Gameplay Design

To understand what a game mechanic is, first it’s important to be familiar with another term important to video games: gameplay.

While it can vary depending on who you ask, gameplay is essentially how the player interacts with the game.

• When you think about a game’s rules, plot, objectives, challenges, and how the player is meant to interact with them, you’re thinking about the gameplay.
• Game mechanics help provide gameplay by providing a construct of methods or rules designed for the player to interact with.
• A good user interface is often more important than that of a good user interface of a website or piece of software, since a game is often played in real-time, meaning that the longer a user needs to think about how to perform an action, the more costly it can be to the player.

• There are several things a user interface for a game must be:
  • It needs to be easy to use
  • It needs to remain consistent throughout the game
  • It needs to fit the narrative/theme of the game
• Some game genres have similar user interfaces throughout different games.

• Turns

• Action points

• Auction or bidding

• Cards

• Capture/eliminate

• Catch-up

• Dice

• Movement

• Resource management

• Risk and reward

• Role-playing

• Tile-laying

• Worker placement

• Game modes

• Goals

• Quest

• Loss avoidance

• Piece elimination

• Puzzle solving

• Races

• Structure building

• Territory control

• Victory points

• Combination conditions

1. Rotation system: Where the blocks spawn, in what position they spawn, how they rotate, and their wall kick (their position when you try to rotate on the edge).

2. Randomizers: The order/sequence in which the block types spawn.

3. Scoring Systems: The points you get for line clears, including back-to-back lines, combos, T-spins, etc.

4. Mobility: The player’s ability to manipulate the blocks, including rotating, dropping, etc.

    

• Call of Duty on the other hand is a very complex game with a lot of complicated game mechanics.
  Some of these mechanics are very limited only to the COD games and do not appear frequently across video games.
  

Armory
Assault Strike Package
Ban and Protect
Black Ops Data Servers
Call of Duty game engine mechanics
Call of Duty: World at War/Ranks
Cheats
Civilian Extraction
Clan Tag
Combat Immersion
Damage Multiplier

Death Cards
Destructible Environment
Developer console
Dive to Prone
Division Skill
Divisions
Dog Tags
Double Feature
Exo Movements
Exoskeleton
Finishing Move
Fire mode

Firing Range (WWII)
Game Engine
Graphic Content Filter
Gunsmith
Headquarters (social)
Heads-up display
Headshots Only
Health system
Heroic Actions
Hitscan
Kill Counter
League Play
Leaning
Live streaming

Maps
Medical Kits
Melee
Minimap
Mounting
Non-Playable Character
Paintball Effects
Paintshop
Radiation Zone
Randomly generated soldiers
Recoil
Reserve Cases
Safe House
Scorestreak Training

Shellshock
Sliding
Specialist Strike Package
Specialists
Speed Reload
Spotting
Squad Abilities
Strike Chain
Super Sprint
Supply Credits
Supply Drop
Support Strike Package
Swimming
T-Mode

Tactical Rigs
Thrust Jump
Thrust Slide
Trigger
Vehicular Combat
Wall Running
War Room
Weapon Inspection
Weapon Kits
Weapon Level
Weapon Variant Stats
XP
Zero-Gravity