Gilliard: Now, that is a good example of game concept turning into verbs, is it not?

Rafael: Yeah... Lots of verbs, like “click”, “click”, and... ummm... “click”?

As the starting point of our discussion, the concept layer represents the most abstract view of the
game. The next sections describe the remaining layers with increasing granularity, representing
an incremental process of specification of the game idea, turning it into the detailed description
of the game.

The Context Layer

The context of a game, as far as the proposed architecture is concerned, comprises the story,
circumstances and motivation presented to the player. Why must the player do what he is doing?
Does he have to save the princess from the castle or must he save the world from an alien
invasion? The context does not have to be story-driven, but it must define a more concrete view
of the game that the players can easily refer to.

Whenever a player has to make a choice in order to progress further in the game, his options are
based on, and related to, the concept at hand. Such decisions could be choosing between types of
weapons in a shooter, dialogue options in an adventure game or RPG, or even whether he will
dodge or strike in a fighting game. It is expected that every choice the player makes in a game is
a meaningful one, even if its purpose is merely aesthetic (say, to answer a question made by a
character that has no other purpose besides telling you how mean he is).

The context should be the guide to these choices, enriching the game environment with events
related to the situation proposed by the game. It is important that every non-aesthetic choice has
a clear purpose and outcome in the game; if not, the game should rather “choose” for the player,
and keep the things going. For example, in 2K Boston/2K Australia's masterpiece BioShock, you
are not supposed to use your weapons in certain areas, so the game “chooses” no weapons for
you, instead of letting you choose any weapon -- that you will not be able to use anyway.

It is important to note that it is not always necessary for the context to be related to the storyline,
but one important purpose of context, being it through aesthetic or game-changing choices, is to
bind the player to the game universe.

Take for example Square's highly-praised RPG Chrono Trigger

for the Super NES. This game puts the player in the role of
Chrono and his friends, inhabitants of the interesting and
conflicting kingdom of Guardia. The game's context comprises
the journey among the Guardia region in different eras in time,
and the story itself is full of opportunities for the manipulation
of future events through actions taken in the past.

Gilliard: Beware! Wonderfully crafted world and story,

amazing context... The greatest game of all time!
Rafael: When did we start talking about Ocarina of Time?

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 Gilliard: (Sigh) We never did... This is Chrono Trigger...

On the other hand, let's look at Wii Sports; there is no story there to guide the player through, but
the game's context comprises several activities that everyone is familiar with.

Gilliard: See? You don't need to tell a story in order to play with Mii and my Wii... hehehe...
Rafael: Dude... that joke was already old six months ago...

The Core Layer: Content and Features

Although the context defines a more material view of the game's concept, it still lacks any game-
specific components. For example, the concept and context of a game could also be implemented
as a movie or a book, with only minor adjustments. It is in the next layer down the line that such
game-related functionality becomes clear.

Contents of a game are basically what players see and most often can touch inside the game
space. The player's avatar itself is game content, together with any other characters, weapons,
items, scenario objects, etc., that are there for the player to interact with, using the game system.
We can think of content as the concretization of the game from the perspective of the player.

Features, on the other hand, are the mid-level description of gameplay, often represented as use
cases (“squad control”, ”vehicle riding”) and broad system descriptions (“price fluctuation”,

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 “real-time cloth physics”), which comprise the different ways in which the player can touch the
game or be touched by it. They also define the nature of the player's interaction, in terms of the
feedback perceived by the player from his actions in the game world (“destructible
environments”, “believable emotional NPCs”).

While concept and context are the layers responsible for the player's first impression and general
understanding of the game, it is the content and features that will make him want to play more
and more. Content and features are the bread and butter of a game. Together, they define how the
concept and context are realised as an interactive experience. Features are the blueprint onto
which content is constructed, thus instantiating gameplay.

Content and features, therefore, play a major, central role in the player's experience with the
game, and so we decided, for our layered approach, to bind these two components in a single
layer called Core.

The most important distinction between the top-down and bottom-up cognition processes, as
discussed later in this article, is exemplified in the relation between content and features with
regard to the other layers. If we work down from the top, we can see features as an abstraction of
content in order to create the desired game mechanics; on the other hand, if we go up from the
bottom, we can see content as an abstraction of features to create the desired game context.
Therefore, it is impossible to tell which of these two layers is more abstract than the other. That
is the main reason why we choose to consider these two layers as an unified component of the
architecture.

The relation between features and content can also be observed through a different perspective:
the conflict between “open-ended” and “scripted” gameplay. Open-ended games such as Zelda or
GTA rely on features to provide the desired gameplay experience, in the form of emergent
behavior of the objects and characters that populate the game environment. In this case, features
are more abstract and fundamental than content, because it is the behavior of things, rather than
their actual colors and flavors, that generate a living game environment for the players to
explore.

On the other hand, scripted games

such as Half-Life or Metal Gear
Solid rely on content to guarantee
that the gameplay experience is
exactly what the game designers
have planned. In this case, content
is more abstract than features,
because it is the actual layout of
things that will provide the
desired experience; the behavior
of things has to be only as
complex as needed by the desired
content.

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 Gilliard: Now this is an open-ended game! I can do things the game designer has not planned...
Rafael: And all you can think about is carrying a chicken around?

The Mechanics Layer

The mechanics of a game are the “brain” of a game's design. Whenever the player wishes to
perform an action, he must invoke one of the available verbs in the given game state (more on
this in the next section). Then his input is processed internally by a set or rules and an output is
given (hopefully being what the player had intended to do). Game mechanics must be designed
to be the gears that spin under the hood; all the player must do is step on the gas and feel the car
moving. He does not need to understand how the engine works to be able to drive.

The game designer, however, must have a clear and detailed definition of such mechanics, in
order to provide the other developers with an accurate picture of the desired outcome in the
game. The most important component of the mechanics layer is the definition of the process in
which verbs (the layer downwards) are manipulated by the system and provide feedback, both to
the player and to the game world, of the actions performed, thus bringing the desired game
features and content (the layer upwards) to life.

To illustrate game mechanics, let's take a quick look at Sony's masterpiece, Shadow of the
Colossus. Most of the player's actions are focused in the small circle on the corner of the screen.
That circle measures the power that the player has available to execute actions such as strike a
colossus with the sword or the bow.

The maximum power available can be reduced if the player keeps hanging on things or executing
other tiring actions -- thus, consuming power slowly -- and with every consecutive blow struck
upon the giant. Pressing the button once willl start filling up the circle with power; pressing it a
second time will unleash a blow as powerful as the current power level in the circle. The player
then has to wait a short while in order to recover this power. As the player sees it, the character
just gets tired of those extreme actions; he cannot use his full power to strike all the time, and
needs to stop to rest for a little

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