„The Masterplan“ is a card game about YOU being the villain and having to plan and explain your next big coup to your fellow partners in crime. Decide who’ll be your ultimate partner in crime, choose your most powerful object and the perfect location for carry out THE biggest coup of the century.
No. of Players: 3+
Length of Play: max. 20 minutes
Age group: 14+
You are playing as a teenager that has been grounded. Your crush suddenly invites you to a date. You cannot miss this opportunity and therefore decide to sneak out. Your parents are very strict and you realize that if they catch you, you will be in an immense amount of trouble.
Together with your teammate find all 4 item cards and then reach an end zone. Only one player may be in each end zone. The team that finishes first wins.
MDA Breakdown of Super Smash Bros. Melee (Amalgamation of previous M and DA Analyses)
(Naomi Seeling) The “Super Smash Bros.” series is, at its core, a 2D fighting game. One to four players compete against each other, each controlling a different character, with the goal to knock out opponents from the stage before they do the same to you. The characters are controlled with analogue Game Cube controllers, and follow simple inputs such as directional movement (left, right, jump, drop down), attacks, shields and special attacks.
When a character is hit by an attack, they build up a damage value called percent (%), and the more percent a character has, the further he will be knocked back the next time he is hit by an attack. The amount of percent worth of damage that a single attack can do varies greatly, from a simple jab hitting for 3% and a difficult to hit special attack hitting for up to 30%.
Percent is however not the only factor relevant to being knocked out. Every match is played on a stage of the players’ choice, with some stages being very large and open and other stages being tight and small. In order to be knocked out, a character needs to be knocked back beyond the “blast lines” of the stage. Blast lines are simply the horizontal and vertical perimeters of the 2D stage, and thus effectively the edges of the monitor on which the game is being played. Though a character can in theory accumulate up to 999% worth of damage, in practice most characters can be reliably killed at 60-100%, as the knockback of getting hit by an attack at this percent can be sufficient to be knocked beyond a blast line.
The movement system of the game is very straight forward. If you press right, your character goes right. If you press jump your character jumps. This makes the game very accessible to new and/or casual players. There are, however, many more layers to it that just simple right and left inputs. Depending on the angle that a direction is input, a character can be made to walk or dash. A light tap on the jump button causes a short hop, where a solid jump input causes a full hop. An advanced technique of movement referred to as “wave dashing” in which the character jumps and immediately dodges back towards the ground is a stepping stone towards becoming a competitive player.
Over-all, the game provides excellent gameplay for both casual and competitive players, as the inputs and winning condition are straight-forward and accessible, but at the same time there is room for advanced movement techniques without complicating the game for newer players, because they simply aren’t even aware that wave dashing exists.
As discussed previously, one of the core mechanics of the “Super Smash Bros.” series is that when a character is hit by an enemy’s attack, they are sent flying backwards (this is called knock-back). How far the character is knocked back depends directly on other game mechanics, such as how much damage % they have accumulated, as well as the strength and angle of the attack they are being hit by. All of this is important not only from a mechanical perspective, but actually relates closely to how players perceive and approach the game.
Simply put, the more damage % a character has, the further they will get knocked back by the next attack, and if they get knocked back too far off the stage, the character is K.O.’d. All players playing the game are aware of this, which results in a clear increase in tension when one or more characters have taken a lot of damage %, as the next attack that connects will have a good chance of knocking them out. This knowledge greatly impacts how both new and experienced players interact with the game, because, of course, they want to avoid being knocked out.
A classic choice that players make when their characters are close to being knocked out is to focus more on defending than attacking. They dodge more, shield more, and stay further away from enemy characters in hopes of prolonging play time by not being knocked out. This is not something dictated by game mechanics - a character moves and attacks exactly the same way whether they have freshly spawned or have been badly damaged – but it is an active player choice to switch up style of play. This is a dynamic resulting from the pressure of having an enemy to play against.
