TEXT: www.GFX.0fees.net
  
   The Art of Game Design
  
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   The Art of Game Design
  A Book of Lenses 
   Jesse  Schell 
  Carnegie Mellon University 
   AMSTERDAM  • BOSTON  • HEIDELBERG  • LONDON 
   NEW YORK  • OXFORD  • PARIS  •  SAN DIEGO 
   SAN FRANCISCO  • SINGAPORE  • SYDNEY  • TOKYO 
   Morgan Kaufmann Publishers is an imprint of Elsevier 
  
    Morgan Kaufmann Publishers is an imprint of Elsevier. 
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   © 2008 by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 
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   08  09  10  11  12    5  4  3  2  1  
  
    For Nyra
    who always listens  
  
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  vii
   
  Table of Lenses ...................................................................................................................... xvii
   
  Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................xxi
  Hello ......................................................................................................................................... xxiii
  1
   In the Beginning, There Is the 
  Designer ................................................................................... 1 
   
  Magic Words ............................................................................................................................... 1
   
  What Skills Does a Game Designer Need? .......................................................................2
   
  The Most Important Skill ........................................................................................................4
   
  The Five Kinds of Listening ....................................................................................................5
   
  The Secret of the Gifted ..........................................................................................................6
   2 
    The Designer Creates an  Experience ..........  9 
   
  The Game Is Not the Experience .......................................................................................10
   
  Is This Unique to Games? .....................................................................................................11
   
  Three Practical Approaches to Chasing Rainbows .....................................................12
   
  Introspection: Powers, Perils, and Practice .....................................................................14
   
  Dissect Your Feelings .............................................................................................................17
   
  Defeating Heisenberg ...........................................................................................................18
   
  Essential Experience ..............................................................................................................20
    
  All That’s Real Is What You Feel ...........................................................................................21
   3 
    The Experience Rises Out of a
  Game ....................................................................................... 23
   
  A Rant About Definitions .....................................................................................................24
   
  So, What Is a Game? ................................................................................................................26
  vii
  TABLE OF CONTENTS
  
  TABLE OF CONTENTS
  ix
   
  A Short History of Software Engineering .......................................................................81
   
  Risk Assessment and Prototyping .....................................................................................83
   
  Eight Tips for Productive Prototyping .............................................................................86
   
  Closing the Loop .....................................................................................................................91
   
  How Much is Enough? ...........................................................................................................94
   8 
    The Game is Made for a  Player ................... 97
   
  Einstein’s Violin.........................................................................................................................98
   
  Project Yourself ........................................................................................................................99
   
  Demographics ..........................................................................................................................99
   
  The Medium is the Misogynist? ...................................................................................... 102
   
  Psychographics ..................................................................................................................... 108
   9 
    The Experience is in the  Player’s
  Mind  ..................................................................................... 113 
   
  Modeling ................................................................................................................................. 115
      
  Focus     ......................................................................................................................................... 118
   
  Empathy .................................................................................................................................. 123
   
  Imagination ............................................................................................................................ 124
   
  Motivation .............................................................................................................................. 126
      
  Judgment     ................................................................................................................................ 127
   10  Some Elements are Game
  Mechanics ....................................................................... 129  
   
  Mechanic 1: Space ............................................................................................................... 130
   
  Mechanic 2: Objects, Attributes, and States ................................................................ 136
   
  Mechanic 3: Actions ............................................................................................................ 140
   
  Mechanic 4: Rules ................................................................................................................. 144
   
  Mechanic 5: Skill ................................................................................................................... 150
   
  Mechanic 6: Chance ............................................................................................................ 153
  
  TABLE OF CONTENTS
  x
   11  Game Mechanics Must be in
  Balance  .............................................................................. 171 
   
  The Twelve Most Common Types of Game Balance ................................................ 172
   
  Game Balancing Methodologies .................................................................................... 201
   
  Balancing Game Economies ............................................................................................ 203
   
  Dynamic Game Balancing ................................................................................................ 205
   
  The Big Picture ...................................................................................................................... 205
   12   Game Mechanics Support  Puzzles ......... 207 
   The Puzzle of Puzzles .......................................................................................................... 208
   
  Aren’t Puzzles Dead? ........................................................................................................... 209
   
  Good Puzzles ......................................................................................................................... 211
   
  A Final Piece ........................................................................................................................... 219
   13   Players Play Games Through an
  Interface ............................................................................ 221 
   
  Breaking it Down ................................................................................................................. 223
   
  The Loop of Interaction ..................................................................................................... 228
   
  Channels of Information .................................................................................................... 234
      
  Other Interface Tips     ............................................................................................................. 240
   14   Experiences Can be Judged by 
  Their Interest Curves ........................................... 245 
   
  My First Lens .......................................................................................................................... 246
   
   Interest Curves ...................................................................................................................... 247
   
   Patterns Inside Patterns ..................................................................................................... 250
   
  What Comprises Interest? ................................................................................................. 253
   
  Interest Factor Examples ................................................................................................... 258
   
  Putting It All Together ........................................................................................................ 259
  
  TABLE OF CONTENTS
  xi
   15
    One Kind of Experience Is the  Story  ... 261 
   
   Story/Game Duality ............................................................................................................. 262
   
  The Myth of Passive Entertainment .............................................................................. 263
   
  The Dream .............................................................................................................................. 264
   
  The Reality .............................................................................................................................. 264
   
  The Problems ......................................................................................................................... 266
   
  The Dream Reborn .............................................................................................................. 270
   
  Story Tips for Game Designers ........................................................................................ 270
   16
    Story and Game Structures can
  be Artfully Merged with  Indirect
  Control  ............................................................................... 283  
   
  The Feeling of Freedom ..................................................................................................... 284
   
  Indirect Control Method #1: Constraints ..................................................................... 285
   
  Indirect Control Method #2: Goals ................................................................................. 286
   
  Indirect Control Method #3: Interface .......................................................................... 286
   
  Indirect Control Method #4: Visual Design ................................................................. 287
   
  Indirect Control Method #5: Characters ....................................................................... 292
   
  Indirect Control Method #6: Music ................................................................................ 292
   
  Collusion ................................................................................................................................. 293
   17
    Stories and Games Take Place in
  Worlds ................................................................................ 299  
   
  Transmedia Worlds .............................................................................................................. 300
   
  The Power of Pokemon ...................................................................................................... 301
      
  Properties of Transmedia Worlds    .................................................................................... 303
   
  What Successful Transmedia Worlds Have in Common ......................................... 305
   18
    Worlds Contain  Characters ........................... 309  
   
  The Nature of Game Characters ..................................................................................... 310
  
  TABLE OF CONTENTS
  xii
   
  Avatars ..................................................................................................................................... 312
   
  Creating Compelling Game Characters ....................................................................... 314
   19   Worlds Contain  Spaces ..................................... 329
   
  The Purpose of Architecture ............................................................................................ 330
   
  Organizing your Game Space .......................................................................................... 330
   
  Christopher Alexander is a Genius ................................................................................ 334
   
  Real vs. Virtual Architecture .............................................................................................. 338
   
  Level Design ........................................................................................................................... 343
   20   The Look and Feel of a World Is 
  Defined by Its  Aesthetics ................................. 345 
   
  Monet Refuses the Operation ......................................................................................... 346
   
  The Value of Aesthetics ...................................................................................................... 347
   
  Learning to See ..................................................................................................................... 348
   
  How to Let Aesthetics Guide your Design .................................................................. 349
      
  How Much Is Enough?     ........................................................................................................ 350
   
  Use Audio ................................................................................................................................ 351
   
  Balancing Art and Technology ........................................................................................ 352
   21  Some Games are Played with 
  Other Players...............................................................   353 
   
    We Are Not Alone ................................................................................................................. 354
   
    Why We Play With Others .................................................................................................. 354
   22   Other Players Sometimes Form
  Communities  ............................................................... 357 
   
  More than just Other Players ........................................................................................... 358
   
  Ten Tips for Strong Communities ................................................................................... 359
   
  The Challenge of Griefing ................................................................................................. 368
      
  The Future of Game Communities    ................................................................................. 370
  
  TABLE OF CONTENTS
  xiii
   23
    The Designer Usually Works 
  with a Team  .................................................................. 371  
   
  The Secret of Successful Teamwork .............................................................................. 372
      
  Designing Together     ............................................................................................................. 375
   
  Team Communication ........................................................................................................ 376
   24
    The Team Sometimes Communicates
  Through  Documents  ............................................. 381 
   
  The Myth of the Game Design Document .................................................................. 382
   
  The Purpose of Documents .............................................................................................. 382
   
  Types of Game Documents .............................................................................................. 383
   
  So, Where Do I Start? ........................................................................................................... 387
   25
    Good Games Are Created Through
  Playtesting  ..................................................................... 389  
   
  Playtesting .............................................................................................................................. 390
   
  My Terrible Secret ................................................................................................................ 391
   
  Playtest Question the First: Why? ................................................................................... 392
   
  Playtest Question the Second: Who? ............................................................................ 393
   
  Playtest Question the Third: Where? ............................................................................. 394
   
  Playtest Question the Fourth: What? ............................................................................. 396
   
  Playtest Question the Fifth: How? .................................................................................. 396
   26
    The Team Builds a Game 
  with Technology ....................................................... 403  
   
  Technology, At Last .............................................................................................................. 404
   
  Foundational vs. Decorational ......................................................................................... 405
   
  The Hype Cycle ..................................................................................................................... 409
   
  The Innovator’s Dilemma .................................................................................................. 410
  
  TABLE OF CONTENTS
  xiv
   
  The Singularity ...................................................................................................................... 411
   
  Look Into Your Crystal Ball ................................................................................................ 412
   27   Your Game Will Probably Have 
  a Client ............................................................................... 415 
    
  Who Cares What the Client Thinks? ............................................................................... 416
   
  Coping with Bad Suggestions ......................................................................................... 417
   
  Not That Rock ........................................................................................................................ 418
   
  The Three Layers of Desire ................................................................................................ 419
   
  Firenza, 1498 .......................................................................................................................... 419
   28   The Designer Gives the Client 
  a Pitch ................................................................................ 423 
   
    Why Me? .................................................................................................................................. 424
   
  A Negotiation of Power ..................................................................................................... 424
   
  The Hierarchy of Ideas ........................................................................................................ 425
   
  Twelve Tips for a Successful Pitch .................................................................................. 425
   29   The Designer and Client Want 
  the Game to Make a  Profit  ............................ 433 
   
   Love and Money ................................................................................................................... 434
      
  Know Your Business Model    ...............................................................................................435
   
  Units Sold ................................................................................................................................ 436
   
  Breakeven ............................................................................................................................... 436
      
  Know the Top Sellers     ........................................................................................................... 437
   
  Learn the Language ............................................................................................................ 437
   30   Games  Transform Their Players ............... 441 
   
  How Do Games Change Us? ............................................................................................ 442
   
  Can Games Be Good For You? ......................................................................................... 442
  
  TABLE OF CONTENTS
  xv
   
  Can Games Be Bad For You? ............................................................................................. 448
   
  Experiences ............................................................................................................................ 451
   31  Designers Have Certain
  Responsibilities .......................................................... 453  
   
  The Danger of Obscurity ................................................................................................... 454
   
  Being Accountable .............................................................................................................. 455
   
  Your Hidden Agenda .......................................................................................................... 456
   
  The Secret Hidden in Plain Sight .................................................................................... 456
   
  The Ring ................................................................................................................................... 457
   32
    Each Designer has a  Motivation ............. 459  
   The Deepest Theming ........................................................................................................ 460
   33   Goodbye ........................................................................... 463 
   
  All Good Things … ................................................................................................................ 464
   
  Endnotes ................................................................................................................................. 465
   
  Bibliography........................................................................................................................... 477
   
  Index ......................................................................................................................................... 481
  
