The Core Gameplay

In this article I will discuss the topic “core gameplay”. I will try to show why it is important to focus on your core gameplay, how to pick your core gameplay and how to craft a solid core gameplay.

The importance of core gameplay

No game is infinite. Game Designers have to make choices about what the players will be capable of doing in their game and what not. When you have a limited amount of actions or tools that the players can use to overcome the challenges in your game, it is almost guaranteed that they will use these actions repeatedly. For example in a first-person-shooter, players have to use their guns to overcome the challenge in the game and they will use these guns over and over again. So you could say that shooting weapons is part of the core gameplay and very important in a first-person-shooter. The core gameplay is essential to the experience of the game. Therefore it should be one of the best parts of your game; keep that in mind when you’re planning your game. There is no use in having a lot of content if the gameplay the player is experiencing while exploring your content is bad. Good core gameplay can make it even easier to come up with content that stays fresh.

How to define and pick the right actions for your game

So how do you pick the right actions that will define the core gameplay of your game? There are many ways of how you can come up with ideas for your core gameplay. I would say that it mostly depends on the experience you want to create for your players. Therefore I would use a top down process and think about the fantasy you want to create for your players.

For example, you could ask yourself what players would expect when they think about a game where they play Batman in a city full of criminals, a soldier in world war II, an assassin in a  mysterious post-apocalyptic London, a football team during a match or a modern-time dog trainer.

You can consider these aspects:

Individual Experience: This is probably the most important aspect when deciding which actions your players will be able to perform. If you have an aspect that is very important to the experience you want to create, you should always check if your decisions about your game design are in line with your desired experience.

Genre: Genres raise specific expectations in your players so you should consider what players might expect when they think about a genre.

Avatar: Does the player take control of one or more characters in the game? If so, what does he expect from these characters?

Space: Where does the game take place? Is it a realistic game world or is it a magical place full of mysteries?

Time: When does the game take place? It could be set in the Middle Ages, on a futuristic space station or be envisioned as a modern underground scenario.

Come up with exciting ideas that catch the attention of your players!

If you want to make a game about a first-person-stealth-shooter that takes place in a futuristic world where the player plays a cybernetic assassin, you should start by making a list of what actions your players will expect when playing this kind of character. You should start with broad ideas and get more and more precise.

At this level you only have a very broad description of what is important to increase chances that players get excited about your game but you haven’t defined the mechanics of your core gameplay, yet. It’s just a formal description of the actions but not the mechanics.

How to craft a solid core gameplay

Think of the actions your players can perform as tools that you offer them to overcome the challenges in your game. The player has a toolbox he can use. There are five important things that lead to quality of the toolbox.

1. The number of different tools
2. The number of subjects of each tool
3. The quality/depth of the tools
4. The accessibility of each tool
5. Iteration

The number of different tools

Each action is a different tool that the player needs in order to overcome the different challenges in your game and to reach his goal. For example the different moves in a fighting game are different tools to bring the hitpoints of your enemy to 0 (the goal of the game). I think that there is no right or wrong when it comes to the perfect number of different tools for a game. Some games have only one tool and have an incredibly solid core gameplay. The Chinese game called Go is an often used example for a very deep game that provides its players with only one tool: the “stones” that they can place on the board to control and capture the different spaces. Still it is very deep and due to the fact that is has so little tools it is often called the most elegant game on earth.

There are also a lot of games that offer a lot more tools than Go and that are very successful. In League of Legends each champion, skill, objective or item counts as a tool to defeat the enemies’ Nexus and it is the most played PC game in the world. It has hundreds of tools and is very entertaining and enjoyed by millions of players but it is also hard to learn and it takes a lot of time before players can start to master the different tools.

So you should consider that each tool is something a player has to familiarise himself with, which makes the game less accessible and harder to grasp. But as long as it serves your desired experience, as long as you are still able to teach him the different tools step by step and as long as he isn’t overwhelmed or frustrated by the number of tools, you can keep adding.

The number of subjects of each tool

With the number of subjects for the different tools in your game you can increase the depth of your game without increasing its complexity. Think about the number of units a player can control in a strategy game. If the maximum amount of units in Starcraft 2 a player can build would be 20 it would lose a lot of depth because players could form less variations of unit combinations.

Again this depends deeply on your game but you can consider this, if you think that your game lacks depth and you don’t want to add more tools one solution could be to give the player more subjects of the same tool.

The quality and depth of each tool

This is hard to achieve and you should probably focus a lot attention to increase the quality of the tools in the game. Good tools give your player the possibility to think about your game and discover more and more possibilities on how to overcome the challenges in your game. They give the players the possibility to express themselves in many different ways that makes them feel smart and proud about their creativity in using your tools and making decisions in your game.

