Hello! Please pop through and read this thread from the beginning to here, the end. It's a very useful historical dive, but I have some more context to add to this particular point and what the term "play-mechanic" means here! https://twitter.com/katewillaert/status/1264630949188456454

This 1823 essay on English tragedy is from the Edinburgh Review. Now, contrary to what examples from the thread suggest, the author (English poet Barry Cornwall, pseudonym of Bryan Procter) is NOT in fact referring to the "mechanics" of a play, but something else entirely!

In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, a group of tradesmen put on a famously bad play for Athenian aristocrats. These tradesmen are called the "mechanicals" as, per the logic of the time, they have jobs (carpentry, weaving) that involve the use and maintenance of machinery.

The joke, in the end, is that they are not artists or aesthetes--they're unlearned craftsmen! And so through Shakespeare's influence "mechanical" enters into drama and literary criticism as a way of suggesting things are amateurish, workmanlike, or egregiously artificial.

Cornwall here is describing the work of dramatist-poet Nicholas Rowe (incidentally, one of the first editors of Shakespeare), and specifically accusing Rowe of too clearly lifting elements of his play "The Fair Penitent" from the work of the Jacobean dramatist Philip Massinger.

So Cornwall, by making Rowe representative of an era when the "poor play-mechanic" was popular, is in fact suggesting this entire generation of writers are simply hacks "mechanically" imitating/stealing from their predecessors with no artistry or innovation.

Back to game studies and "play mechanics"--I'd say games as a form buck these very traditional literary notions. A game is NOT successful UNLESS it brings us into alignment with its clearly signaled "mechanical" components. It's worth us pondering that shift in media priorities!

And if you liked this little bit of transhistorical play history, you should check out GAME STUDIES STUDY BUDDIES, the podcast where @ckunzelman and I read and discuss books of academic game studies and I frequently go on tears about 17th century theater: https://blubrry.com/gssb/