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  xvii
  TABLE OF LENSES
   Lens #1: The Lens of Essential Experience ....................................................................... 21 
   Lens #2: The Lens of Surprise ................................................................................................ 26 
     Lens #3: The Lens of Fun     ......................................................................................................... 27 
   Lens #4: The Lens of Curiosity .............................................................................................. 30 
   Lens #5: The Lens of Endogenous Value ........................................................................... 32 
   Lens #6: The Lens of Problem Solving ............................................................................... 37
   Lens #7: The Lens of the Elemental Tetrad ....................................................................... 43 
   Lens #8: The Lens of Holographic Design ........................................................................ 46 
   Lens #9: The Lens of Unification .......................................................................................... 53 
   Lens #10: The Lens of Resonance ........................................................................................ 56 
   Lens #11: The Lens of Infinite Inspirationm ..................................................................... 59 
   Lens #12: The Lens of the Problem Statement ............................................................... 62 
   Lens #13: The Lens of the Eight Filters. ..............................................................................  78 
   Lens #14: The Lens of Risk Mitigation ................................................................................ 86
   Lens #15: The Lens of the Toy ............................................................................................... 90 
   Lens #16: The Lens of the Player ....................................................................................... 106 
   Lens #17: The Lens of Pleasure .......................................................................................... 112 
   Lens #18: The Lens of Flow ................................................................................................. 122 
   Lens #19: The Lens of Needs .............................................................................................. 127 
   Lens #20: The Lens of Judgment ...................................................................................... 128
   Lens #21: The Lens of Functional Space ........................................................................ 135 
   Lens #22: The Lens of Dynamic State ............................................................................. 140 
   Lens #23: The Lens of Emergence .................................................................................... 143
   Lens #24: The Lens of Action ............................................................................................. 144 
   Lens #25: The Lens of Goals ............................................................................................... 149 
   Lens #26: The Lens of Rules ................................................................................................ 150 
   Lens #27: The Lens of Skill ................................................................................................... 153 
   Lens #28: The Lens of Expected Value ............................................................................ 167 
   Lens #29: The Lens of Chance ............................................................................................ 169 
  
  xviii
  TABLE OF LENSES
   Lens #30: The Lens of Fairness .......................................................................................... 176 
   Lens #31: The Lens of Challenge ...................................................................................... 179
   Lens #32: The Lens of Meaningful Choices ................................................................... 181 
   Lens #33: The Lens of Triangularity ................................................................................. 182
   Lens #34: The Lens of Skill vs. Chance ............................................................................. 184
   Lens #35: The Lens of Head and Hands ......................................................................... 185 
   Lens #36: The Lens of Competition ................................................................................. 186
   Lens #37: The Lens of Cooperation ................................................................................. 187
   Lens #38: The Lens of Competition vs. Cooperation ................................................. 187 
   Lens #39: The Lens of Time ................................................................................................. 189 
   Lens #40: The Lens of Reward ........................................................................................... 191 
   Lens #41: The Lens of Punishment .................................................................................. 194
   Lens #42: The Lens of Simplicity/Complexity .............................................................. 196 
   Lens #43: The Lens of Elegance ........................................................................................  198 
   Lens #44: The Lens of Character .......................................................................................  199 
   Lens #45: The Lens of Imagination .................................................................................. 201
   Lens #46: The Lens of Economy ........................................................................................ 204
   Lens #47: The Lens of Balance ........................................................................................... 205 
   Lens #48: The Lens of Accessibility .................................................................................. 213
   Lens #49: The Lens of Visible Progress ........................................................................... 214 
   Lens #50: The Lens of Parallelism .....................................................................................  216 
   Lens #51: The Lens of the Pyramid .................................................................................. 217
   Lens #52: The Lens of the Puzzle ......................................................................................  219 
   Lens #53: The Lens of Control ............................................................................................ 222 
   Lens #54: The Lens of Physical Interface ........................................................................ 226 
   Lens #55: The Lens of Virtual Interface ........................................................................... 226
   Lens #56: The Lens of Transparency ................................................................................ 227
   Lens #57: The Lens of Feedback ....................................................................................... 230
   Lens #58: The Lens of Juiciness ......................................................................................... 233 
   Lens #59: The Lens of Channels and Dimensions ...................................................... 238 
   Lens #60: The Lens of Modes ............................................................................................. 240 
   Lens #61: The Lens of the Interest Curve ....................................................................... 252 
   Lens #62: The Lens of Inherent Interest ......................................................................... 254 
   Lens #63: The Lens of Beauty ............................................................................................. 255 
   Lens #64: The Lens of Projection ......................................................................................  257 
   Lens #65: The Lens of the Story Machine ...................................................................... 266 
  
  xix
   Lens #66: The Lens of the Obstacle ................................................................................. 271
   Lens #67: The Lens of Simplicity and Transcendence ............................................... 272 
   Lens #68: The Lens of the Hero’s Journey ...................................................................... 275 
   Lens #69: The Lens of the Weirdest Thing ..................................................................... 279 
   Lens #70: The Lens of Story ................................................................................................ 280 
   Lens #71: The Lens of Freedom .........................................................................................  284 
   Lens #72: The Lens of Indirect Control ........................................................................... 293 
   Lens #73: The Lens of Collusion ........................................................................................ 298 
   Lens #74: The Lens of the World .......................................................................................  307 
   Lens #75: The Lens of the Avatar ......................................................................................  314 
   Lens #76: The Lens of Character Function .................................................................... 316 
   Lens #77: The Lens of Character Traits ............................................................................ 317
   Lens #78: The Lens of the Interpersonal Circumplex ................................................ 319 
   Lens #79: The Lens of the Character Web ..................................................................... 321 
   Lens #80: The Lens of Status .............................................................................................. 323 
   Lens #81: The Lens of Character Transformation ........................................................ 327 
   Lens #82: The Lens of Inner Contradiction ................................................................... 335 
   Lens #83: The Lens of The Nameless Quality ............................................................... 337 
   Lens #84: The Lens of Friendship ..................................................................................... 361
   Lens #85: The Lens of Expression ..................................................................................... 363
   Lens #86: The Lens of Community ................................................................................... 367
   Lens #87: The Lens of Griefing .......................................................................................... 370 
   Lens #88: The Lens of Love ................................................................................................. 375 
   Lens #89: The Lens of the Team ........................................................................................  380 
   Lens #90: The Lens of Documentation ........................................................................... 387 
   Lens #91: The Lens of Playtesting .................................................................................... 401
   Lens #92: The Lens of Technology ................................................................................... 412
   Lens #93: The Lens of the Crystal Ball ............................................................................. 413
   Lens #94: The Lens of the Client ....................................................................................... 420 
   Lens #95: The Lens of the Pitch ......................................................................................... 432 
   Lens #96: The Lens of Profit ................................................................................................ 439 
   Lens #97: The Lens of Transformation ............................................................................ 452 
   Lens #98: The Lens of Responsibility .............................................................................. 457
   Lens #99: The Lens of the Raven .......................................................................................  460 
   Lens #100: The Lens of Your Secret Purpose ................................................................ 461
  TABLE OF LENSES
  
  xx
   I will talk to you of art, 
   For there is nothing else to talk about, 
   For there is nothing else. 
   Life is an obscure hobo, 
   Bumming a ride on the omnibus of art.
   —Maxwell H. Brock 
  
  xxi
   ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    This has been a long project, and so many people have been kind enough to help 
  make it come into being, I know I am going to miss some. A complete list can be 
  found in the acknowledgments section of  http://www.artofgamedesign.com , but I 
  mention people here who really did more than their share. 
    Nyra and Emma, the loves of my life, who always encouraged me, and put up 
  with years of me staring into space and jotting little notes when I should have been, 
  say, mowing the lawn, doing the dishes, or putting out that fire in the backyard. 
    My mother, Susanne Fahringer, who, when I was twelve, understood somehow 
  that Dungeons and Dragons was very, very important. 
    My brother, Ben, who taught me how to play Thunder, a card game he invented 
  in a dream when he was four years old. 
    Jeff McGinley, for putting that whole ice cream cone in his mouth. And for 
  putting up with me for three decades. 
    Reagan Heller, who worked with me for countless hours in countless restau-
  rants, airplanes, and meeting rooms coming up with visualization ideas for the lens 
  images on the card deck, designed the card layouts, and did graphic design for sev-
  eral aspects of the book. 
    Emma Backer, who performed all the Cinderella tasks — typesetting the cards, 
  wrangling the card artists, cleaning up and organizing book images, tracking down 
  copyright holders, and cleaning the ashes from the fireplace. 
    The team at Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann, who kindly let a two-year project take 
  five years: Tim Cox, Georgia Kennedy, Beth Millett, Paul Gottehrer, Chris Simpson, 
  Laura Lewin, and Kathryn Spencer. 
    Everyone at the Disney VR Studio who put up with my rambling theoretical non-
  sense conversations for all those years, especially Mike Goslin, Joe Shochet, Mark 
  Mine, David Rose, Bruce Woodside, Felipe Lara, Gary Daines, Mk Haley, Daniel 
  Aasheim and Jan Wallace. 
    The staff, faculty, and students of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology 
  Center, who graciously let me teach Game Design and Building Virtual Worlds, 
  which forced me to figure all this out. Most especially Don Marinelli, Randy Pausch, 
  xxi
  
  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  xxii
  Brenda Harger, Ralph Vituccio, Chris Klug, Charles Palmer, Ruth Comley, Josh 
  Yelon, and Drew Davidson. 
   Randy Pausch deserves a double thank you, for his magical lens that let him see 
  that I could do this when I didn’t believe that I could. Thanks, Randy.  
  
  xxiii
    Hello there! Come in, come in! What a nice surprise — I had no idea you would 
  be visiting today. I’m sorry if it is a little messy in here, I’ve been writing. Please — 
  make yourself comfortable. Good, good. Now let’s see… where should we begin? 
  Oh — I should introduce myself! 
     My name is Jesse Schell, and I have always loved designing games. Here’s 
  picture of me: 
    I was shorter then. Since that picture was taken, I’ve done a lot of different things. 
  I’ve worked in circuses as a professional juggler. I’ve been a writer, comedian,
  and magician’s apprentice. I’ve worked at IBM and Bell Communications Research 
  as a software engineer. I’ve designed and developed interactive theme park rides 
  and massively multiplayer games for the Walt Disney Company. I’ve started my 
  own game studio, and become a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. But when 
  people ask me what I do, I tell them that I am a game designer. 
    I mention all this only because at various times in this book, I will be draw-
  ing examples from these experiences, since every single one of them has taught me 
  valuable lessons about the art of game design. That might sound surprising now, 
  but hopefully, as you read this book, it will help you see the ways that game design 
  meaningfully connects to the many experiences in your own life. 
  HELLO
  
   HELLO
  xxiv
   One thing I should clarify — while the goal of this book is primarily to teach 
  you how to be a better videogame designer, many of the principles we explore will 
  have little to do with videogames specifically — you will find they are more broadly 
  applicable than that. The good news is that much of what you read here will work 
  equally well no matter what kind of game you are designing — digital, analog, or 
  otherwise. 
    What is Game Design? 
   As we begin, it is important for us to be absolutely clear about what is meant by 
  “game design. ” After all, it is what the whole rest of the book is about, and some 
  people seem a bit confused about it. 
   Game design is the act of deciding what a game should be. 
   That’s it. On the surface, it sounds too simple.
   “You mean you design a game by just making one decision? ” 
   No. To decide what a game is, you must make hundreds, usually thousands of 
  decisions. 
   “Don’t I need special equipment to design a game? ” 
   No. Since game design is simply decision making, you can actually design a 
  game in your head. Usually, though, you will want to write down these decisions, 
  because our memories are weak, and it is easy to miss something important if you 
  don’t write things down. Further, if you want other people to help you make deci-
  sions, or to help build the game, you need to communicate these decisions to them 
  somehow, and writing them down is a good way to do that. 
   “What about programming? Don’t game designers have to be computer 
  programmers? ”
   No, they don’t. First of all, many games can be played without the use of com-
  puters or technology; board games, card games, and athletic games, for example. 
  Secondly, even for computer games or videogames, it is possible to make the deci-
  sions about what those games should be without knowing all the technical details 
  of how those decisions are carried out. Of course, it can be a tremendous help if you 
  do know these details, just as being a skilled writer or artist can help. This allows 
  you to make better decisions more quickly, but it is not strictly necessary. It is like 
  the relationship between architects and carpenters: an architect does not need to 
  know everything the carpenter knows, but an architect must know everything the 
  carpenter is capable of. 
   “So, you mean that the game designer just comes up with the story for the 
  game?”
   No. Story decisions are one aspect of a game design, but there are many, many 
  others. Decisions about rules, look and feel, timing, pacing, risk-taking, rewards, 
  punishments, and everything else the player experiences is the responsibility of the 
  game designer. 
  
