Mechanics

A seasonal progression system in which players purchase (or sometimes earn through play) access to a tiered reward track containing cosmetics, currency, and experience boosts, then unlock those rewards by completing in-game challenges or accumulating playtime experience over the course of a season, typically 60 to 90 days. Battle passes were introduced to PC gaming by Dota 2 in 2013 but became the dominant live-service monetisation model after Fortnite's Chapter 1, Season 2 pass (2018) proved the formula could generate enormous recurring revenue at accessible price points ($10 per season). The model offers structural advantages over loot boxes: players know exactly what they are buying (no randomness), the content scales with engagement (active players get more value), and the time-limited nature creates seasonal events with clear beginnings and endings. Criticism of battle passes centres on their time-demand engineering: daily and weekly challenges are designed to create habitual login patterns, missing a season's content can never be recovered, and cosmetics accumulate faster than players use them. A significant design evolution came when Fortnite introduced a 'never expire' clause for battle pass content, acknowledging that expiry-pressure is a meaningful source of player anxiety. Premium battle passes now offer an alternative to loot boxes in many major titles including Apex Legends, Call of Duty, and Valorant.

Cooperative gameplay in which two or more players work together toward shared objectives rather than competing against each other, with success and failure shared collectively. Co-op modes range widely in structure: split-screen couch co-op (It Takes Two, Overcooked) where players share a screen in the same room; online co-op campaigns (Deep Rock Galactic, Halo, Sea of Thieves) where players tackle missions together online; raid groups in MMORPGs requiring coordinated teams of 8-40 players; and asymmetric co-op where players have different roles or mechanics (Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes). Co-op gaming experienced a major resurgence in the early 2020s with Deep Rock Galactic, Valheim, Phasmophobia, and Lethal Company proving that the social experience of shared struggle and coordinated problem-solving drives deep engagement and word-of-mouth growth. It Takes Two (2021) won Game of the Year at multiple ceremonies and is broadly considered one of the best co-op games ever made. A distinct branch is 'asynchronous co-op,' where players contribute to a shared world at different times; Palworld's shared server base-building exemplifies this. The rise of cross-play has dramatically expanded co-op's reach by removing platform barriers between friends.

A monetisation mechanic in which players spend currency, real money converted to premium in-game currency, for randomised draws that yield characters, weapons, or cosmetics at variable rarity rates, modelled on Japanese gashapon capsule toy vending machines. The mechanic originated in Japanese mobile gaming and was brought to global prominence by Fate/Grand Order (2015) and most dramatically by Genshin Impact (2020), which demonstrated that gacha could generate billions annually in a production-quality open-world RPG. Key gacha concepts include: the 'pity system', a guaranteed high-rarity reward after a set number of pulls, typically 90 in Genshin Impact; 'rate-up banners' that increase the probability of a specific limited character; and 'soft pity,' where pull rates increase gradually before the hard pity threshold. Gacha mechanics have been subject to regulatory scrutiny in multiple countries due to their structural similarity to gambling, several European jurisdictions have regulated or banned the mechanic. Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, Blue Archive, and Nikke exemplify the genre's production quality today. A common misconception is that gacha games are pay-to-win, most major gacha games are carefully balanced so that F2P players can complete all story content, with spending primarily affecting collection completion speed.

A game model in which the title is designed for ongoing, indefinite engagement rather than being a complete, self-contained experience. Live-service games are updated continuously with new seasonal content, new characters, maps, modes, cosmetics, story chapters, and balance patches, and monetised through recurring purchases such as battle passes or cosmetic item shops rather than one-time game sales. The model originated in PC gaming with MMORPGs and online shooters, but was industrialised for mass markets by Fortnite (Epic Games, 2017), which demonstrated that a free-to-play live service could generate billions in annual revenue through cosmetic purchases alone. Major live-service games include Fortnite, Apex Legends, Destiny 2, League of Legends, Path of Exile, and Genshin Impact. The model creates a fundamental tension: players want significant content updates, but live-service development is expensive and teams can struggle to maintain quality while shipping every six to twelve weeks. When a live service fails to attract or retain players, it faces a death spiral: falling population reduces matchmaking quality, reducing incentives to play, reducing population further. Many live-service games have been shut down, including Anthem, Babylon's Fall, and Hyenas.

A layer of persistent progression that exists above the run-level systems in a roguelite: upgrades, unlocks, and permanent bonuses that carry over between attempts and accumulate over a player's entire history with the game, rather than resetting on death. Meta-progression fundamentally changes the roguelite experience compared to pure roguelikes: no run is ever fully wasted, because every attempt earns something toward the wider progression arc. In Dead Cells, meta-progression unlocks new starting gear and ability cells that increase power in future runs. In Hades, players upgrade the Infernal Arms, unlock new Boons, and progress the story through the hub regardless of how far they reach in any individual escape attempt. In Slay the Spire, meta-progression unlocks new card options and events that add strategic variety. The design challenge for meta-progression is calibration: too weak and it feels meaningless; too strong and it trivialises the run-level challenge by making the player overpowered. Many roguelites deliberately slow meta-progression to keep individual runs tense for longer. 'Catch-up' meta-progression, where struggling players gain accelerated upgrades, is a common accessibility design choice in mobile roguelites.