Now, because many players play a lot more carefully and defensive when their characters are at the brink of being knocked out, a few other players have developed a perhaps unintuitive strategy: when they’re close to being knocked out, they switch their playstyle to being profoundly aggressive. As opponents expect defensive play in this situation, sudden aggression despite being very vulnerable can completely surprise the other players and catch them off guard. Opponents would expect defensive play, because that is in a way the “meta” of the game, and going against this meta (which is entirely dictated by best practices of the majority of players) is unexpected. This takes place entirely on a level of interaction between player and player; it’s a mind-game, defined down nowhere in the rules and mechanics of the game.
The thrill of playing another versus another player is probably the biggest part of what makes “Super Smash Bros. Melee” exciting. Mastering the game mechanics is one thing, but defeating another player by out-mind-gaming them is truly a triumphant feeling, especially if that other player is more mechanically skilled. This constitutes one of the main aesthetic lenses of the game: fellowship. Meeting with a friend in person to play on an old CRT-TV with analogue controllers, seeing them grin when they’re winning, seeing their surprise when you outplay them, and at the end of the day having fun despite the intense competitiveness of the game is what truly makes “Super Smash Bros. Melee” a social game. The skill ceiling of “Melee” and the mind-games also work to make it a popular spectator sport, and there are frequent LAN-events and many livestreams which allow fans to participate in the excitement, also granting the game a sense of community.
Another aesthetic lens through which the game should be viewed is challenge. And that is not only the challenge of fighting directly against another player, because simply playing the game at a decent level is already an obstacle in and of itself. The movement system is complex and very challenging – top level professional players will spend hours just drilling their movement on an empty stage with no opponents. Because of this difficulty, and also because of the social component of the game, there is a real sense of accomplishment when a player learns how to “wave-dash”, then “wave-land”, to “shield-drop” and to “moon walk”, and thus also gains further acceptance among the experienced players of the game, having overcome the challenge of learning those techniques.
All these advanced movement techniques listed are actually not game mechanics, but rather dynamics, as they results from over-sights by the game developers on the interaction of multiple game mechanics at once. It took dedicated players’ trial and error approaches as well as simple chance to discover these movement techniques. Funnily enough, the game developers have expressed a clear dislike for the use of these techniques, as they had intended for the game to be a very casual party-game rather than a competitive e-sport, but with release of the game it was out of their hands and the game’s community of players has continued to organise large-scale tournaments, precisely because it feels good to be competitively good at the game, because being good at the game is so challenging, because exploiting the interaction between game mechanics on a dynamical level impresses others.
As later iterations of the game have been released, the fellowship aspect was retained, and of course there is still challenge involved in playing against other players, but the developers greatly reduced the demanding dynamics of the game, which has also greatly decreased its challenge. As a result, many loyal fans of “Melee” never even touched the game’s successor “Brawl”.
MDA Framework: The Aesthetic of exploration in Zelda: Breath of The Wild.
In Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the player starts in a Tutorial zone called "The Great Plateau". Once the tutorial finished, the player can choose where to go and could even choose to go face the "Ultimate Challenge" of facing the end boss right off the bat.
During this tutorial the player discovers some of the game Mechanics:
-Weapon Durability: All weapons break relatively fast (There is only one exception for an end game weapon). Weapons work as temporary power boosts that you can store in your inventory.
-Permanent Armors: Once the player has an unlocked an armor piece, he will keep it forever. This mean they work as permanent upgrades.
-Open Worlds: The entirety of the world is free to explore as soon as the tutorial is over. Leaving the player with the choice of where to go. The player is also given different ways of exploring; Riding, Gliding, Sailing, Walking, Running, Climbing ect...
-Cold/Hot zones: These zones need preparation to be explored (Either resist potions or resist gear).
-Rain: The weather affects all regions. The rain is the most important because it can virtually create walls around an area preventing you to explore them by making the normally climbable walls slippery. Depending on how much stamina you have, the gear you are wearing and if you have any active stamina effect active, some areas will be inaccessible until the rain stops.
-Chests: All the "odd" areas are worth exploring because the player will most of the times find a chest in them, awarding him with new weapons, armor or rare ingredients.