  xxv
    “So the game designer makes decisions about what the game should be, writes 
  them down, and moves on? ”  
    Almost never. None of us has a perfect imagination, and the games we design in 
  our heads and on paper almost never come out quite the way we expected. Many 
  decisions are impossible to make until the designer has seen the game in action. For 
  this reason, the designer is usually involved in the development of a game from the 
  very beginning to the very end, making decisions about how the game should be all 
  along the way. 
    It is important to make the distinction between  “game developer ” and “ game 
  designer. ”  A game developer is anyone who has any involvement with the creation 
  of the game at all. Engineers, animators, modelers, musicians, writers, producers 
  and designers who work on games are all game developers. Game designers are just 
  one species of game developer. 
    “So, the game designer is the only one allowed to make decisions about the 
  game?”
    Let’s turn that around: Anyone who makes decisions about how the game should 
  be is a game designer. Designer is a role, not a person. Almost every developer on a 
  team makes some decisions about how the game will be, just through the act of cre-
  ating content for the game. These decisions are game design decisions, and when 
  you make them, you are a game designer. For this reason, no matter what your role 
  on a game development team, an understanding of the principles of game design 
  will make you better at what you do. 
     Waiting for Mendeleev 
    The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new 
  eyes. 
  — Marcel Proust 
    The goal of this book is to make you the best game designer you can be. 
    Unfortunately, at present, there is no  “unified theory of game design, ” no simple 
  formula that shows us how to make good games. So what can we do? 
    We are in a position something like the ancient alchemists. In the time before 
  Mendeleev discovered the periodic table, showing how all the fundamental elements 
  were interrelated, alchemists relied on a patchwork quilt of rules of thumb about 
  how different chemicals could combine. These were necessarily incomplete, some-
  times incorrect, and often semi-mystical, but by using these rules, the alchemists 
  were able to accomplish surprising things, and their pursuit of the truth eventually 
  led to modern chemistry. 
    Game designers await their Mendeleev. At this point we have no periodic table. 
  We have our own patchwork of principles and rules, which, less than perfect, 
  allows us to get the job done. I have tried to gather together the best of these into 
  WAITING FOR MENDELEEV
  
   HELLO
  xxvi
  one place, so that you can study them, consider them, make use of them, and see 
  how others have used them. 
   Good game design happens when you view your game from as many perspec-
  tives as possible. I refer to these perspectives as  lenses, because each one is a way 
  of viewing your design. The lenses are small sets of questions you should ask your-
  self about your design. They are not blueprints or recipes, but tools for examining 
  your design. They will be introduced, one at a time, throughout the book. A deck 
  of cards, with one card summarizing each lens, has been created to accompany this 
  book, and is available at www.artofgamedesign.com, to make it easy to use the 
  lenses while you are designing. 
   None of the lenses are perfect, and none are complete, but each is useful in one 
  context or another, for each gives a unique perspective on your design. The idea is 
  that even though we can’t have one complete picture, by taking all of these small 
  imperfect lenses and using them to view your problem from many different perspec-
  tives, you will be able to use your discretion to figure out the best design. I wish we 
  had one all-seeing lens. We don’t. So, instead of discarding the many imperfect ones 
  we do have, it is wisest to collect and use as wide a variety of them as possible, for 
  as we will see, game design is more art than science, more like cooking than chem-
  istry, and we must admit the possibility that our Mendeleev will never come. 
   Focus on Fundamentals 
   Many people assume that to best study the principles of game design, one would 
  naturally study the most modern, complex, high-tech games that are available. 
  This approach is completely wrong. Videogames are just a natural growth of tradi-
  tional games into a new medium. The rules that govern them are still the same. An 
  architect must understand how to design a shed before he can design a skyscraper, 
  and so, we will often be studying some of the very simplest games. Some of these 
  will be videogames, but some will be far simpler: Dice games. Card games. Board 
  games. Playground games. If we cannot understand the principles of these games, 
  how can we have a hope of understanding more complex games? Some will argue 
  that these games are old, and therefore not worth studying, but as Thoreau said, 
  “We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. ” A game is a game is a 
  game. The principles that make the classic games fun are the same principles that 
  make the most modern games fun. The classic games have the added advantage 
  that they have withstood the tests of time. Their success is not due to the novelty of 
  their technology, which is the case with many modern games. These classic games 
  have deeper qualities that, as game designers, we must learn to understand. 
   As well as a focus on classic games, this book will strive to deliver the deep-
  est and most fundamental principles of game design, as opposed to genre-specific 
  principles ( “Fifteen tips for a better story-based first-person shooter! ”), because gen-
  res come and go, but the basic principles of game design are principles of human 
  psychology that have been with us for ages, and will be with us for ages to come. 
  
  xxvii
  Well-versed in these fundamentals, you will be able to master any genre that 
  appears, and even invent new genres of your own. As opposed to other books on 
  game design, whose goal often seems to be to cover as much ground as possible, 
  this book will not strive to cover ground, but to teach you to dig in the most fertile 
  places. 
    And though this book will teach you principles you will be able to use to create 
  traditional board and card games, it is very much slanted toward the videogame 
  industry. Why? Because a game designer’s job is to create new games. The explo-
  sion of computer technology over the last thirty years has allowed for innovation 
  in the field of game design such as the world has never seen. There are more game 
  designers alive today than have ever been alive in all of human history. Chances 
  are, if you want to create games, you will be creating them somewhere on the cut-
  ting edge of this new technology, and this book is prepared to show you how to do 
  just that, although the principles here will work just as well with more traditional 
  game genres. 
   Talk to Strangers 
    Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly enter-
  tained angels 
  — Hebrews 13:2 
    Game developers have a reputation for xenophobia, that is, fear of strangers. By 
  this I mean not unfamiliar individuals, but rather unfamiliar techniques, practices, 
  and principles. It almost seems like they believe that if it didn’t originate in the 
  game industry, it isn’t worth considering. The truth is really that game develop-
  ers are usually just too busy to look outside their immediate surroundings. Making 
  good games is hard, so developers keep their heads down, stay focused, and get 
  the job done. They usually don’t have the time to seek out new techniques, figure 
  out how to integrate them into their games, and take the risk that a new technique 
  might fail. So, they play it safe, and stick with what they know, which unfortunately 
  leads to a lot of the “cookie-cutter ” game titles that you see on the market. 
    But to succeed, to create something great and innovative, you have to do some-
  thing different. This is not a book about how to make cookie-cutter games. It is a 
  book about how to create great new designs. If you were surprised by the focus 
  this book places on non-computer games, you will be even more surprised to see 
  how it uses principles, methods, and examples from things that aren’t even games. 
  Examples from music, architecture, film, science, painting, literature, and everything 
  else under the sun will be pulled in. And why not? Why should we have to develop 
  all our principles from scratch, when hard work has been going on in other fields, 
  sometimes for hundreds or thousands of years? Design principles will come from 
  everywhere because design is everywhere, and  design is the same everywhere . 
  TALK TO STRANGERS
  
   HELLO
  xxviii
  Not only will this book draw design inspiration from everywhere, it will persuade 
  you to do the same. Everything you know and everything you have experienced is 
  fair game at the game design table. 
   It does not make much difference what a person studies. All knowledge 
  is related, and the man who studies anything, if he keeps at it, will become 
  learned. 
  — Hypatia 
   The Map 
   Game design is not an easy subject to write about. Lenses and fundamentals are 
  useful tools, but to truly understand game design is to understand an incredibly 
  complex web of creativity, psychology, art, technology, and business. Everything in 
  this web is connected to everything else. Changing one element affects all the oth-
  ers, and the understanding of one element influences the understanding of all of the 
  others. Most experienced designers have built up this web in their minds, slowly, 
  over many years, learning the elements and relationships by trial and error. And 
  this is what makes game design so hard to write about. Books are necessarily linear. 
  One idea must be presented at a time. For this reason, many game design books 
  have an incomplete feeling to them — like a guided nighttime tour with a flashlight, 
  the reader sees a lot of interesting things, but can’t really comprehend how they all 
  fit together. 
   Game design is an adventure, and adventure needs a map. For this book, I 
  have created a map that shows the web of game design relationships. You can see 
  the complete map near the end of the book, but to see the entire map at once is 
  confusing and overwhelming. Picasso once said,  “To create, one must first destroy. ”
  And so we will. We set everything aside, and begin our map as a blank slate. As 
  we do this, I encourage you, too, to set aside your preconceptions about game 
  design, so that you can approach this difficult but fascinating subject with an 
  open mind. 
   Chapter one will begin by adding a single element, the designer. Successive 
  chapters will add other elements, one at a time, gradually building up the complex 
  system of relationships between designer, player, game, team, and client, so you can 
  see how they fit together, and why they fit together the way they do. By the end of 
  the book, you will have, both on paper and in your mind, a map of these relation-
  ships. Of course, the map on paper is not the important one — the important one is 
  the one in your mind. And the map is not the territory. It will necessarily be imper-
  fect. But hopefully, after this book helps to create a map of relationships in your 
  mind, you will test your mental map against reality, altering it and augmenting it, as 
  you find parts of it that can be improved. Every designer goes through the journey 
  of building their own personal map of these relationships. If you are new to game 
  
  xxix
  design, this book should be able to give you the beginnings of your map. If you are 
  already a seasoned game designer, I hope that this book can give you some ideas 
  about how to improve the map you have. 
   Learning to Think 
    Every truth has four corners: as a teacher I give you one corner, and it is for you 
  to find the other three. 
  — Confucius 
    What is Confucius talking about? Shouldn’t a good teacher show you all four 
  corners, laying everything out plainly? No. To truly learn, remember, and under-
  stand, your mind must be in a state of questing, of seeking to find knowledge. If it 
  is not in this state, a state of really wanting to deeply understand, the wisest prin-
  ciples will roll off you like water off a duck. There will be times in this book where 
  things will not be laid out plainly — times where things are intentionally less clear 
  so that when you do uncover the truth, it means something to you. 
    There is another reason for this sometimes cryptic approach. As discussed 
  earlier, game design is not an exact science. It is full of mysteries and contradic-
  tions. Our set of lenses will be incomplete and imperfect. To become a great game 
  designer, it is not enough to be familiar with the set of principles this book has to 
  offer. You must be ready to think for yourself, to figure out why certain principles 
  don’t work in certain cases, and to invent new principles of your own. We await our 
  Mendeleev. Perhaps it is you. 
    Why I Hate Books 
    I hate books, for they only teach people to talk about what they don’t 
  understand. 
  — Jean-Jacques Rousseau 
    It is very important to have a balanced approach to study and practice. 
  — The Dalai Lama 
    Please do not think that reading this book, or any book, will make you into a 
  game designer, much less a great game designer. Game design is not a set of 
  principles, it is an activity. You could no sooner become a singer, pilot, or bas-
  ketball player by reading a book than you could become a game designer. There 
  is only one path to becoming a game designer, and that is the path of designing 
  WHY I HATE BOOKS
  
   HELLO
  xxx
  games — and more to the point, designing games that people really like. That 
  means that simply jotting down your game idea isn’t enough. You must build the 
  game, play it yourself, and let others play it. When it doesn’t satisfy (and it won’t), 
  you must change it. And change it. And change it again, dozens of times, until 
  you have created a game that people actually enjoy playing. When you have been 
  through this a few times, then you will start to understand what game design is. 
  There’s an saying among game designers:  “Your first ten games will suck — so 
  get them out of the way fast. ” The principles in this book will help to guide your 
  designs, and give you useful perspectives on how to make better designs faster, but 
  you can only become a good designer through practice. If you are not really inter-
  ested in becoming a good game designer, put this book down now. It has nothing 
  for you. But if you truly do want to be a game designer, then this book is not an 
  end, but a beginning —the beginning of a continuous process of study, practice, 
  assimilation, and synthesis that is going to last the rest of your life.  
  
