MDA: A Formal Approach To Game Design And Game Research

MDA stands for Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics and is a formal approach to understanding games and tries to bridge the gap between game design and development, game criticism, and technical game research.


The MDA framework formalizes the consumption of games by breaking them into their distinct components:

                                                and establishing their design counterparts:

The meaning of theses three components are:

Mechanics - Describes particular components of the game, at the level of date representation and algorithms.

Dynamics- Describes the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each others outputs overtime.

Aesthetics- Describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system. When you think about aesthetics you don't think about fun or game play but more of some of these:

1. Sensation
  Game as sense-pleasure
2. Fantasy
  Game as make-believe
3. Narrative
   Game as drama
4. Challenge
  Game as obstacle course
5. Fellowship
  Game as social framework
6. Discovery
  Game as uncharted territory
7. Expression
  Game as self-discovery
8. Submission
  Game as pastime

Games are more like artifacts than media because the content of a game is it's behavior not the media that streams out of it towards the player.

This image shows the difference in perspectives from the designers and the players; showing that players first see the aesthetics then dynamics and finally mechanics. Where as a developer works from the opposite way concentration on the fundamental parts of the game first.

Looking at this feedback system  in the game monopoly shows that the leader/leaders of the game become more wealthy they can penalize players with increasing effectiveness so that the poorer players become more poorer. Using the understanding of aesthetics and dynamics, we think of ways to fix Monopoly either rewarding players who are behind to keep them within a reasonable distance of the leaders, or making progress more difficult for rich players.