I need to try this on some new eye''s to see how easy it is to understand. This is a doc that i''ve been working on as a contribution to a game news web site. If you''ve got the patience to read through it and give me some constructive critisms back i would be very appreciative. Thanks

quote: The Fulcrum, Lever and Axle Theory of Competitive Games By Paul Cunningham After playing many competitive games from modern day computer games like Quake to the old board games of yesteryear like Monopoly one can start to wonder where the similarities start and finish. This is what the theory of the Fulcrum, Lever and Axle hopes to answer. The reason why I attempt to do this is purely to give all promising game designers some kind of foundational knowledge to understand the game they are planning or hoping to make before they start on their journey into game design madness. Try to remember that this is all targeted at the competitive game design. The trick to understanding most competition based game design concepts is to be able to distinguish the interactive game elements from the non-interactive game elements first. In order to do this you have to understand what makes a game element truly interactive. To spill it out quickly for you, “An interactive element is something that the player can use with deliberation to change the direction of the game” – to interact. There are many game elements that appear at first sight to supply the user directly with the ability to interact that don’t actually do this. To avoid this misconception earlier rather than later here’s a case example: Monopoly – presuming you have played this game I’ll skip the finer details. Monopoly major interactive element is “Money”. Money being the game element here that the player can actually use deliberately. Other elements like the dice, pieces, rent etc are all non-interactive as the player can not use these to change to direction of game flow deliberately. Next we have the mechanical operations of a game; these are the game structures designed to dictate the functionality of the game. Rulesets from open mechanic games like board games are a perfect example of Game Mechanics. Game Mechanics are separate to interactive elements. Finally we get to the middle ground. Here we find the third and final link that exists in all competitive games. The middle ground is where the Interactive Elements are joined to the Game Mechanics. Examples of the middle ground is a GUI for a role playing game, here is a game structure (GUI) that doesn’t hold the value of Game Mechanics and it isn’t an interactive element. The GUI acts like an axle between the Game Mechanic’s and The Interactive Elements. So hopefully we can all now see that every competitive game is made of the 3 basic parts: The Mechanics, Interactive Elements and the Middle Ground. Now by renaming these basic game parts appropriately – Interactive Elements to “Lever”, The Game Mechanic’s to “The Fulcrum” and The Middle Ground to “The Axle” we can see how this Fulcrum, Lever and Axle model operates and what each part represents. To help visualize this model here’s a diagram.

Thoughts? One more time for the dumbies ar+gu+ment n. A discussion in which reasons are put forward in support of and against a proposition, proposal, or case; debate.