  CHAPTER
  1
   In the Beginning, 
  There Is the Designer  
  1
  ONE
   Magic Words 
   Would-be designers often ask me,  “How do you become a game designer? ” And the 
  answer is easy:  “Design games. Start now! Don’t wait! Don’t even finish this con-
  versation! Just start designing! Go! Now! ”
   And some of them do just that. But many have a crisis of confidence, and feel 
  stuck in a catch-22: If only game designers can design games, and you can only 
  become a game designer by designing games, how can anyone ever get started? If 
  this is how you feel, the answer is easy. Just say these magic words: 
   I am a game designer  
   I’m serious. Say them out loud, right now. Don’t be shy — there’s no one here 
  but us. 
  F I G U R E
  1.1
  
  2
   Did you do it? If so, congratulations. You are now a game designer. You might 
  feel, at this moment, that you aren’t really a game designer yet, but that you’re  just 
  pretending to be one. And that’s fine, because as we’ll explore later, people become 
  what they pretend to be. Just go on pretending, doing the things you think a game 
  designer would do, and before long, to your surprise, you will find you are one. If 
  your confidence wavers, just repeat the magic words again:  I am a game designer . 
  Sometimes, I repeat them like this: 
    Who are you? 
   I am a game designer . 
    No, you’re not. 
   I am a game designer . 
    What kind of a designer? 
   I am a game designer . 
    You mean you play games. 
   I am a game designer . 
   This game of confidence building may seem silly at first. But it is far from the sil-
  liest thing you will do as a designer. And it is terribly important that you get good at 
  building your confidence, for doubts about your abilities will forever plague you. As a 
  novice designer, you will think  “I’ve never done this — I don’t know what I’m doing. ”
  Once you have a little experience, you will think  “My skills are so narrow — this new 
  title is different. Maybe I just got lucky last time. ” And when you are a seasoned 
  designer, you will think  “The world is different now. Maybe I’ve lost my touch. ”
   Blow away these useless thoughts. They can’t help you. When a thing must be 
  attempted, one must never think about possibility or impossibility. If you look at 
  the great creative minds, all so different, you will find they have one thing in com-
  mon: They lack a fear of ridicule. Some of the greatest innovations have come from 
  people who only succeeded because they were too dumb to know that what they 
  were doing was impossible. Game design is decision making, and decisions must be 
  made with confidence. 
   Will you fail sometimes? Yes you will. You will fail again, and again, and again. 
  You will fail many, many more times than you will succeed. But these failures are 
  your only path to success. You will come to love your failures, because each failure 
  brings you a step closer to a truly phenomenal game. There is a saying among jug-
  glers:  “If you aren’t dropping, you aren’t learning. And if you aren’t learning, you 
  aren’t a juggler. ” The same is true for game design: If you aren’t failing, you aren’t 
  trying hard enough, and you aren’t really a game designer. 
   What Skills Does a Game Designer Need? 
   In short, all of them. Almost anything that you can be good at can become a useful 
  skill for a game designer. Here are some of the big ones, listed alphabetically: 
   ●  Animation — Modern games are full of characters that need to seem alive. The 
  very word  “animation” means “to give life. ” Understanding the powers and limits 
  CHAPTER ONE • IN THE BEGINNING, THERE IS THE DESIGNER
  
  3
  of character animation will let you open the door for clever game design ideas 
  the world has yet to see. 
   ●  Anthropology — You will be studying your audience in their natural habitat, try-
  ing to figure out their heart’s desire, so that your games might satisfy that desire. 
   ●  Architecture — You will be designing more than buildings — you’ll  be design-
  ing whole cities and worlds. Familiarity with the world of architecture, that is, 
  understanding the relationship between people and spaces, will give you a tre-
  mendous leg up in creating game worlds.  
   ●  Brainstorming — You will need to create new ideas by the dozens, nay, by the 
  hundreds. 
   ●  Business — The game industry is just that, an industry. Most games are made 
  to make money. The better you understand the business end of things, the better 
  chance you have of making the game of your dreams. 
   ●  Cinematography — Many games will have movies in them. Almost all modern 
  videogames have a virtual camera. You need to understand the art of cinematog-
  raphy if you want to deliver an emotionally compelling experience. 
   ●  Communication — You will need to talk with people in every discipline listed 
  here, and even more. You will need to resolve disputes, solve problems of mis-
  communication, and learn the truth about how your teammates, your client, and 
  your audience really feel about your game. 
   ●  Creative Writing — You will be creating entire fictional worlds, populations to 
  live in them, and deciding the events that will happen there. 
   ●  Economics — Many modern games feature complex economies of game resources. 
  An understanding of the rules of economics can be surprisingly helpful. 
   ●  Engineering — Modern videogames involve some of the most complex engi-
  neering in the world today, with some titles counting their lines of code in the 
  millions. New technical innovations make new kinds of gameplay possible. 
  Innovative game designers must understand both the limits and the powers that 
  each technology brings. 
   ●  History — Many games are placed in historical settings. Even ones placed in fan-
  tasy settings can draw incredible inspiration from history. 
   ●  Management — Any time a team works together toward a goal, there must be 
  some management. Good designers can succeed even when management is bad, 
  secretly  “ managing from below ” to get the job done. 
   ●  Mathematics — Games are full of mathematics, probability, risk analyses, com-
  plex scoring systems, not to mention the mathematics that stands behind com-
  puter graphics and computer science in general. A skilled designer must not be 
  afraid to delve into math from time to time. 
   ●  Music — Music is the language of the soul. If your games are going to truly 
  touch people, to immerse, and embrace them, they cannot do it without music. 
  WHAT SKILLS DOES A GAME DESIGNER NEED?
  
  CHAPTER ONE • IN THE BEGINNING, THERE IS THE DESIGNER
  4
   ●  Psychology — Your goal is to make a human being happy. You must understand 
  the workings of the human mind or you are designing in the dark. 
   ●  Public Speaking — You will frequently need to present your ideas to a group. 
  Sometimes you will speak to solicit their feedback, sometimes you will speak to 
  persuade them of the genius of your new idea. Whatever the reason, you must 
  be confident, clear, natural, and interesting, or people will be suspicious that you 
  don’t know what you are doing. 
   ●  Sound Design — Sound is what truly convinces the mind that it is in a place; in 
  other words,  “hearing is believing. ” 
   ●  Technical Writing — You need to create documents that clearly describe your 
  complex designs without leaving any holes or gaps. 
   ●  Visual Arts — Your games will be full of graphic elements. You must be fluent in 
  the language of graphic design and know how to use it to create the feeling you 
  want your game to have.  
   And of course, there are many more. Daunting, isn’t it? How could anyone pos-
  sibly master all of these things? The truth is that no one can. But the more of these 
  things you are comfortable working with, however imperfectly, the better off you 
  will be. This is another reason that game designers must be confident and fearless. 
  But there is one skill that is the key to all the others. 
    The Most Important Skill 
   Of all the skills mentioned in the previous section, one is far and away the most 
  important, and it sounds so strange to most people that I didn’t even list it. Many 
  people guess “creativity, ” and I would argue that this is probably the second most 
  important skill. Some guess “critical thinking ” or “logic, ” since game design is about 
  decision making. These are indeed important, but by no means the most important 
  skills. 
   Some say  “communication,” which starts to get close. The word communica-
  tion has unfortunately become corrupted over the centuries. It once referred to an 
  exchange of ideas, but now has become a synonym for talking, as in  “I have some-
  thing to communicate to you. ” Talking is certainly an important skill, but good com-
  munication and good game design are rooted in something far more basic and far 
  more important. 
   Listening. 
   The most important skill for a game designer is listening. 
   Game designers must listen to many things. These can be grouped into five 
  major categories: Team, Audience, Game, Client, and Self. Most of this book will be 
  about how to listen to these five things. 
   This may sound absurd to you. Is listening even a skill? We are not equipped 
  with “earlids. ” How can we help but listen? 
  
  5
   By listening, I don’t mean merely hearing what is said. I mean a deeper listen-
  ing, a thoughtful listening. For example, you are at work, and you see your friend 
  Fred.  “Hi, Fred, How are you? ” you say. Fred frowns, looks down, shifts his weight 
  uncomfortably, seems to be hunting for words, and then says quietly, without eye 
  contact “Uh, fine, I guess. ” And then, he collects himself, takes a breath, and looks 
  you in the eye as he determinedly, but not convincingly, says a little louder  “ I’m, 
  uh, fine. How are you? ”
   So, how is Fred? His words say  “He’s fine. ” Great. Fred is fine. If you are just 
  “surface listening, ” you might draw that conclusion. But if you listen more deeply, 
  paying full attention to Fred’s body language, subtle facial expression, tone of voice 
  and gestures, you might hear a very different message:  “Actually, I’m not fine. I have 
  a serious problem that I think I might want to discuss with you. But I won’t do that 
  unless I get some kind of commitment from you that you really care about my prob-
  lem, because it is kind of a personal issue. If you don’t want to get involved with it, 
  though, I won’t bother you with it, and I’ll just pretend that everything is okay. ”  
   All of that was right there, in Fred’s  “I’m fine. ” And if you were listening deeply 
  to what he said, you heard it all; clear as a bell, plain as day, as if he’d said it out 
  loud. This is the kind of listening that game designers must engage in, day in and 
  day out, with every decision that they make. 
   When you listen thoughtfully you observe everything and constantly ask yourself 
  questions.  “Is that right? ” “Why is it that way? ” “Is this how she really feels? ” “ Now 
  that I know that, what does it mean? ”  
   Game designer Brian Moriarty once pointed out that there was a time when we 
  didn’t use the word  “ listen, ”  instead we said  “ list! ”  And where did this come from? 
  Well, what do we do when we listen? We tip our head to one side — our head liter-
  ally lists, as a boat at sea. And when we tip to one side, we put ourselves off bal-
  ance; we accept the possibility of upset. When we listen deeply we put ourselves in 
  a position of risk. We accept that possibility that what we hear may upset us, may 
  cause everything we know to be contradicted. It is the ultimate in open-mindedness. 
  It is the only way to learn the truth. You must approach everything as a child does, 
  assuming nothing, observing everything, listening as Herman Hesse describes in 
  Siddhartha : 
   To listen with a silent heart, with a waiting, open soul. Without passion, with-
  out desire, without judgment, without rebuke. 
   The Five Kinds of Listening 
   Because game design is such an interconnected web, we will be visiting and revisiting 
  the five kinds of listening, and exploring their interconnections throughout this book. 
   You will need to listen to your  team (Chapters 23 and 24), since you will be 
  building your game and making crucial game design decisions together with them. 
  Remember that big list of skills? Together, your team might have all of them. If you 
  THE FIVE KINDS OF LISTENING
  
  CHAPTER ONE • IN THE BEGINNING, THERE IS THE DESIGNER
  6
  can listen deeply to your team, and truly communicate with them, you will all func-
  tion as one unit, as if you all shared the same skills. 
   You will need to listen to your  audience (Chapters 8, 9, 21, 22, and 30) because 
  these are the people who will be playing your game. Ultimately, if they aren’t happy 
  with your game, you have failed. And the only way to know what will make them 
  happy is to listen to them deeply, getting to know them better than they know 
  themselves. 
   You will need to listen to your  game (most chapters in the book). What does 
  this even mean? It means you will get to know your game inside and out. Like a 
  mechanic who can tell what is wrong with a car by listening to the engine, you will 
  get to know what is wrong with your game by listening to it run. 
   You will need to listen to your  client (Chapters 27–29). The client is the one 
  who is paying you to design the game, and if you don’t give them what they want, 
  they’ll go to someone else who does. Only by listening to them, deeply, will you be 
  able to tell what they really want, deep in their hearts. 
   And last, you will need to listen to your  self (Chapters 1, 6, and 32). This sounds 
  easy, but for many, it is the most difficult kind of listening. If you can master it, 
  however, it will be one of your most powerful tools, and the secret behind your tre-
  mendous creativity. 
   The Secret of the Gifted 
   After all that fancy talk, your confidence might be fading already. You might be 
  wondering whether game design is really for you. You might have noticed that 
  skilled game designers seem to have a special gift for the work. It comes easily and 
  naturally to them, and though you love games, you wonder if you are gifted enough 
  to succeed as a designer. Well, here is a little secret about gifts. There are two kinds. 
  First, there is the innate gift of a given skill. This is the minor gift. If you have this 
  gift, a skill such as game design, mathematics, or playing the piano comes natu-
  rally to you. You can do it easily, almost without thinking. But you don’t necessar-
  ily enjoy doing it. There are millions of people with minor gifts of all kinds, who, 
  though skilled, never do anything great with their gifted skill, and this is because 
  they lack the major gift. 
   The major gift is love of the work. This might seem backward. How can love of 
  using a skill be more important than the skill itself? It is for this simple reason: If 
  you have the major gift, the love of designing games, you will design games using 
  whatever limited skills you have. And you will keep doing it. And your love for the 
  work will shine through, infusing your work with an indescribable glow that only 
  comes from the love of doing it. And through practice, your game design skills, like 
  muscles, will grow and become more powerful, until eventually your skills will be 
  as great, or greater than, those of someone who only has the minor gift. And people 
  will say,  “Wow. That one is a truly gifted game designer. ” They will think you have 
  the minor gift, of course, but only you will know the secret source of your skill, 
  which is the major gift: love of the work. 
  
