Ben Gonshaw: Digital Media Theorist & Game Design Consultant
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A PRIORI: PRIORITISING GAME MECHANICS

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As in most cases, there is an interesting area of crossover where the argument becomes difficult to untangle. Try doing the ‘drive-by’ in the Pirate version, and there won’t be much to hit apart from a passing shark. A sensible designer would add something to ensure that the drive-by element could remain, such as by having a density of water traffic, or they would remove the drive-by ability. This negates the idea that transplanting a set of mechanics to another scenario will simply work. If the mechanics are adapted from their original form then they no longer posses the ability to uniquely define GTA as being GTA. However, if you sat two people down and asked them to play the pirate game and GTA one after the other, they would express a deep similarity between the two at the very least.

This means that to view a game as either rules or story is not enough. There are some parts of a game that are clearly only rules and there are others, like cutscenes, that are clearly only story. However, there is a third aspect. These are in the mechanics that are borne out of the setting, like that drive-by example. It seems that there is a set of fundamental rules that I will call ‘a priori’ mechanics. These are the rules that are transferable between different stylistic interpretations that could make the space game seem like it was GTA. I call them ‘a priori’ because they can exist without any game setting and can be used in abstract thought experiments about how the game would play. However, once a setting is in place this begins to influence the way the rest of the mechanics take shape. Such mechanics are ‘a posteriori’, requiring an experience of the gameworld to be able to exist.

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