Games MDA

 Here are my learnings after my attempt of this weeks reading tasks.

MDA is a framework we can use when breaking down games that helps us establish what is good and about games and what makes people like them. MDA stands for Mechanics, Dynamics and Asthetics.

Mechanics: The mechanics of a game are the motions that happen within the game e.g running, Jumping, Swiping etc. Different games can have different dynamics e.g Subway surfers the main mechanics of the game are sliding left and right jumping and crouching. But it games like call of duty there are more mechanics like running sprinting crouching shooting looking at maps changing guns etc..

Dynamics: The Dynamics of the game are what happens when the mechanics are put to use. When mechanics are combined together to achieve an outcome. E.g. In the Call Of Duty games the mechanics of running jumping and shooting are all used together to shoot and kill an opponent. In this situation I believe killing the opponent would be the Dynamic.

Aesthetics: Just as the dynamics are an outcome of the mechanics we look at the dynamics in order to create the aesthetics.  the main goal of the aesthetics is to create an emotional response for the player this can be done with the help of a few subsections that make up the asthetics

  • Sensation - emotions evoked whilst playing
  • Fantasy - The world of the game 
  • Narrative - The story within the game
  • Challenge - Obstacles that must be overcome
  • Fellowship - The social aspect of the game involving team work
  • Discovery 
  • Expression 
  • Submission - The final outcome the satisfaction / Reward of completion

Here are links to 3 articles I enjoyed that have some more information on parts of the MDA framework.

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1781/principles_of_virtual_sensation.php?print=1

https://medium.com/super-jump/the-best-story-driven-games-ive-played-this-year-dd939fc64331

https://journals.ala.org/index.php/ltr/article/view/5630/6949

                                        https://www.pinterest.ie/pin/344736546469407822/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction Post

Image
 Hello my name is Daniel Jupe. I am 20 years old and in 2nd year of the Creative digital media course in TU Dublin. My Favourite part of last year was the studio photography module. I enjoyed this module the most because I learnt a lot about lighting and photography and it was the most enjoyable for me. To be entirely honest my goal for this module is just to pass. I haven't really got much interest in video games I will remain open minded going into this module but I can't imagine ill enjoy it that much so just a B or a C would do me. In My spare time when I'm not doing college work or working my job I like to go to the gym, listen to music /podcasts, go skating and surfing for the weekend whenever I get it off. I think my short term goal is to get through to 3rd year without any more repeats. in the longer run Id like to work with some company like red bull or some kind of production company to do photography and videography covering action sports, concerts and festivals....
Read more

Alpha

Image
 This week we continued the making of my game further. Continuing on from last week I was having an issue with my player whenever I tried to add a rigid body component it would fall through the terrain I fixed this by adding in a mesh collider. This week I spent my time getting the controls down on my game now whenever the game starts the board takes off and can now be navigated using the left and right arrow keys. I learnt how to do this from following previous unity tutorials.  with the player now able to navigate the course I added an if statement to the player controller script that enables the player to jump so now when the home button is pressed the player can jump in the air. I had to adjust the mass of the player in the rigid body because whenever I would jump the player would be suspended in the air for too long this would have caused problems later in the game because some obstacles in the game are meant to be cleared others are not.  So far I think I'm on track...
Read more

Game Prototype

Image
 This week we began by making our prototypes for our games. I was fortunate enough to already have most of the assets for my game already downloaded from the unity story. most fo the assets used will be from the first set of unity tutorials all I needed to outsource was a skateboard and a backdrop of some kind here are some screenshots of what I have put together so far The only one Im struggling to find is a sutible backdrop so if anyone who's reading this knows anything about designing backdrops in unity or where to source them from please drop a comment below all help is appreciated     once I have gotten my backdrop I will then begin my coding process.
Read more