  7
   But maybe you aren’t sure if you have the major gift. You aren’t sure if you truly 
  love game design. I have encountered many students who started designing games 
  just to see what it was like, only to find that to their surprise, they truly love the 
  work. I have also encountered those who were certain that they were destined to be 
  game designers. Some of these even had the minor gift. But when they experienced 
  what game design really was like, they realized it wasn’t for them. 
   There is only one way to find out if you have the major gift. Start down the path, 
  and see if it makes your heart sing. 
   So, recite your magic words, for down the path we go! 
   I am a game designer.  
   I am a game designer . 
   I am a game designer . 
   I am a game designer .  
  THE SECRET OF THE GIFTED
  
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  CHAPTER
  9
   The Designer Creates 
  an Experience 
  9
   TWO 
  F I G U R E
  2.1
  
  CHAPTER TWO • THE DESIGNER CREATES AN EXPERIENCE
  10
   I already know the ending / 
  it’s the part that makes your face implode /
  I don’t know what makes your face implode /
   but that’s the way the movie ends.
  – They Might Be Giants,  Experimental Film 
  Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or the 
  soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?
  – Edgar Allen Poe, The Philosophy of Composition 
   In the last chapter we established that everything begins with the game designer, 
  and that the game designer needs certain skills. Now it is time to begin talking 
  about what a game designer uses those skills for. Put another way, we need to ask 
  “What is the game designer’s goal? ” At first, the answer seems obvious: a game 
  designer’s goal is to design games. 
   But this is wrong. 
   Ultimately, a game designer does not care about games. Games are merely a 
  means to an end. On their own, games are just artifacts — clumps of cardboard, 
  or bags of bits. Games are worthless unless people play them. Why is this? What 
  magic happens when games are played? 
   When people play games, they have an experience. It is this experience that the 
  designer cares about. Without the experience, the game is worthless. 
   I will warn you right now, we are about to enter territory that is very difficult 
  to talk about. Not because it is unfamiliar — in fact, quite the opposite. It is hard 
  to talk about because it is too familiar. Everything we’ve ever seen (look at that 
  sunset!), done (have you ever flown a plane?), thought (why is the sky blue?), or 
  felt (this snow is so cold!) has been an experience. By definition, we can’t experi-
  ence anything that is  not an experience. Experiences are so much a part of us, they 
  are hard to think about (even thinking about experiences is an experience). But, as 
  familiar as we are with experiences, they are very hard to describe. You can’t see 
  them, touch them, or hold them — you can’t even really share them. No two peo-
  ple can have identical experiences of the same thing — each person’s experience of 
  something is completely unique. 
   And this is the paradox of experiences. On one level, they are shadowy and nebu-
  lous, and on another, they are all we know. But as tricky as experiences can be,  creat-
  ing them is all a game designer really cares about. We cannot shy away from them, 
  retreating into the concreteness of our material game. We must use every means we 
  can muster to comprehend, understand, and master the nature of human experience. 
   The Game Is Not the Experience 
   We must be absolutely clear on this point before we can proceed. The game is not 
  the experience. The game enables the experience, but it  is not the experience. This 
  is a hard concept for some people to grasp. The ancient Zen question addresses this 
  
  11
  directly:  “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a 
  sound? ”  This has been repeated so often that it sounds hackneyed, but it is  exactly 
  what we are talking about. If our definition of  “ sound ”  is air molecules vibrating, 
  then yes, the tree makes a sound. If our definition of sound is the  experience of 
  hearing a sound, then the answer is no, the tree makes no sound when no one is 
  there. As designers, we don’t really care about the tree and how it falls — we care 
  only about the experience of hearing it. The tree is just a means to an end. And if 
  no one is there to hear it, well, we don’t care at all. 
    Game designers only care about what  seems to exist. The player and the game 
  are real. The experience is imaginary — but game designers are judged by the qual-
  ity of this imaginary thing because it is the reason people play games. 
   If we could, through some high-tech magic, create experiences for people directly, 
  with no underlying media — no game boards, no computers, no screens — we 
  would do it. In a sense, this is the dream of  “artificial reality ” — to be able to create 
  experiences that are in no way limited by the constraints of the medium that delivers 
  the experiences. It is a beautiful dream, but only a dream. We cannot create expe-
  riences directly. Perhaps in the distant future, using technologies hard to imagine, 
  such a thing could happen. Time will tell. For now, we live in the present, where all 
  we can do is create artifacts (rule sets, game boards, computer programs) that are 
  likely to create certain kinds of experiences when a player interacts with them. 
    And it is this that makes game design so very hard. Like building a ship in a bot-
  tle, we are far removed from what we are actually trying to create. We create an arti-
  fact that a player interacts with, and cross our fingers that the experience that takes 
  place during that interaction is something they will enjoy. We never truly see the 
  output of our work, since it is an experience had by someone else and, ultimately, 
  unsharable. 
    This is why deep listening is so essential for a game design. 
   Is This Unique to Games? 
    You might well ask what is so special about games, compared to other types of 
  experiences, that requires us to get into all of this touchy-feely experience stuff. And 
  really, on one level, there is nothing special about games in this regard. Designers of 
  all types of entertainment — books, movies, plays, music, rides, everything — have 
  to cope with the same issue: How can you create something that will generate a cer-
  tain experience when a person interacts with it? 
   But the split between artifact and experience is much more obvious for game 
  design than it is for other types of entertainment, for a not-so-obvious reason. Game 
  designers have to cope with much more interaction than the designers of more lin-
  ear experiences. The author of a book or screenplay is designing a linear experience.
  There is a fairly direct mapping between what they create and what the reader or
  viewer experiences. Game designers don’t have it so easy. We give the player 
  a great deal of control over the pacing and sequence of events in the experience. 
  IS THIS UNIQUE TO GAMES?
  
  CHAPTER TWO • THE DESIGNER CREATES AN EXPERIENCE
  12
  We even throw in random events! This makes the distinction between artifact and 
  experience much more obvious than it is for linear entertainment. At the same time, 
  though, it makes it much harder to be certain just what experience is really going to 
  arise in the mind of the player. 
   So, why do we do it? What is so special about game experiences that we would 
  give up the luxuries of control that linear entertainers enjoy? Are we simply maso-
  chists? Do we just do it for the challenge? No. As with everything else game design-
  ers do, we do it for the experience it creates. There are certain feelings: feelings of 
  choice, feelings of freedom, feelings of responsibility, feelings of accomplishment, 
  feelings of friendship, and many others, which only game-based experiences seem 
  to offer. This is why we go through all the trouble — to generate experiences that 
  can be had no other way. 
   Three Practical Approaches to Chasing Rainbows 
   There ain’t no rules around here! We’re trying to accomplish something!
  – Thomas Edison  
   So — we’ve established what we need to do — create games that will somehow 
  generate wonderful, compelling, memorable experiences. To do this, we must 
  embark on a daunting endeavor: to uncover both the mysteries of the human mind 
  and the secrets of the human heart. No one field of study has managed to per-
  fectly map this territory (Mendeleev, where are you?), but several different fields 
  have managed to map out parts of it. Three, in particular, stand out: Psychology, 
  Anthropology, and Design. Psychologists want to understand the mechanisms that 
  make people tick, anthropologists want to understand people on a human level, and 
  designers just want to make people happy. We will be using approaches borrowed 
  from all three of these fields, so let’s consider what each one has to offer us. 
   Psychology 
   Who better for us to learn the nature of human experience from than psychologists, 
  the scientists who study the mechanisms that govern the human mind? And truly, they 
  have made some discoveries about the mind that are incredibly useful, some of which 
  will be covered in this book. In fact, you might expect that our quest for understand-
  ing how to create great human experiences might end right here; that the psychologists 
  should have all the answers. Sadly, this is not the case. Because they are scientists, 
  they are forced to work in the realm of what is real and provable. Early in the twentieth 
  century, a schism in psychology developed. On one side of the battle were the behav-
  iorists who focused only on measurable behavior, taking a  “black box ” approach to the 
  study of the mind. Their primary tool was objective, controlled experimentation. On 
  the other side were the phenomenologists who study what game designers care about 
  
  13
  most — the nature of human experience and  “the feeling of what happens. ” Their pri-
  mary tool was introspection — the act of examining your experiences as they happen. 
   Unfortunately for us, the behaviorists won out, and for very good reasons. The 
  behavioristic focus on objective, repeatable experiments makes for very good sci-
  ence. One behaviorist can do an experiment, publish a paper about it, and other 
  behaviorists can repeat the experiment under the same conditions, almost certainly 
  getting the same results. The phenomenological approach, on the other hand, is 
  necessarily subjective. Experiences themselves cannot be directly measured — only 
  described, and described imperfectly. When an experiment takes place in your 
  mind, how can you possibly be sure the experimental conditions are controlled? As 
  fascinating and useful as it might be to study our own internal thoughts and feel-
  ings, it makes for shaky science. As a result, for as much progress that has been 
  made by modern psychology, it generally feels obligated to avoid the thing we care 
  about the most — the nature of human experience. 
    Though psychology does not have all the answers we need, it does provide some 
  very useful ones, as we’ll see. More than that, it provides approaches we can use 
  quite effectively. Not bound by the strict responsibilities of good science, game 
  designers can make use of both behavioristic experiments and phenomenological 
  introspection to learn what we need to know, since ultimately, as designers, we are 
  not concerned with what is definitely true in the world of objective reality, but only 
  with what seems to be true in the world of subjective experience. 
    But perhaps there is another scientific approach that lies somewhere between the 
  two extremes of behaviorism and phenomenology? 
   Anthropology 
   Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of 
  the humanities.  
  – Alfred L. Kroeber  
    Anthropology is another major branch of study about human beings and what they 
  think and do. It takes a much more holistic approach than psychology, looking at 
  everything about people including their physical, mental, and cultural aspects. It is 
  very concerned with studying the similarities and differences between the various 
  peoples of the world, not just today, but throughout history. 
    Of particular interest to game designers is the approach of cultural anthropology, 
  which is the study of living peoples ’ ways of life, mostly through fieldwork. Cultural 
  anthropologists live with their subjects of study, and try to immerse themselves 
  completely in the world of the people they are trying to learn about. They strive for 
  objective observation of culture and practices, but at the same time they engage in 
  introspection and take great pains to put themselves in the place of their subjects. 
  This helps the anthropologist better imagine what it  “ feels like ” to be their subjects. 
  THREE PRACTICAL APPROACHES TO CHASING RAINBOWS
  
  CHAPTER TWO • THE DESIGNER CREATES AN EXPERIENCE
  14
   We can learn a number of important things about human nature from the work 
  of anthropologists — but much more important, by taking a cultural anthropolo-
  gist’s approach to our players, interviewing them, learning everything we can about 
  them, and putting ourselves in their place, we can gain insights that would not have 
  been possible from a more objective point of view. 
   Design 
   The third field that has made important study of human experience is, not surpris-
  ingly, the field of design. We will be able to learn useful things from almost every 
  kind of designer: musicians, architects, authors, filmmakers, industrial designers, 
  Web designers, choreographers, visual designers, and many more. The incredible 
  variety of design  “rules of thumb ” that comes from these different disciplines do an 
  excellent job of illustrating useful principles about human experience. But unfortu-
  nately, these principles can often be hard for us to use. Unlike scientists, designers 
  seldom publish papers about their discoveries. The very best designers in various 
  fields often know little about the workings of other fields of design. The musi-
  cian may know a lot about rhythm, but probably has given little thought to how 
  the principles of rhythm might apply to something non-musical, such as a novel 
  or stage play, even though they may have meaningful practical application there, 
  since they are ultimately rooted in the same place — the human mind. So, to use 
  principles from other areas of design, we will need to cast a wide net. Anyone who 
  creates something that people are meant to experience and enjoy has something 
  to teach us, and so we will pull rules and examples from designers of every stripe, 
  being as “xenophilic ” as possible. 
   Ideally, we would find ways to connect all the varied principles of design to each 
  other through the common ground of psychology and anthropology, since ultimately 
  all design principles are rooted in these. In some small ways, we will do that in this 
  book. Perhaps one day these three fields will find a way to unify all their principles. 
  For now, we will need to be content with building a few bridges here and there — this 
  is no small accomplishment, since these are three fields that seldom have much cross-
  pollination. Further, some of the bridges will prove to be surprisingly useful! The task 
  before us, game design, is so difficult that we cannot afford to be snobbish about 
  where we get our knowledge. None of these approaches can solve all our problems, so 
  we will mix and match them, trying to use them appropriately, like we might use tools 
  from a toolbox. We must be both open-minded and practical — good ideas can come 
  from anywhere, but they are only good for us if they help us create better experiences.  
   Introspection: Powers, Perils, and Practice 
   We have discussed some of the places to find useful tools for mastering human 
  experience. Let’s now focus on one tool that has been used by all three disciplines: 
  introspection. This is the seemingly simple act of examining your own thoughts and 
  
