ICGAN 2025

Mechanics-as-Metaphor: dwelling with video game mechanics as emergent language of experience in the gaming socio-cultural ecosystem

Citations:

Bjork, Staffan, and Jussi Holopainen. “Patterns in Game Design.” ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236157130_Patterns_in_Game_Design. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

Hunicke, Robin, et al. “MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research.” Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Challenges in Game AI., vol. 4, no. 1, 2004.

Joyce, James. “Fuzzy Sets and the Study of Linguistics.” Pacific Coast Philology, vol. 11, 1976, pp. 39–42. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1316746.

Lo, Priscilla, et al. “What Is a Game Mechanic?” Entertainment Computing – ICEC 2021, vol. 13056, Springer International Publishing AG, 2021, pp. 336–47.

Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play : Game Design Fundamentals. MIT Press, 2003.

Sicart, Miguel. “Defining Game Mechanics.” Game Studies, vol. 8, no. 2, Dec. 2008. Game Studies, https://gamestudies.org/0802/articles/sicart?viewType=Print&view.

Wiens, Brianna I. Media Matrix Mapping: A Feminist Small Data Methodology for Digital Media Ecologies. Lexington Books, 2024. uwspace.uwaterloo.ca, https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/20459.

Wiens, Brianna I., and Shana MacDonald. Dwelling as Method: Lingering in/with Feminist Curated Data Sets on Instagram. 2024. uwspace.uwaterloo.ca, https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/20373.

Zadeh, L. A. “Fuzzy Sets.” Information and Control, vol. 8, no. 3, June 1965, pp. 338–53. ScienceDirect, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0019-9958(65)90241-X.

General Definitions & Presentation Outline:

Introduction & On Video Game Mechanics Definitions
- How do you define video game mechanics?
- Discussion of the state of video game definitions in the field, literature review by Lo et al.
- Gamer: This term is used to mean someone who may otherwise be called “an enculturated player:” someone who spends enough time playing games or consuming gaming-related content, including but not required, online gaming paratext and communities, to be considered a member of the gaming community. I recognize the contentious nature of this label as an identity, due to the toxic history of gaming culture, hence the more neutral “enculturated player.”
- Player: Player is used synonymously with the above-definition of gamer, and as an implied shorthand for enculturated player.
- (Video) Game Mechanics – For the majority of the presentation, “video game mechanics” as a term is used synonymously with game mechanics and simply, mechanics. In the literature, and in common use, this may also be conflated or used in conjunction with “gameplay.” While in my presentation I maintain the stance of not using one specific definition of video game mechanics, I do offer a loose definition that came out of my research thus far.

Mechanics are the point of interaction/interactivity with the game world. They can be passive (environmental, context-based, automated by computer, Boss encounters, etc.) or active (player-initiated).

Reddit Thread Analysis Preliminary Results: “What game mechanic needs to die?”
- Brief overview of how I selected the thread and approached its analysis, including initial division of yes (1) and no (0), and subsequent subdivision of minor categories based on the comments.
- Fuzzy Sets – “a term applied to a set of elements for which membership in the set is gradual rather than absolute.” (Joyce 39); at this time this is used conceptually to thematically consider different kinds of “mechanicness” as expressed by the commenters.
- Dwelling Methodology – a feminist methodology for analyzing small data sets, integrating Donna Haraway’s situated knowledges into an applicable research framework. Defined later in the presentation in my use case:

“…through small data…the interconnected domains of influence between individual spheres and their relationship to the collective and structural level” (Wiens 2) It emphasizes the significance of the “personal relationships we develop in a community as researchers…are significant to consider more fully through their emergent interetextualities.” (Wiens and MacDonald 1) Finally, it “…enables [me] to pay attention to…a digital space to understand how humans are embodied in intricate affective and material relationships,…” and signalling “…how digital artifacts circulate at the structural level of entanglement, considering the systemic factors that are present across the individual and the collective” (5, 7-8).

Game Mechanics as Experiential-Metaphorical Language
- Transition from discussion of Reddit interpretations of game mechanics to game mechanics as metaphorical language. Use of /r/Outside as an example of this in action, as an overarching theme of the site.

Who I am, what I’m doing, and why
- Positioning myself in this research via dwelling methodology (defined above) and within my history not only as an academic but as a “gamer,” including my history with gaming culture and writing about them.
- A call for considering mechanics from a different perspective, influenced by a nuanced lived experience gamer-driven approach, and what that could mean for understanding mechanics in the larger ecosystem of the human experience.