THIS IS HOW I TEACH GAME MECHANICS NOw.
Game designers, kid or adult, need to have a good understanding about what game mechanics are and how they are used in games.
At this point, I've had students play around 10 different games with a wide variety of game mechanics, see the Game Mechanics & Groups so you can see the different games they may play in class. After they play games, we discuss 25 various mechanics so they can see how work in relation to each other.
FIRST, I give each student a game mechanics packet. They mark the mechanics they have experienced in games played in class (they have played games with most of them at this point) and answer the questions about mechanics. After this, we discuss them more in-depth.
NEXT, I teach them about different mechanics sorted by function. (If you want the old one, it's not deleted: Game Mechanics Google Slides Presentation.) We go through all of them, and I want them to see how categorizing the mechanics can help them to see how they can be used and how they can modify a mechanic to make it work for their game.
You can use my Which Mechanic Wore It Best? document if you want some written analysis.
AFTERWARDS, I have them brainstorm game ideas using the game UnPub. I made a super simple document for them to record their ideas: UnPub-Esque Mechanics Brainstorming.
I made my own version of UnPub cards that have more mechanics and themes with no components listed on the cards.
I'm shifting my approach to have them design more, smaller games, so I'm playing with having them take Monkey Madness and apply different mechanics to it. (It's a game for three year olds and there are no choices, so you could use it to just have them play with giving players different choices to assigning mechanics and having them apply those mechanics to see what happens.)
At this point, I've had students play around 10 different games with a wide variety of game mechanics, see the Game Mechanics & Groups so you can see the different games they may play in class. After they play games, we discuss 25 various mechanics so they can see how work in relation to each other.
FIRST, I give each student a game mechanics packet. They mark the mechanics they have experienced in games played in class (they have played games with most of them at this point) and answer the questions about mechanics. After this, we discuss them more in-depth.
NEXT, I teach them about different mechanics sorted by function. (If you want the old one, it's not deleted: Game Mechanics Google Slides Presentation.) We go through all of them, and I want them to see how categorizing the mechanics can help them to see how they can be used and how they can modify a mechanic to make it work for their game.
You can use my Which Mechanic Wore It Best? document if you want some written analysis.
AFTERWARDS, I have them brainstorm game ideas using the game UnPub. I made a super simple document for them to record their ideas: UnPub-Esque Mechanics Brainstorming.
I made my own version of UnPub cards that have more mechanics and themes with no components listed on the cards.
I'm shifting my approach to have them design more, smaller games, so I'm playing with having them take Monkey Madness and apply different mechanics to it. (It's a game for three year olds and there are no choices, so you could use it to just have them play with giving players different choices to assigning mechanics and having them apply those mechanics to see what happens.)
(One important note: I used to use a lot of info from boardgamedesignersforum.com so some of the wording may be borrowed from them. I have rewritten a lot over the past few years, which you'll see in my later materials that there are differences with how I've described mechanics and such, but any direct copying is unintentional at this point.)