  15
  feelings — that is, your own experiences. While it is true you can never truly know 
  the experience of another, you certainly can know your own. In one sense, it is all 
  you can know. By deeply listening to your own self, that is, observing, evaluating, 
  and describing your own experiences, you can make rapid, decisive judgments about 
  what is and is not working in your game, and why it is or is not working. 
    “But wait, ” you might say.  “Is introspection really such a good idea? If it isn’t 
  good enough for the scientists, why is it good enough for us? ” And this is a fair 
  question. There are two main perils associated with using introspection: 
      Peril #1: Introspection Can Lead to False Conclusions 
  About Reality 
    This is the scientists ’ main reason to reject introspection as a valid method of 
  inquiry. Many pseudo-scientists over the years have come up with crackpot theories 
  based mainly on introspection. This happens so often because what seems to be true 
  in our personal experience is not necessarily really true. Socrates, for example, noted 
  that when we learn something new, it often feels like we knew it all along, and that 
  in learning it, it feels as if we were just reminded of something we already knew, but 
  had forgotten. This is an interesting observation, and most people can remember a 
  learning experience that felt this way. But Socrates then goes too far and forms an 
  elaborate argument that since learning can feel like recollection, we must then be 
  reincarnated souls who are just now remembering what we learned in past lives. 
    This is the problem with drawing conclusions about reality based on introspec-
  tion — just because something feels true, it doesn’t mean it is true. People very 
  easily fall into the trap of building up structures of questionable logic to back up 
  something that feels like it must be true. Scientists learn to be disciplined about 
  avoiding this trap. Introspection certainly has its place in science — it allows 
  one to examine a problem from points of view that mere logic won’t allow. Good 
  scientists use introspection all the time — but they don’t draw scientific conclusions 
  from it. 
    Fortunately for us, game design is not science! While  “objective truth about real-
  ity ”  is interesting and sometimes useful to us, we primarily care about what  “ feels 
  like it is true. ” Aristotle gives us another classical example that illustrates this per-
  fectly. He wrote a number of works on a variety of topics, such as Logic, Physics, 
  Natural History, and Philosophy. He is famous for the depth of his personal intro-
  spection, and when we examine his works, we find something interesting. His ideas 
  about physics and natural history are largely discredited today. Why? Because he 
  relied too much on what felt true, and not enough on controlled experiments. His 
  introspection led him to all kinds of conclusions we now know to be false, such as: 
    ●  Heavier objects fall faster than light ones 
    ●  The seat of consciousness is in the heart 
    ●  Life arises by spontaneous generation  
  INTROSPECTION: POWERS, PERILS, AND PRACTICE
  
  CHAPTER TWO • THE DESIGNER CREATES AN EXPERIENCE
  16
   And many others. So why do we remember him as a genius, and not as a crack-
  pot? Because his other works, about metaphysics, drama, ethics, and the mind, are 
  still useful today. In these areas where what feels true matters more than what is 
  objectively, provably true, most of his conclusions, reached through deep introspec-
  tion, stand up to scrutiny thousands of years later. 
   The lesson here is simple: When dealing with the human heart and mind, and 
  trying to understand experience and what things feel like, introspection is an incred-
  ibly powerful, and trustworthy tool. As game designers, we don’t need to worry 
  much about this first peril. We care more about how things feel and less about 
  what is really true. Because of this, we can often confidently trust our feelings and 
  instincts when making conclusions about the quality of an experience. 
   Peril #2: What Is True of My Experiences May Not be True 
  for Others 
   This second danger of introspection is the one we must take seriously. With the first 
  peril, we got a  “Get Out of Jail Free Card ” because we are designers, not scientists. 
  But we can’t get away from this one so easily. This peril is the peril of subjectivity, 
  and a place where many designers fall into a trap:  “I like playing this game, there-
  fore it must be good. ” And sometimes, this is right. But other times, if the audi-
  ence has tastes that differ from your own, it is very, very wrong. Some designers 
  take extreme positions on this ranging from  “I will only design for people like me, 
  because it is the only way I can be sure my game is good ” to “introspection and 
  subjective opinions can’t be trusted. Only playtesting can be trusted. ” Each of these 
  is a “safe” position, but also has its limits and problems: 
   “I only design for people like me ” has these problems: 
   ●  Game designers tend to have unusual tastes. There may not be enough people 
  like you out there to make your game a worthwhile investment. 
   ●  You won’t be designing or developing alone. If different team members have dif-
  ferent ideas about what is best, they can be hard to resolve. 
   ●  There are many kinds of games and audiences that will be completely off-limits 
  to you.  
   “Personal opinions can’t be trusted ” has these problems: 
   ●  You can’t leave every decision to playtesting, especially early in the process, 
  when there is no game yet to playtest. At this point someone has to exert a per-
  sonal opinion about what is good and bad. 
   ●  Before a game is completely finished, playtesters may reject an unusual idea. 
  They sometimes need to see it completed before they can really appreciate it. If 
  you don’t trust your own feelings about what is good and bad, you may, at the 
  
  17
  advice of your playtesters, throw out an  “ugly duckling ” that could have grown 
  up to be a beautiful swan. 
    ●  Playtesting can only happen occasionally. Important game design decisions must 
  be made on a daily basis.  
    The way out of this peril, without resorting to such limiting extremes, is again, 
  to listen. Introspection for game design is a process of not just listening to yourself, 
  but also of listening to others. By observing your own experiences, and then observ-
  ing others, and trying to put yourself in their place, you start to develop a picture of 
  how your experiences differ from theirs. Once you have a clear picture of these dif-
  ferences, you can, like a cultural anthropologist, start to put yourself in the place of 
  your audience and make predictions about what experiences they will and will not 
  enjoy. It is a delicate art that must be practiced — and with practice your skill at it 
  will improve.  
   Dissect Your Feelings 
    It is not such a simple thing to know your feelings. It is not enough for a designer to 
  simply have a general sense about whether they like something or not. You must be 
  able to clearly state what you like, what you don’t like, and why. A friend of mine 
  in college was notoriously bad at this. We would frequently drive each other crazy 
  with conversations like:
   Me: What did you eat at the cafeteria today?  
  Him: Pizza. It was bad.  
  Me: Bad? What was bad about it?  
  Him: It was just  … bad.
   Me: Do you mean it was too cold? Too hard? Too soggy? Too bitter? Too much 
  sauce? Not enough sauce? Too cheesy? What was bad about it?  
  Him: I don’t know — it was just bad!  
    He was simply unable to clearly dissect his experiences. In the case of the 
  pizza, he knew he didn’t like it, but was unable to (or didn’t bother to) analyze 
  the experience to the point where he could make useful suggestions about how 
  the pizza might improve. This kind of experience dissection is a main goal of your 
  introspection — it is something designers must do. When you play a game, you must 
  be able to analyze how it made you feel, what it made you think of, and what it 
  made you do. You must be able to state this analysis clearly. You must put words to 
  it, for feelings are abstract, but words are concrete, and you will need this concrete-
  ness to describe to others the experiences you want your game to produce. You need 
  to do this kind of analysis not only when designing and playing your own games, 
  but also when playing games other people have created. In fact, you should be 
  able to analyze any experience you might have. The more you analyze your own 
  DISSECT YOUR FEELINGS
  
  CHAPTER TWO • THE DESIGNER CREATES AN EXPERIENCE
  18
  experiences, the more clearly you will be able to think about the kinds of experi-
  ences your games should create. 
    Defeating Heisenberg 
   But there is still a greater challenge of introspection. How can we observe our own 
  experiences without tainting them, since the act of observation itself is an experi-
  ence? We face this problem quite often. Try to observe what your fingers are doing 
  as you type at a computer keyboard and you will quickly find yourself typing slowly 
  and making many errors, if you can still type at all. Try to observe yourself enjoying a 
  movie or a game, and the enjoyment can quickly fade away. Some call this  “paralysis 
  by analysis, ” and others refer to it as the Heisenberg principle. This principle, in refer-
  ence to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle from quantum mechanics, points out 
  that the motion of a particle cannot be observed without disturbing the motion of that 
  particle. Similarly, the nature of an experience cannot be observed without disturbing 
  the nature of that experience. This makes introspection sound hopeless. While it is a 
  challenging problem, there are ways around it that are quite effective, though some 
  take practice. Most of us are not in the habit of openly discussing the nature of our 
  thought processes, so some of the following is going to sound a little strange. 
   Analyze Memories 
   One good thing about experiences is that we remember them. Analyzing an expe-
  rience while it is happening can be hard, because the part of your mind used to 
  analyze is normally focused on the experience itself. Analyzing your memory of an 
  experience is much easier. Memory is imperfect, but analyzing a memory is better 
  than nothing. Of course, the more you remember, the better, so working either with 
  memories of powerful experiences (these often make the best inspiration, anyway) 
  or with fresh memories is best. If you have the mental discipline, it also can be very 
  useful to engage in an experience (such as playing a game), with the intention of 
  not analyzing it while you play, but with the intention of analyzing the memory of 
  it immediately after. Just having this intention can help you remember more details 
  of the experience without interfering with the experience itself. This does require 
  you to remember that you are going to analyze it without letting that thought inter-
  fere with the experience. Tricky! 
    Two Passes 
   A method that builds on analyzing memories is to run through your experience 
  twice. The first time, don’t stop to analyze anything — just have the experience. 
  Then, go back and do it again, this time, analyzing everything — maybe even paus-
  ing to take notes. You have the untainted experience fresh in your mind, and the 
  
  19
  second run through lets you  “relive it, ” but gives you a chance to stop and think, 
  considering how it felt, and why. 
   Sneak Glances 
    Is it possible to observe your experience without spoiling it? It is, but it takes some 
  practice. It sounds strange to say this, but if you  “sneak quick glances ” at your expe-
  rience while it is happening, you can often observe it quite well without degrading 
  or interrupting it significantly. It is kind of like trying to get a good look at a stranger 
  in a public place. Take a few short glances at them, and they won’t notice you are 
  observing them. But look too long, and you will catch their attention, and they will 
  notice you staring. Fortunately, you can learn a lot about an experience with a few 
  short “mental glances. ” Again, this takes some mental discipline or you will get car-
  ried away with analysis. If you can make these mental glances habitual, just doing 
  them all the time without thinking about it, they will interrupt things even less. 
  Most people find what really interrupts their train of thought, or train of experience, 
  is interior mental dialog. When you start asking and answering too many questions 
  in your head, your experience is doomed. A  “quick glance ” is more like:  “ Exciting 
  enough? Yes. ” Then, you immediately stop analyzing and get back to the experi-
  ence, until the next glance. 
   Observe Silently 
   Ideally, though, you want to observe what is happening to you while it is happen-
  ing, not just through a few quick glances, but through continuous observation. You 
  want it to be as if you were sitting outside yourself, watching yourself, except that 
  you see more than a normal observer. You can hear all of your thoughts and feel all 
  of your feelings. When you enter this state, it is almost as if you have two minds: 
  one moving, engaged in an experience, and one still, silently observing the other. 
  This may sound completely bizarre, but it is quite possible and quite useful. It is a 
  difficult state to achieve, but it can be reached. It seems to be something like the Zen 
  practice of self-observation, and it is not unlike the meditation exercise of trying to 
  observe your own breathing cycle. Normally we breathe without thinking, but at any 
  moment, we may consciously take control of our breathing process — consequently 
  interfering with it. With practice however, you can observe your natural, uncon-
  scious breathing without disturbing it. But this takes practice, just as observing your 
  experiences takes practice. Observing your experiences can be practiced anywhere — 
  while watching TV, while working, while playing, or while doing anything at all. 
  You won’t get it right at first, but if you keep experimenting and practicing, you will 
  start to get the hang of it. It will take a great deal of practice. But if you truly want to 
  listen to your  self , and understand the nature of human experience, you will find the 
  practice worthwhile.  
  DEFEATING HEISENBERG
  
