The combined knowledge of the League of Gamemakers is a force to be reckoned with. Some of our most popular pieces are on game mechanics. The nuts and bolts. Getting the gears aligned. Finely tuning the engine of your game. Below you’ll find a list of blog posts on a variety of game design topics. If you’re a game designer and looking to build interesting and engaging mechanics, these posts will help you out. Don’t forget to leave some comments if you’re so inspired, and be sure to enter our Summertime Raffle for a chance to win a nice stack of games!!!
Game Mechanics Blog Posts
by various authors on the League of Gamemakers.
Each posted in the first half of 2014.
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“Everyone Can Win, Everyone Can Lose“
– by Luke Laurie.
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“Game Mechanics that Prevent Ganging up and Turtling“
– by Tom Jolly
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“ Experience vs. Mechanics “
– by Mark Major
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“Building Tension: The Ars Victor Glory Track”
– by Stephen Debaun
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“Be Honest – The Honor System in Game Design“
– by Michael Domeny
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“Adding Opportunity Costs – Army Building in Ars Victor“
– by Stephen Debaun
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“The World of the Play“
– by Kelsey Domeny
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“Transmorgrify Your Mechanics“
– by Brad Brooks
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“How to Design a Worker Placement Game” Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3(Refining Your Game)
– by Luke Laurie
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“Exploring Drafting“
– by guest author Teale Fristo
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“Mechanics are More Important than Theme“
– by Luke Laurie
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“Theme is More Important than Mechanics“
– by Peter Vaughan
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“Theme vs Mechanics: the False Dichotomy“
– by Mark Major
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Luke Laurie
Game Designer at Luke Laurie Games
Designer of Stones of Fate and The Manhattan Project: Energy Empire
Game designer by night, and middle school science and pre-engineering teacher by day. He lives in Santa Maria California with his amazing wife and two unrealistically well-behaved children.
Game designer by night, and middle school science and pre-engineering teacher by day. He lives in Santa Maria California with his amazing wife and two unrealistically well-behaved children.
Latest posts by Luke Laurie (see all)
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3 Readers Commented
Join discussionThis is a fantastic list of mechanic based posts. I particularly liked the Theme v. Mechanic debate posts. I had recently heard, the best way to actually approach it is an “Experience based” design route. That you first describe what you want your players to experience, and build mechanics and themes to fit that experience. Of course this seems partially like a theme based design still because having an experience is a very thematic idea, but hearing it described further it was more of a “Feel” based design. How you want the player to feel as you play.
Anyway, great posts.
Thanks so much Beau! Glad you found some value in our writing.
Can’t wait to dive in! Quality reading for days off! 🙂