How Game Designers Create Meaningful Mechanics | Conveying Themes, Emotions and Ideas In Video Games

This Video analyzes how some of the best game designers in our medium have used meaningful mechanics as a metaphor to convey specific emotions,themes and ideas

Support the channel on Patreon for additional content
  / gameoveranalyser  

Meaningful mechanics are still underutilized in gaming, and there are no shortage of emotions, themes and ideas we can convey as an artform if we think of mechanics as metaphors. What we need to do, I feel, is assemble a compendium of meaningful mechanics, and use this library as a basis to push the medium forward. There are already so many incredible examples that exist in our medium, all we have to do is explicitly outline how they work.

This video contains some of my favourite examples, but i urge you to share some of your favorites in the comments below

Games mentioned
-Ico
-Journey
-Braid
-Missile command
-Never alone 4:21
-Brothers a tale of two sons 4:54
-Florence 5:26
-The last guardian 6:09
-Heavy rain
-Thomas was alone 7:04
-Rez 8:08
-Catherine
Hellblade 9:16
-Dark Souls
-Celeste
-Devil May cry 3 10:43
-Spec ops 11:49
-Shadow of the Colossus
-Papers Please
-Everything
-Mafia 3 15:13
-Assassins creed Liberation 15:33
-Bioshock 16:12
-Nier Automata
-Metal Gear solid 2 16:47
-The Tetris Effect
-Battlefield
-Call of duty
-P.T
-Civilization
-Gears of War
-Flower
-The unfinished Swan
-Thumper
-What remains of edith finch

Additional footage from

-Shirrako
-App Unwrapper
-TetraNinja
-IamSpOOn
-GDC - Will Wright Mata haggis Soren Johnson Sid Maeir
-EightBitHD
-Jonathan Blow
-Fumito ueda

All rights for games, music and idea belong to their respective owners. Please message me if I missed sourcing you.