  CHAPTER TWO • THE DESIGNER CREATES AN EXPERIENCE
  20
   Essential Experience 
   But how does all this talk about experience and observations really fit in with games? 
  If I want to make a game about, say, a snowball fight, does analyzing my memories 
  of a real snowball fight have any bearing on the snowball fight game I want to make? 
  There is no way I can perfectly replicate the experience of a real snowball fight with-
  out real snow and real friends outside in the real world — so what is the point? 
   The point is that you don’t need to perfectly replicate real experiences to make a 
  good game. What you need to do is to capture the essence of those experiences for 
  your game. What does  “the essence of an experience ” really mean? Every memo-
  rable experience has some key features that define it and make it special. When 
  you go over your memory of a snowball fight experience, for example, you might 
  think of a lot of things. Some you might even consider essential to that experi-
  ence: “There was so much snow, school was canceled, ” “We played right in the 
  street, ” “The snow was just right for packing, ” “It was so cold, but sunny — the 
  sky was so blue, ” “There were kids everywhere, ” “We built this huge fort, ” “Fred 
  threw a snowball really high — when I looked up at it, he chucked one right at my 
  head!,” “We couldn’t stop laughing. ” There are also parts of that experience that 
  you don’t consider essential:  “I was wearing corduroy pants, ” “I had some mints in 
  my pocket, ” “A man walking his dog looked at us. ”
   As a game designer trying to design an experience, your goal is to figure out the 
  essential elements that really define the experience you want to create, and find 
  ways to make them part of your game design. This way the players of your game 
  get to experience those essential elements. Much of this book will be about the 
  many ways you can craft a game to get across the experience you want players to 
  have. The key idea here is that the essential experience can often be delivered in a 
  form that is very different from a real experience. To follow up on the snowball fight 
  example, what are some of the ways you could convey the experience  “it was so 
  cold” through a snowball fight game? If it is a videogame, you could certainly use 
  artwork: the characters could breathe little puffs of condensation, and they could 
  have a shivering animation. You could use sound effects — perhaps a whistling 
  wind could convey coldness. Maybe there wasn’t a cold wind on the day you are 
  imagining, but the sound effect might capture the essence and deliver an experience 
  that seems cold to the player. You could use the rules of the game, too, if cold was 
  really important to you. Maybe players can make better snowballs without gloves, 
  but when their hands get too cold, they have to put gloves on. Again, that might 
  not have really happened, but that game rule helps deliver an experience of cold-
  ness that will be integral part of your game. 
   Some people find this approach strange — they say,  “Just design a game, and 
  see what experience comes out of it! ” And I suppose it is true — if you don’t know 
  what you want, you might not care what you get. But if you do know what you 
  want — if you have a vision of how you would like your game to feel to the players —
  you need to consider how you are going to deliver the essential experience. And this 
  brings us to our first lens.
  
  21
    The design of the very successive baseball game in  Wii Sports is an excellent 
  example of the Lens of Essential Experience in use. Originally, the designers had 
  intended to make it as much like real baseball as possible with the added bonus 
  that you could swing your controller like a bat. As they proceeded, though, they 
  realized they wouldn’t have time to simulate every aspect of baseball as well as they 
  wanted. So, they made a big decision — since swinging the controller was the most 
  unique part of this game, they would focus all their attention on getting that part of 
  the baseball experience right — what they felt was the essential part. They decided 
  that other details (nine innings, stealing bases, etc.) were not part of the essential 
  experience they were trying to create. 
     It is true that many designers do not use the Lens of Essential Experience. They 
  just kind of follow their gut instinct, and stumble across game structures that hap-
  pen to enable experiences that people enjoy. The danger with this approach is that 
  it relies on luck to a large extent. To be able to separate the experience from the 
  game is very useful: If you have a clear picture in your mind of the experiences 
  your players are having, and what parts of your game enable that experience, you 
  will have a much clearer picture of how to make your game better, because you will 
  know which elements of the game you can safely change, and which ones you can-
  not. The ultimate goal of the game designer is to deliver an experience. When you 
  have a clear picture of your ideal experience, and its essential elements, your design 
  has something to aspire to. Without that goal you are just wandering in the dark. 
    All That’s Real Is What You Feel 
    All this talk of experience brings out an idea that is very strange indeed. The only 
  reality that we can know is the reality of the experience. And we know that what we 
   Lens #1: The Lens of Essential Experience 
    To use this lens, you stop thinking about your game and start thinking about 
  the experience of the player. Ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  What experience do I want the player to have? 
    ●  What is essential to that experience? 
    ●  How can my game capture that essence?  
    If there is a big difference between the experience you want to create and the 
  one you are actually creating, your game needs to change: You need to clearly 
  state the essential experience you desire, and find as many ways as possible to 
  instill this essence into your game.  
  ALL THAT’S REAL IS WHAT YOU FEEL
  
  CHAPTER TWO • THE DESIGNER CREATES AN EXPERIENCE
  22
  experience is  “not really reality. ” We filter reality through our senses, and through 
  our minds, and the consciousness we actually experience is a kind of illusion — not 
  really reality at all. But this illusion is all that can ever be real for us, because it  is 
  us. This is a headache for philosophers, but a wonderful thing for game designers, 
  because it means that the designed experiences that are created through our games 
  have a chance of feeling as real and as meaningful (and sometimes more so) than 
  our everyday experiences. 
   We will explore that further in Chapter 9, but now it is time to look at the other 
  side of the experience coin. We have studied the flame — it is time now to examine 
  the log from which it rises.  
   
  
  CHAPTER
  23
   The Experience Rises 
  Out of a Game 
  23
   THREE 
  F I G U R E
  3.1
  
  CHAPTER THREE • THE EXPERIENCE RISES OUT OF A GAME
  24
   It is wonderful to talk about the design of experiences. Creating great experiences 
  is indeed our goal. But we cannot touch experiences. We cannot manipulate them 
  directly. What a game designer can control, can get his hands in, is the game. The 
  game is your clay, and you will shape it and mold it to create all kinds of fabulous 
  game experiences. 
   So, what kind of games are we talking about? In this book, we mean all kinds of 
  games. Board games, card games, athletic games, playground games, party games, 
  gambling games, puzzle games, arcade games, electronic games, computer games, 
  videogames, and just about any other game that you might think of, for as we’ll see, 
  the same principles of design apply to all of them. It is a little surprising that with 
  such variety between these kinds of games, we recognize them all as one kind, that 
  is, as different as they are, we intuitively recognize them all as games. 
   What is it that these things have in common? Or, to put it another way, how do 
  we define  “game”?
   A Rant About Definitions 
   Before we continue, I want to be clear about why we should seek such a definition. 
  Is it so that we know what we mean when we say  “game”? No. For the most part, 
  we all know what we are talking about when we say game. It is true that the idea 
  of what game (or any term) means will vary a bit from person to person, but 
  mostly, we all know what a game is. Sometimes, in a discussion, a debate may arise 
  about whether something is “truly a game, ” forcing the discussion participants to 
  clarify their own personal definition of what a game is, and once that is settled, the 
  discussion moves on. There is nothing wrong with people having their own per-
  sonal opinions about the proper definition of game, and what is or is not really a 
  game, just as they may have similar opinions about what really is or not  “music, ”
  “art,” or “a sport. ”
   Some people, mostly academics, do not hold this view. They view the lack of 
  standardized definitions in the world of game design as  “a crisis ” that is holding 
  back the art form. Usually, the people most concerned about this are the farthest 
  removed from the actual design and development of games. So, how do real-world 
  designers and developers get by without a standardized vocabulary? Just like every-
  one else: when there is ambiguity, they simply explain what they mean. Does this 
  sometimes slow down discussions and therefore the design process? Yes and no. 
  Yes, it requires that at times, designers have to stop and explain what they mean, 
  which can slow things down a little (and only a little). On the other hand, this 
  pause for clarification often saves time in the long run, since after the pause, the 
  designers are definitely each clear about what the other means. 
   Would it be best if there was some centralized dictionary of standard terms 
  we could all refer to when discussing issues of game design? It would certainly 
  be convenient, but it is far from necessary, and the fact that we don’t have such 
  a dictionary is far from a  “barrier” or a “crisis. ” It is just a slight inconvenience, 
  
  25
  because it means we sometimes have to stop and think about what we mean, and 
  what we are trying to say. In fact, having to do this, in the long run, may make 
  us better designers, not weaker ones, since we are forced to think just a little bit 
  more. Further, such a dictionary would hardly be a gold standard for all time — as 
  technologies change, they force us to reconsider some of our old definitions and 
  terms, redefine some of them, and create new terms — so the process of definition 
  and redefinition is likely to continue indefinitely, or at least as long as there are 
  advances in technology that are relevant to games. 
   Others say that the  “real problem ” with a lack of game design vocabulary is not 
  a problem of standardized definitions, but a lack of terms, at all, to discuss some 
  of the complex ideas that arise as part of the game design process. Therefore, they 
  argue, it is urgent that we try to put names on all these things. This is putting the 
  cart before the horse, though, for the real problem we have is not a lack of words to 
  describe elements of game design — the problem is a lack of clear thinking about 
  what these ideas really are. As with many fields of design, game designers follow 
  their gut instincts and feelings about what makes a good or a bad game, and some-
  times have difficulty articulating what exactly it is about a certain design that is 
  good or bad — they just know it when they see it, so they are able to design great 
  things. And you can certainly get by this way. What is important is to state clearly 
  what you mean when you say a design is good or bad, and how, specifically, it 
  can improve. It is not a matter of knowing the vocabulary of game design — it is 
  a matter of knowing the ideas of game design — what we call them matters little. 
  Standardized terms for these things will evolve over time — this is not a process 
  that can be rushed. The terms designers find useful will survive, the ones they don’t 
  will fall by the wayside. 
   That said, clear statements about important game design ideas, and terms to 
  refer to them, are introduced all the time, and several are introduced in this book. 
  These are not meant to be canonical definitions, but rather a clear expression of 
  ideas that I hope you can use. If you have better ideas, or better terms, please use 
  them instead — if your ideas and terms are indeed clear and strong, they will catch 
  on and help other people more clearly think and express what they mean. 
   Some of the ideas we will have to deal with are necessarily murky. Terms like 
  “experience, ” “ play, ” and “ game ”  are defined differently by different people, and 
  considering that the ideas these terms represent do not have clear definitions even 
  after the thousands of years we’ve been thinking and talking about them, it is 
  unlikely they will be rigidly defined any time soon. 
   Does this mean we should shy away from trying to define them? By no means. 
  Defining things forces you to think about them clearly, concisely, and analytically. 
  Having a list of terms and their definitions would teach you little. Embarking on the 
  journey of trying to define these terms will teach you a great deal and strengthen 
  your ability to think about design, even though the definitions you end up with may 
  prove imperfect. For this reason you may find this chapter offers you more ques-
  tions than it does answers. But that’s okay: the goal of this book is to make you a 
  better designer, and a good designer must think. 
  A RANT ABOUT DEFINITIONS
  
  CHAPTER THREE • THE EXPERIENCE RISES OUT OF A GAME
  26
   So, What Is a Game? 
   Now that we have discussed why we should define these things, let’s give it a try, 
  beginning with some things we can say for sure about games. Here’s a start: 
   A game is something you play. 
   I don’t think anyone will disagree with that. But it doesn’t tell us very much. For 
  example, is a game different than a toy? Yes. Games are more complex than toys, 
  and involve a different kind of play. We even use different language: 
   A toy is something you play  with . 
   Okay, interesting. Since toys are simpler than games, maybe we should try defin-
  ing them first. Let’s see if we can do better with our definition of toy. You can play 
  with friends, and they aren’t toys. Toys are objects. 
   A toy is an object you play with. 
    Well, that’s something. But I might play with a roll of tape while I talk on the 
  phone. Does that make it a toy? Technically, yes, but probably not a very good one. 
  In fact, anything you play with could be classified as a toy. Perhaps it is a good idea 
  for us to start considering what makes for a good toy.  “Fun ” is one word that comes 
  to mind in conjunction with good toys. In fact, you might say: 
   A good toy is an object that is fun to play with. 
   Not bad. But what do we mean when we say  “fun?” Do we simply mean pleas-
  ure, or enjoyment? Pleasure is part of fun, but is fun simply pleasure? There are 
  lots of experiences that are pleasurable; for example, eating a sandwich, or lying in 
  the sun, but it would seem strange to call those experiences  “fun.” No, things that 
  are fun have a special sparkle, a special excitement to them. Generally, fun things 
  involve  surprises. So, a definition for fun might be: 
   Fun is pleasure with surprises. 
   Can that be right? Can it be that simple? It is strange how you can use a word 
  your whole life, and know for certain what it means, but not be able to express it 
  clearly when asked. A good way to test definitions is to come up with counterex-
  amples. Can you think of things that are fun, but not pleasurable, or fun, but don’t 
  involve some feeling of surprise? Conversely, can you think of things that are pleas-
  urable and have surprises but aren’t fun? Surprise and fun are such important parts 
  of every game design that they become our next two lenses.
   Lens #2: The Lens of Surprise 
   Surprise is so basic that we can easily forget about it. Use this lens to remind 
  yourself to fill your game with interesting surprises. Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What will surprise players when they play my game? 
   ●  Does the story in my game have surprises? Do the game rules? Does the 
  artwork? The technology? 
  
