The Unimportance of Flawless Game Mechanics

This short paper will try to forward a discussion based on these questions: can we design games the same way we design toys? What influences how players enact a game we design? How do we balance between freedom of interpretation and excess of expectations? How do players effect other players’ interpretations of a same game? This paper is intended for game design students, researchers, authors, and designers who are interested in creating original and experimental games, and challenging themselves with new takes on the process of game creation. It is especially targeted at developers that want to create games that are more open to interpretation and that accommodate more personal play styles: we believe this approach make games more powerful as communication devices, though this is not discussed in the paper. Instead, we will expand on the concept of “player deputization” and introduce a new take on designing games without focus on tasks and objectives.