In my last blog post I mentioned that we will be using Machinations in designing the game mechanics for Party Animals. Just to summarize, everything in the game, from the districts, staffs, and events can be considered as a resource, and that the game facilitates the interaction of these resources with each other. I also described a basic node: Resource Pools, and two different types of connections: Resource connections and State connections. If you would like to learn this in detail check out the book Mechanics: Advanced Game Design by Ernest W. Adams and Joris Dormans
In this post I will
be going over the core game-play of Party Animals using Machinations while
introducing new nodes: converters and end
conditions. Also, this is not a step by step tutorial on how to use
Machinations, because the authors already did an excellent job right here. What
this post hopes to achieve is to show you how to think about game design using
Machinations by using Party Animals as an example.
One thing important
to know, Machinations is not only a tool
for modelling game mechanics, but also a framework for describing game design on different levels( high to low
level). I'll start by showing the game from a high level point of view, then describe mechanics in detail in succeeding
blog posts.
The Whole is the Sum of its Parts
Party Animals is a 'territory acquisition' game at its core.
The main objective of the player in the game is to get more reputation than his
opponent before the election, and he does this through various means like
campaigning, bribing, and participating in game events. Look at the diagram below:
More often than not, actions that give the player reputation also require that the player spend campaign resources. There are two important campaign resources in the game: gold and command points. I will not explain the specifics here but for the purpose of showing mechanics I reduced both resources into the resource Funds(see B in the diagram).
Another thing of
note is that the player can also spend funds on various actions like
rallying(raise voter concern on district issues), and gifting patrons(improve
patron relationship) which improves the efficiency of his campaign. By efficiency I mean getting more reputation
for the same(or less) amount of funds.
Now let's take a look at the different elements shown in the
diagram:
A. Fund Production - The triangle with an asterisk(A) is a source node. The source node
produces funds and the resource connection(arrow connecting node A to node B) stores the funds into the
players Fund pool(node B).
B. Fund Pool -
The circles in the diagram are called pools and they store resources, in this
case funds.
C. 'Get Reputation'
Converter - The sideways triangle is called a converter. Converters take in resources as input and
transform them into other resources. If you take a look at the diagram you can
see that there are two resource connections leading to C , 1) [B to C] , and 2) [D to C] . What this means is
that in order to get Candidate Reputation(node E), the player needs to convert
funds and District Reputation(node D). Without funds or available District
Reputation then the player can't 'mine' reputation.
 |
| The converter converts District Reputation and Funds into Candidate Reputation |
E. Candidate
Reputation - Also a pool node, getting as much candidate reputation by
converting district reputation and funds is the goal of the player in the game.
F,G. Campaign
Investments - As stated above, the player can spend funds to improve the
efficiency of his campaign so that he gets more reputation by expending less
resources. Node F is a converter node which represents all actions in the game
which can help the player gain reputation.
As an example, a
candidate can give gifts(spend gold) to a patron to get bonus reputation when
campaigning in the patron's district.
 |
| Nodes F and G represent actions in the game which improve the efficiency of the candidate's campaign |
When the candidate 'invests in his campaign' by
spending funds, an investment resource
is produced from node F and stored in node G. As shown in the diagram, node G
is connected to resource connections [C to E] and [D to C] by state
connections( dashes). This means that whenever an 'investment resource' is
stored in node G, [C to E] and [D to C ]increases by 1 which in turn means that
the player can mine an additional reputation resource.
H. End Game Condition - This node determines how the game
ends. The state connection [D to H] shows that the game will end when District
Concern( node D) is depleted (less than or equal to 0). Note
that this end condition is used only for the purpose of this article.
As stated at the beginning of the post, the diagram shows
the game-play from a high level point of view, thus a lot of the game mechanics
which will make the game more interesting are missing. But it does show the
following:
1) The player has funds to spend.
2) The player spends funds to acquire reputation.
3) The player can invest in his campaign in order to
maximize the use of his funds.
which is what the player will be doing throughout most of
the game. Now it's only a matter of breaking
these three down or elaborating on them to make the game more interesting.
Key Concepts to Understand
Some of the skills I think is important when designing games
using Machinations are:
1) Abstraction
In the diagram, I've grouped together several game mechanics
and reduced them to a single node. For example, the Campaign Investment node
groups together mechanics in the game which the player can spend funds on to
improve the amount of reputation he can 'mine'.
Learning how to 'see' similarities in mechanics and how they can be
grouped will be useful when trying to model game mechanics in machinations.
2) Learn to think in
terms of relationships
Game mechanics in machinations are represented by
nodes, resource and state connections.
It's important to understand how mechanics in your games are related to each
other. When designing games using machinations think about how the different
mechanics in your game work together.
3) Learn to see and
use abstract resources
In Mechanics: Advanced Game Design, the authors
distinguished between concrete and
abstract resources. Basically concrete resources are the ones you normally see in the game, and abstract
resources are the ones that you don't but are there. Some example of abstract
resources that I regularly use are strategic advantage
and player skill. An example of
advantage as a resource is information in a game with hidden information as a
mechanic. Certainly getting information
that your opponents do not have increases your likelihood of winning the game.
In this article I've shown you how we use the machinations
tool in modelling our game mechanics, as well as given a few tips which will
help you learn the machinations tool. In the next blog post I'll be talking
about abstracting and elaborating mechanics as well as show some of the Party
Animals game mechanics I mentioned earlier.
Thanks for reading. If you'd like to tell us about political candidates from your side of the word, you can email us at heypartyanimals@gmail.com. To be one of the first people to try our closed alpha, please sign up for our mailing list!
