MDA - A Formal Approach to Game Design

MDA, or mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics, is an attempt at creating a formal approach to video game design and game research, penned by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek (and run on sentence). It is designed to help bridge the gap between game design and development, game
criticism, and technical game research, as well as help "clarify and strengthen the iterative
processes of developers, scholars and researchers alike, making it easier for all parties to decompose, study and design a broad class of game designs and game artifacts."

To begin, we must understand MDA.

• Mechanics - The particular components of a game
• Dynamics - Run time behaviour of mechanics, acting on player inputs and other dynamic outputs
• Aesthetics -Describes desirable emotional response evoked

This MDA framework formalizes video game consumption, which is necessary because of the difference between games and other entertainment (books, music, movies): game consumption is relatively unpredictable. The string of events that occur during gameplay and the outcome of
those events are unknown at the time the product is finished. MDA breaks games down into their distinct components and matching them to their deign counterpart.

Fundamental to this framework is the idea that games are more like artifacts than media. By this they mean that the content of a game is its behavior and not the media that streams out of it towards the player.

Thinking about games as designed artifacts helps to frame them as systems that build behavior via interaction. "It supports clearer design choices and analysis at all levels of study and development."

MDA as a Lens

Each aspect of MDA framework can be seen as it's own viewpoint, or lens. It is important to consider this, as a designer, as a player will almost always have an opposite viewpoint to you.

It is helpful to consider both the designer and player perspectives. It helps us observe how even small changes in one layer can cascade into others. In addition, thinking about the player encourages experience-driven (as opposed to feature-driven) design.


The article goes on to have a very in-depth look at aesthetics, dynamics before finishing with mechanics. It was a highly useful and informative piece, and I have a feeling it will come back to haunt me in every piece of work I do on this course.To be honest I couldn't think of a better article to help me.

As a final note, a very useful resource I have used for years now is Extra Credits, an online show which attempts to formally discuss games and help games designers both green and veteran. They happen to have an episode relating directly to this topic which may be worth a watch for someone looking to supplement their knowledge.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/aesthetics-of-play