game.

A games mechanics are the behind the scenes, functional parts of a game which players generally don't get to see, the games internal data and algorithms.

A games Dynamics are the players interactions with the game world and how the game world in turn , reacts to the players inputs.

A games Aesthetics is how the game makes a player feel as they go through the game as well as the look and design of the game.

 Design, Dynamics & Experience (DDE) for Game design

The MDA framework has been put into question as it does not fit with all kinds of games, namely those that are narrative based designs and narrative design does not fit into mechanics, dynamics or aesthetics.

There are a lot of conflicting arguments for why the MDA framework does not work for plenty of games, but it seems there is not a one size fits all system that has yet been created by any academic, although there does seem to be a broad understanding that each layer of a games design affects the other in some way, but some still argue that mechanics directly affect a games aesthetics while others believe that each part of a game is interconnected and making a slight change to any part of a game will have some kind of affect down the line in another part. There is no clear right or wrong answer and it seems all the frameworks to explain this kind of design method are just theoretical or placeholders for something more permanent, even though they do seem to agree on many basic fundamentals.

Explaining the MDA Design Framework | Video Game Design

When designing a game it is important to look at older games as examples and analyse them to see what made that game good or bad, what made that game "that game", what was unique about it.

By mixing and combining a games mechanics it is possible for players to create a new kind of dynamic in the game the developer may have not intended.

Using the MDA framework , designers can only affect a games mechanics so they must try to see ahead and consider how their mechanics will create the games dynamics , which will in turn generate the games aesthetic.