CHAPTER EIGHT HITTING around the bases. In fact, the beginner version of baseball, T-ball, does away with the pitch and jumps straight to the hit. Because at the center of baseball lays the sheer act of whacking something as hard as you can. In talking with game designers, I've sometimes picked up on a note of disdain for hitting as a mechanic. It's easy to write off the swinging of a stick or the smash- ing of your hand into another object as an uninteresting act of sheer brute force. The sentiment seems to be that hitting is so simple and basic that little can be said or explored around hitting. This denies the sheer fun of hitting as a mechanic. It also ignores the subtleties of a basic play mechanic like hitting. Hitting ranges from easy to incredibly difficult, often within the same game. Just look at any sport that involves hitting and you'll see the incredible range of complexity that can be embodied in each swing. Reducing boxing to simply "punching your opponent" ignores all of the myriad types of punches, feints and jabs that exist. Once you get past the spectacle of two humans punching each other, you realize that boxing is an incredibly technical sport with a complex array of hits, jabs, crosses and cuts. The joy that comes from hitting, combined with the way it scales to ability, makes the mechanic of hitting worth a second look by game designers. Hitting is a great exam- ple of play mechanic that scales directly into a robust game mechanic.