A game mechanic in which the death of the player's character is permanent; there is no respawning at a checkpoint, no save reloading, and no second chance. When the character dies, the run (or the entire save file, in its strictest implementation) ends, and the player must start over from the beginning. Permadeath is the defining feature of the roguelike genre, where it serves a specific design purpose: every resource decision, whether to use a healing item now or save it for later, whether to engage or retreat, carries real weight because the consequences are irreversible. This creates a quality of tension and focus impossible to replicate when death has no cost. In some games, permadeath exists as an optional mode: Diablo IV Hardcore, Minecraft Hardcore, XCOM's Ironman mode, and The Binding of Isaac all offer permanent death as a challenge layer on top of a game that normally allows retries. Some narrative games use permadeath for named companions (Fire Emblem's classic mode) where the emotional attachment to characters makes their loss genuinely impactful rather than mechanically inconvenient. A common beginner mistake is assuming permadeath makes games 'unfair'. In well-designed permadeath games, deaths are almost always the result of a learnable mistake, not random bad luck.

A technique where game content (levels, maps, items, quests, enemies, or entire worlds) is created algorithmically at runtime using defined rules and randomised seeds, rather than being hand-crafted by a designer. Procedural generation enables theoretically infinite content variety from a finite set of authored rules, making it a cornerstone of the roguelike and sandbox genres. The technique has been used in games since the 1980s (Rogue, Elite), but has been elevated by modern computational power: No Man's Sky (2016) uses procedural generation to create 18 quintillion unique planets with distinct ecosystems, weather, and terrain. Other major applications include Minecraft's infinite biome generation, Diablo's dungeon layouts, and Path of Exile's modular item affix system. The core trade-off of procedural generation is depth vs. coherence: algorithmically generated content can produce extraordinary variety but sometimes lacks the intentional design beats that make hand-crafted levels feel carefully authored. The best procedurally generated games (Dwarf Fortress, Hades) solve this by using procedural generation for spatial layouts while keeping authored content (story beats, unique items, character writing) hand-made.

Player versus Player, any game mode in which the primary challenge and opposition comes from other human players rather than AI-controlled enemies or environmental hazards. PvP spans an enormous range of formats: ranked ladders in MOBAs and fighting games where individual skill determines outcomes; team-based objective modes in FPS games (capture the flag, bomb defusal, payload); battle royale free-for-alls; world PvP in MMORPGs where any player in designated zones can be attacked; and asymmetric PvP (Dead by Daylight) where players occupy different roles with fundamentally different mechanics. The appeal of PvP is the unpredictability and social stakes that AI cannot replicate; human opponents adapt, counter-strategise, and respond to mind games in ways that make victories feel more meaningful than defeating scripted enemies. Designing balanced PvP requires continuous attention to the 'meta' (the currently dominant strategies and character selections) to prevent a single tactic from rendering all others non-viable. Ranked PvP creates long-term engagement through visible skill progression, while casual unranked modes keep the game accessible to players who want competition without the anxiety of rank loss.

Skill-Based Matchmaking, a system that matches multiplayer players against opponents of statistically similar skill level, using performance metrics such as kill-death ratio, win rate, accuracy, or internal MMR (Matchmaking Rating) calculated from match history. SBMM is deployed in most major competitive multiplayer titles as a fairness and retention mechanism: without it, new players are placed against experienced ones and churn rapidly; with it, players face challenges appropriate to their level and have a more balanced experience. The system became a point of significant player controversy in the Call of Duty franchise following Warzone and Modern Warfare's strict SBMM implementation. Critics argue that strict SBMM eliminates the natural variance of casual lobbies that previously let skilled players enjoy 'easy' lobbies mixed with hard ones, creating a 'sweaty' experience where every match feels equally competitive with no relief. Supporters note that without SBMM, player skill disparity creates unplayable experiences for below-average players who make up the majority of any game's playerbase. The debate revealed a fundamental tension in multiplayer game design: SBMM optimises for fair matches (better for new and average players) while degrading the experience for above-average players who enjoyed the variety of mixed-skill lobbies. Some games have explored 'soft SBMM', weighting skill alongside other factors like party size, connection quality, and map variety to prevent any single dimension from dominating matchmaking decisions.

A playthrough of a video game with the goal of completing it as quickly as possible, typically using a combination of optimised movement strategies, sequence breaks (reaching later game areas before intended), and deliberate exploitation of programming bugs and glitches that manipulate game state in unintended ways. Speedrunning has a substantial community infrastructure: Speedrun.com serves as the primary leaderboard repository across thousands of game categories; GDQ (Games Done Quick) charity marathons broadcast curated speedruns to hundreds of thousands of live viewers; and individual runners build Twitch and YouTube audiences around routing research, world record attempts, and learning guides. The major run categories are: Any% (complete the game by any means, using any discovered glitch or skip, resulting in the fastest possible time regardless of game content missed); 100% (complete all objectives, collectibles, and requirements the game tracks); and Glitchless (complete the game without exploiting programming bugs, testing pure movement and routing optimisation). Games with large speedrunning communities include The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (where a 'wrong warp' glitch allows a sub-6-minute any% from a 30-hour game), Dark Souls, Super Mario 64, and Hades (where the community runs all heat levels and all weapon types). The social and analytical dimensions of speedrunning, routing theory, glitch discovery, record competition, make it a form of competitive play distinct from and parallel to conventional multiplayer.