If you want to achieve these feelings you can give your tools some properties that raise this chance that your game becomes as deeps as it needs to be.

One good start is to give your tools some connections between each other. A simple example of a connection in chess is that the different units can’t stand on the same space on the board. This leads to the fact that players need to think about a lot more pieces than the one that they want to move. Pieces can block each other and therefore it opens up a lot of strategies about blocking and protecting other units.

A lot of games feature some resource mechanic where different tools depend on the same resource. The combat system of the souls series from From Software is a good example. A lot of actions in the game cost the player stamina, a resource that only regenerates when the player didn’t do anything that costs stamina for a short time. Sprinting, dodging, attacking, shooting and blocking with your shield, all these tools cost stamina when the player uses them. This way the player has to think about which of these tools he is going to use and when he is going to use them. If he attacks too often, chances are high that he doesn’t have enough stamina to block the next attack etc.

There are infinite ways on how to create the dynamics that rise when you play with relationships between your tools and it is one of the mightiest aspects when you want to increase the quality of your tools and the depth of your game.

Another very important aspect when it comes to the quality of your tools in the game is the uniqueness of each tool. It is important that each tool is as unique as possible. The bigger the difference between each tool the more different and unique feeling possibilities you give to your players when it comes to facing the challenges in your game. Variation is a very important aspect when it comes to game design and  there is not much value in adding tools that behave almost exactly the same. So you should really take the time and think about the tools and how you can make them more unique. The same goes for the challenges in your game (enemies are nothing else than tools of the enemy AI). Difference and variation is incredibly important when it comes to the quality of your core gameplay and therefor you should strive for as much uniqueness for your tools as possible.

To increase the number of ways the player can use each tool is also a great possibility to give your tools and core gameplay more depth. When your player can use a tool in more than just one way you give him the possibility to think about in which way he is going to use that tool. A good example that is very well known are the rocket jumps in Quake 3. In this game players can use the explosions out of their rocket launchers to perform very wide and high jumps. They used these jumps to move quickly around the battlefield and to dodge enemy attacks. Even if this mechanic and behaviour wasn’t intended by the developers it was a great addition to the depth of the game and so important that it became part of the core gameplay.

The last aspect you can think about when it comes to designing your actions is their granularity. It will not always lead to more depth but i can help. Tools that have more than an on/off state are more expressive and can lead to more depth. Think about a first person shooter when you can only aim on the x axis. By adding the y axis you give your players more ways on where they can shoot and at the same time more possibilities on how to interact with each other on the different heights in the level. Suddenly players can flank from above etc.

The accessibility of your tools

This section could be an article for itself, so I won’t cover the details here. But it is very important that your players have a very good understanding of their consequences when engaging with your core gameplay. They should be able to understand their actions and the feedback they get from doing these actions. You need to make sure that the most important actions have a nice feedback on all channels you have available, so it feels already sensational to just performing these actions no matter in which context they are using them. Make it feel great to use the actions that are part of your core gameplay and try to make them as clear as possible. A great core loop comes with great feedback, a good amount of juiciness and has the greatest accessibility possible.

When your core gameplay features mechanics that work the same way in the real word you have a good advantage because players can transfer this experience and need to learn less new things in your game. So when ever you can have for a mechanic that feels natural and adds depth to your game it is a good idea to consider keeping it. A close mapping to the real world saves time and resources of your players mind because otherwise he would need to learn and memorize this stuff, so you can add depth without adding information to learn.

Iteration

Your core gameplay is important. There will be a lot dependencies towards it so you have to make sure that these things are very good and stable. Your chances to achieve good and solid core gameplay rise with the number of iteration loops. So plan enough time for iteration and do not proceed until you’re sure that your core gameplay is good and stable on it’s own. There is no use in developing gameplay features that rely on your core gameplay when the core gameplay itself isn't fun yet.

Finals Words

It is very important to say that even if you have everything of this stuff in your mind it won’t guarantee that your game will have a good and solid core gameplay. Games are very dynamic and you have to take care of these dynamics very carefully. Do not lose these goals out of sight during your concept phase: creating a solid, long lasting experience based on a good and deep core gameplay. It is easy to say that your core gameplay will be deep but to achieve and keeping it this way till the very end of your release and maybe beyond is hard. A lot of people can work on the same game and probably a lot of them will have an opinion, so everybody needs to know about the things that will make your core gameplay shine. Make sure that everybody want’s to achieve this and reflects about your game in the same frame of your defined goals for the core gameplay, iterate as long as you need to and strive for the best you can do.