Elements of game design: Game Mechanics.

Gyromite was full of weird mechanics

Woohoo, we're onto a big boy here. Mmmhmm, yes siree. We've talked about how a game looks, how a game's environment is built and how a game's characters inhabit that environment. But what about how a game plays? This is the big defining thingy. This is what separates games from every other medium on the planet. You watch films, you read books, you listen to music and you PLAY games. When you watch a movie you exist to soak up all the visual/audio information from the screen and that is how you experience it. Some films are cerebral, they require you to do some extra work in order to get the most out of them, but even if you don't do that extra work, the reel rolls on. A game demands much, much more from you. A game requires your input, and without that it wouldn't be a game.
Then what is a "Game mechanic"? Game mechanics are, in a sense, the pieces of game-play which form up to create the overall experience. Some mechanics are so fundamental to the genre of the game that they form a staple of the experience, where as some are so subtle that we forget they exist. Having control over your character is a very basic game mechanic that you'd assume was a part of every game- but it just ain't so. Gyromite for the NES allowed you to play whilst controlling the environment instead of the main character, for example. The ability to jump is another subtle game mechanic that has been around since the early arcade days and defines the very gameplay of the "platformer" genre- to jump from platform to platform. F.E.A.R spices up the standard FPS genre by adding "slow-motion" control to its roster of mechanics, giving you a crutch to lean on in more difficult sections of the game and shaking up the entire combat model of the experience.

"Be quiet, Fisher"

Technology has played a pretty large role in how game mechanics have evolved over the years, and certain modern mechanics such as F.E.A.R's slow mo, or the light/dark stealth systems of Splinter Cell, would not have been possible without modern technology. For a long time now we've been able to make Sam Fisher walk about the environment, but only when we have enough computing power to render shadows can we hide him within them. Go even further, and we can render real-time shadows that he can manipulate to create and destroy cover in the environment. Gameplay has certainly got more complicated over time. Walking from A to B is not a very complicated experience, but walking from A to B without being detected by enemies, and whilst moving shadows around the environment, is a much more thrilling experience. In this way, game mechanics are the bones which form the skeleton of a game. Strip away the graphics, the story and the sound, and this is what you have left. Even today, when we technology that allows destructible environments and perfect physics to enhance our games, sometimes its the most simple mechanics that make for the best games.

image links:

www.visualwalkthroughs.com/splintercell/mission9/34.jpg
agentpothead.com/gamewalls/images/Gyromite-1600x1200-RobotHobo.gif


reference links:

http://fear.wikia.com/wiki/Slow-Mo
http://gamestudies.org/0802/articles/sicart
http://uk.gamespy.com/articles/116/1160325p1.html