The Most Misunderstood Term in Gaming - Benjamin Horn | grokludo 30
Show me five gamers, and I'll show you five different definitions of the word "mechanic."
The term sounds precise, but isn't – which may cause problems as it finds its way into classrooms, courtrooms, and policy discussions. Everyone thinks they have a good handle on it, until they zoom in and discover we've had different meanings all along.
I've had the pleasure of seeing this phenomenon play out multiple times in the lead-up to this episode. Mentioning a discussion of "mechanics" invites definitions from friends. One explicitly allows for it to mean "resources." Another explicitly rejects that. In the wild, we see it used for anything from rules, to systems, to narrative elements, to genres, and more.
Benjamin Horn from the University of Hong Kong released a paper with four other academics, investigating the usefulness of a term with no agreed-upon meaning, and they point out that even the original MDA framework gives two vague definitions, that are perhaps even contradictory.
We discuss how we got to this place, in which all sides of the industry rely so heavily on a word that means nothing, and whether the word can be salvaged, or if it's time to abandon it altogether.
After his conference on "mechanics" as a term, Benjamin Horn had the exact same experience as I've had in the last couple of days. People approach and say "But of course mechanics means X," where X is the polar opposite of the last definition you heard.
Even among those who try to stick to the MDA framework's original meaning, it's remarkable how much we differ, and how much we lean on the term despite that.
This could be a fun experiment to run yourself. Ask your gamer friends, your developer friends, your academic friends, your industry friends... How many definitions can you uncover? Can you catch 'em all?
More importantly, what do we do with a word that is shown to be too vague for precise communication?
