Hunicke's MDA

Robin Hunicke (along with Marc LeBlanc & Robert Zubeck) contributes to the vocabulary of games design with 'Mechanics, Dynamics & Aesthetics'. This set of analysis tools is intended to better understand the fundamental between the way a game is created by the designer and interacted with by the player.

Mechanics - (rules, coding, etc.) Data representation & algorithms, this describes all the objects/game components.

Dynamics - (game behaviours as a result of player input) Player interaction and interaction with the player. Play choice.

Aesthetics - Emotional responses of the player.

Hunicke states that there is an order to which the game is produced and to which the game is played:

Designer >>>

                      Mechanics > Dynamics > Aesthetics
                      ____________________________

                      Mechanics < Dynamics < Aesthetics

                                                                               <<< Player

This can be summed up with a sentence (as understood by the definitions above):

Aesthetics are the player's emotional response as a result of Dynamics, which is the feedback received from interacting with the Mechanics.

The important thing to take away from this is the difference in which we interact with the game as designer compared to the player's experience. A player will only play a game due to the aesthetics, if he/she gains no emotional response from it (other than perhaps boredom) then it's unlikely that they will play the game to the point of dynamically playing with the mechanics which you have painstakingly laboured over as a designer.

This is noticeably the same in role-playing games such as D&D when you are the game master (as I usually am with my groups). The players want to play the game to go on adventures, solve puzzles, fight things and so on. The actual rules are not so important, almost to the point of not being important at all, except for to the game master, who uses the rules to help define the story and keep the game from being entirely biased in whichever direction they wish to take it. The rules are only as important as the results they give, which are only as important as the direction they take the story in (which is what the players are there for)!