Those Mechanics, put together, generate an interesting Award System Dynamic were every time the player decides to push away the final quest of "Destrying Ganon" he will find himself awarded. Not by a quest, not by an npc but by himself.
This Mechanic joined to the world of Zelda creates a very enhanced Adventure/Exploration Aesthetic, were the player runs around the map, exploring anything he didn't visit before, getting new gear and destroying his old gear in the process.
In Fallout 4 the most unique mechanics is the V.A.T.S which stands for Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. While using V.A.T.S, the otherwise real-time combat is slowed down. Various actions cost action points and the user can target specific body areas for attacks inflicting specific injuries. There’s also a critical execution bar which gets filled with each successful hit and when full can be used for a devastating attack.
In the following text the MDA framework for this system will be explained.
Mechanics
The V.A.T.S system is basically a queuing system inspired partly by the ability to shoot specific parts in the turn-based combat system of Fallout and Fallout 2 which were turn based RPGs. Each click on a specific part of the body is queued and executed one after the other based on the order in which they were clicked (eg. if we click the left arm then the head then the torso the player shoots first at the left arm then the head then the torso)
Dynamics
When using V.A.T.S. against a humanoid enemy, seven different areas can be targeted: the head, torso, left arm, right arm, currently held weapon, left leg, and right leg. However, there may be other points available when facing off non-humanoid creatures (e.g. robot combat inhibitors, ant antennae). As explained earlier when V.A.T.S is used the game slows down to almost being considered paused and the player has enough time to select their desirable target spots on the enemy. The number of selections during the use of V.A.T.S depends on the “Action Points” of the player which are limited and based on how much
“endurance” which is part of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L (Strength.Perception.Endurance.Charisma.Intelligence.Agility.Luck) list of the player and can be increased as the game progresses. Another feature of the V.A.T.S is the Critical meter which gets filled with each successful strike on an enemy in V.A.T.S and when full can be used for a devastating hit against the enemy.
Aesthetics
The V.A.T.S allows the player to experience a fantasy world where time slows down to give an advantage to the player over the enemies giving them an edge during combat. Which in a way gives the player a sensation of pleasure from being able to do things that others can’t do in that world in turn making them feel a bit godly amongst a sea of radioactive monsters and psychotic humans.
In ‘Danganronpa‘ you play as the student Makoto Naegi, who gets accepted into Hope’s Peak Academy, a school full of talented students. After arriving at school on his first day, he loses consciousness but soon wakes up to the faces of other students. It turns out that they got locked up into the school and the only way to “graduate“, to leave the school, is to murder another student without being found out.
Class trials are being held at the end of each chapter after a murder took place. Once you find the collectible evidence you proceed to the court room, in which the trial will take place. The students have to determine throughout the trial, who the ‘Blackened‘ student, the murderer, is. During the class trial, students confront each other in several debate phases and put together pieces of the collected evidence.
At the very end, the ‘Closing Argument‘ takes place. The ‘Closing Argument‘ is an unique element of the ‘Danganronpa‘ series. Through a comic-like story, it narrates the events during the murder, how and why the murder actually happened.
Opposed to the aesthetic component of ‘Narration‘, the closing argument gives you a fragmentary comic, which you have to complete. Below, the player has a broad selection of different illustrated round frames. The information in the upper left corner serves as an indicator of how many pages you have to complete with the suitable frames given. In this example, the mechanic is that you have to sort the frames into the comic by dragging it in the appropriate panels. However, you’re given more than ten frames of which some display incorrect information. So you have to decipher which illustration matches with the already filled in panels. If you’ve inserted one frame incorrectly, the story plays out until the panel you’ve filled in wrongly and subtracts one of your life points.
Depending on which game difficulty you started out, the indicator in the upper right corner gives you a time limit in which the trial, including the closing argument with the comic, has to be completed. This aesthetic component of ‘Challenge‘ gives the player a certain kind of achievement if they finish the trial more quickly because you get a specific grade depending on how fast you finish it. After the frames are properly rearranged into the right order, the story plays out. Accompanied by the main characters‘ narration, the now finished comic visually tells the event of the night of the murder.
