13 Medal of Honor: Mission
2_4, ???What Comes
Around????
Improving Player Choices 329
330 Chapter 11: Fun and Accessibility
The Core Mechanic??• Game Design as Activity Design
by Eric Zimmerman, Cofounder and CEO, Gamelab
The following is adapted from a longer essay entitled ???Play as Research??? that appears in the book Design
Research, edited by Brenda Laurel (MIT Press, 2004). It appears here with permission from the author.
Too o en, game designers focus on the content, narrative, or aesthetics of their game design rather than
asking more fundamental questions. As participatory, dynamic systems, it is crucial that games be understood
not just as content but as action. As you begin working on a game design, ask yourself, What is the actual activity
of the game? What is the player actually doing from moment to moment as he or she plays your game?
Virtually all games have a core mechanic, an action or set of actions that players will repeat over and
over as they move through the designed system of the game. A game prototype should help you understand
what this core mechanic is and how the activity becomes meaningful over time.
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