Mechanically Identical, Aesthetically Different: Thinking about Game Feel in Table-Top Games

Perhaps there’s more ways to making an engaging game than only presenting the player with Sid Meier’s “a series of interesting decisions” (2012). Rather than only focussing on the attributes of skill and choice we could look at how the player experiences a game moment to moment. Consider the kinaesthetic pleasure of moving pieces and how illusions of choice can potentially be an effective tool in creating an experience for a game. This notion of ‘game feel’ is not new, it is already being explored in digital games, looking specifically at the way a game responds to a player’s input (Swink, 2008). However, there is still opportunity to further explore the concept within table-top gaming.

To understand a players experience we will utilise the MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics Aesthetic) approach (Hunike et al, 2004). Hunicke et al, discuss how the players of a game and the designer of that game experience it with different perspectives. Designers create rules, which are enacted, allowing the player to experience the game. Players experience the game through the system, which is created from the rules determined by the designer. However, the designer should also try to consider the perspective of the player in order to help create their game.

Therefore any mechanical change made in the game will have an effect on the aesthetic experience for the player. However, there is a subset of mechanical changes that only change the experience for the player and don’t affect the system of the game itself. For example, we could change the material of components, present choices in different ways or create an easier way for players to add up points without changing the system. In order to explore the effects of these changes a game where the mechanical adaptations only affect the players’ aesthetic experience and do not at all adjust the system of the game will be utilised.

By using a simple two-player game where the randomly selected highest card wins, providing the player with no meaningful choices, we will examine the possibility of ‘game feel’ for tabletop game design. This paper will look at material choice, rituals and actions, illusions of choice and simplification of design in order to explore and examine the notions of game feel in tabletop games. This will show the importance of mechanics that have a purely aesthetic effect on the player.

In the end, whatever one considers is required to make playing a game engaging, designing a game is certainly a series of interesting decisions.

References
Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M. and Zubek, R., 2004, July. MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research. In Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Challenges in Game AI (Vol. 4, No. 1, p. 1722).

Meier, S., 2012, March. Interesting decisions. In Game Developers Conference (Vol. 12).

Swink, S., 2008. Game feel: a game designer's guide to virtual sensation. CRC Press.