  27
   ●  Do your rules give players ways to surprise each other? 
   ●  Do your rules give players ways to surprise themselves?  
   Surprise is a crucial part of all entertainment — it is at the root of humor, 
  strategy, and problem solving. Our brains are hardwired to enjoy surprises. 
  In an experiment where participants received sprays of sugar water or plain 
  water into their mouths, the participants who received random sprays consid-
  ered the experience much more pleasurable than participants who received 
  the sprays according to a fixed pattern, even though the same amount of sugar 
  was delivered. In other experiments, brain scans revealed that even during 
  unpleasant surprises, the pleasure centers of the brain are triggered.  
   Lens #3: The Lens of Fun 
   Fun is desirable in nearly every game, although sometimes fun defies analysis. 
  To maximize your game’s fun, ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What parts of my game are fun? Why? 
   ●  What parts need to be more fun?  
   So, back to toys. We say that a toy is an object you play with, and a good toy is 
  an object that is fun to play with. But what do we mean by play? This is a tricky 
  one. We all know what play is when we see it, but it is hard to express. Many peo-
  ple have tried for a solid definition of what play means, and most of them seem to 
  have failed in one way or another. Let’s consider a few.
   Play is the aimless expenditure of exuberant energy.
   – Friedrich Schiller  
   This is an expression of the outdated  “surplus energy ” theory of play, that the 
  purpose of play is to expend extra energy. Throughout the history of psychology, 
  there has been a tendency to oversimplify complex behaviors, and this is an early 
  example of that. It also uses the word  “aimless, ”  as if play did not have goals, which 
  it most certainly does. Surely we can do better than this.
   Play refers to those activities which are accompanied by a state of comparative 
  pleasure, exhilaration, power, and the feeling of self-initiative.
  – J. Barnard Gilmore  
  SO, WHAT IS A GAME?
  
  CHAPTER THREE • THE EXPERIENCE RISES OUT OF A GAME
  28
   That certainly covers some of the territory. Those are certainly things that are 
  often associated with play. But it doesn’t seem complete, somehow. Other things 
  are also associated with play, like imagination, competition, and problem-solving. 
  At the same time, this definition is too broad. For example, an executive might work 
  hard to land a contract, and in doing so experience  “comparative pleasure, exhilara-
  tion, power, and the feeling of self-initiative, ” but it would seem strange to call that 
  an act of play. Let’s try something else.
   Play is free movement within a more rigid structure.
   – Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman  
   This unusual definition, from the book  Rules of Play, is an attempt to create a 
  definition of play so open that it can include things like  “the play of the light along 
  the wall ” and “the play of a car’s steering wheel. ” And while it is hard to find some-
  thing we would call play that is not covered by this definition, one can easily come 
  up with examples of what seem to be non-play activities that do fit. For example, if 
  a child is forced to scrub the kitchen floor, the child is enjoying (enjoying may be 
  the wrong word) free movement (can slide the brush around freely) within a more 
  rigid structure (the floor), but it would sound strange to classify this activity as play. 
  Nonetheless, thinking about your game from the point of view of this definition can 
  be interesting. Perhaps a different definition can better capture the spirit of play.
   Play is whatever is done spontaneously and for its own sake.
   – George Santayana  
   This one is interesting. First let us consider spontaneity. Play is quite often spon-
  taneous. When we talk about someone being  “playful ” that is part of what we 
  mean. But is all play spontaneous? No. Someone might plan a softball game months 
  in advance, for example, but when the game finally happens, it is still  “play. ” So, 
  spontaneity is sometimes part of play, but not always. Some consider spontaneity so 
  important to the definition of play that any attempt to dampen it renders an activity 
  not play. Bernard Mergen states his view:  “Games, competitive games, which have 
  a winner or a loser, are not, in my definition, play. ” This viewpoint is so extreme as 
  to seem ridiculous — by this logic, games (as we typically think of them) are not 
  something you can play. This extreme aside, spontaneity does seem to be an impor-
  tant part of play. 
   But how about the second part of Santayana’s definition:  “done for its own sake ”?
  By this he seems to mean “we play because we like to. ” As trivial as it sounds, this 
  is an important characteristic of play. If we don’t like to do it, it probably isn’t play. 
  That is, an activity itself cannot be classified as a  “work activity ” or “play activity. ”
  Instead, what matters is one’s attitude about the activity. As Mary Poppins tells us 
  in the Sherman brothers ’ wonderful song, Spoonful of Sugar:
   In ev’ry job that must be done 
  There is an element of fun. 
  
  29
  You find the fun and snap!
   The job’s a game.  
   But how do we find the fun? Consider the story that psychologist Mihalyi 
  Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced  “Chick sent me high ”) relates about how factory 
  worker Rico Medellin turns his job into a game:
   The task he has to perform on each unit that passes in front of his station 
  should take forty-three seconds to perform — the same exact operation almost 
  six hundred times in a working day. Most people would grow tired of such work 
  very soon. But Rico has been at this job for over five years, and he still enjoys it. 
  The reason is that he approaches his task in the same way an Olympic athlete 
  approaches his event: How can I beat my record?  
   This shift in attitude turned Rico’s job from work into play. How has it affected 
  his job performance? “After five years, his best average for a day has been twenty-
  eight seconds per unit. ” And he still loves doing it:  “‘It’s better than anything else, ’ 
  Rico says.  ‘ It’s a whole lot better than watching TV. ’ ”
   What is going on here? How does simple goal setting suddenly redefine an activity 
  we would normally classify as work into an activity that is clearly a kind of play? The 
  answer seems to be a change in the reason he is doing the activity. He is no longer 
  doing it for someone else, he is now doing it for his own personal reasons. Santayana 
  actually elaborates on his definition, stating that upon further examination:
   Work and play  … become equivalent to servitude and freedom.  
   When we work, we do it because we are obligated to. We work for food because 
  we are slaves to our bellies. We work to pay the rent because we are slaves to our 
  safety and comfort. Some of this servitude is willing servitude, such as willingness 
  to earn money to care for our families, but it is servitude nonetheless. We are doing 
  it because we have to, not because  “we feel like it. ” The more obligated you are to 
  do something, the more it feels like work. The less obligated you are to do some-
  thing, the more it feels like play. Stated differently,  “It is an invariable principle of 
  all play  … that whoever plays, plays freely. Whoever  must play cannot  play.”  
   Building off of this, I’d like to share my own definition of play, which, though 
  imperfect like these others, has its own interesting perspective. I often find when 
  trying to define things about human activity, it can be useful to pay less attention 
  to the activity itself, and more attention to the thoughts and feelings that motivate 
  the activity. I can’t help but notice that most play activities seem to be attempts to 
  answer questions like: 
   ●  “ What happens when I turn this knob? ”  
   ●  “ Can we beat this team? ”  
   ●  “ What can I make with this clay? ”  
   ●  “ How many times can I jump this rope? ”  
   ●  “ What happens when I finish this level? ”  
  SO, WHAT IS A GAME?
  
  CHAPTER THREE • THE EXPERIENCE RISES OUT OF A GAME
  30
   When you seek to answer questions freely, of your own volition, and not 
  because you are obligated to, we say you are curious. But curiosity doesn’t immedi-
  ately imply you are going to play. No, play involves something else — play involves 
  willful action, usually a willful action of touching or changing something —
  manipulating something, you might say. So, one possible definition would be:
   Play is manipulation that indulges curiosity.  
   When Rico tries to beat his assembly line goal, he is trying to answer the 
  question: “Can I beat my record? ” Suddenly, the reason for his activity is not to 
  earn money to pay the rent, but instead to indulge his curiosity about a personal 
  question. 
   This definition calls some things play that we might not ordinarily think of as 
  play, such as an artist experimenting on canvas. On the other hand, he might say he 
  is “playing with color. ” A chemist who tries an experiment to test a pet theory — is 
  she playing? She might say she is  “playing with an idea. ” This definition has flaws 
  (can you find them?), but I do find it a useful perspective, and personally, it is my 
  favorite definition of play. It also brings us to Lens #4.
   Lens #4: The Lens of Curiosity 
   To use this lens, think about the player’s true motivations — not just the goals 
  your game has set forth, but the reason the player wants to achieve those 
  goals. Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What questions does my game put into the player’s mind? 
   ●  What am I doing to make them care about these questions? 
   ●  What can I do to make them invent even more questions?  
   For example, a maze-finding videogame might have a time-limit goal such that 
  at each level, players are trying to answer the question:  “Can I find my way 
  through this maze in 30 seconds? ” A way to make them care more would be 
  to play interesting animations when they solve each maze, so players might 
  also ask the question: “I wonder what the next animation will be? ” 
   No, Seriously, What Is a Game? 
   We’ve come up with some definitions for toys, and fun and even made a good solid 
  run at play. Let’s try again to answer our original question: How should we define 
  “game”?
  
  31
   Earlier we stated that  “a game is something you play, ” which seems to be true, 
  but isn’t narrow enough. As with play, many people have tried to define  “ game. ” 
  Let’s look at a few of these.
   Games are an exercise of voluntary control systems, in which there is a con-
  test between powers, confined by rules in order to produce a disequilibrial 
  outcome.
   – Elliot Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith  
   Wow. Very scientific! Let’s pick it apart. 
   First,  “an exercise of voluntary control systems ”: That is, like play, games are 
  entered willfully. 
   Second, “a contest of powers ”: That does seem to be part of most games. Two or 
  more things striving for dominance. Some single-player games don’t always feel this 
  way (would you really call Tetris a contest of powers?), but this phrase gets across 
  two things: games have goals, and games have conflict. 
   Third,  “confined by rules ”: A very important point! Games have rules. Toys do 
  not have rules. Rules are definitely one of the defining aspects of games. 
   Fourth,  “a disequilibrial outcome ”: disequilibrial is an interesting word. It does 
  not simply mean “ unequal, ”  it instead implies that at one time there was equilib-
  rium, but that it was then lost. In other words, things started out even, but then 
  somebody won. This is certainly true of most games — if you play, you either win 
  or lose. 
   So this definition points out some key qualities important to games. 
    Q1.   Games are entered willfully. 
   Q2.   Games have goals. 
   Q3.   Games have conflict. 
   Q4.   Games have rules. 
   Q5.   Games can be won and lost.  
   Let’s consider another definition — this time, from not from academia, but from 
  the world of design:
   [A game is] an interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires play-
  ers to struggle toward a goal.  
  – Greg Costikyan  
   Some of this is pretty clear, but what in the world is  “endogenous ” ? We’ll get to 
  that shortly. Let’s take this one apart, like the last one. 
   First,  “an interactive structure ”: Costikyan wants to make it very clear that the 
  player is active, and not passive, and that the player and game interact with one 
  NO, SERIOUSLY, WHAT IS A GAME?
  
  CHAPTER THREE • THE EXPERIENCE RISES OUT OF A GAME
  32
  another. This is definitely true of games — they have a structure (defined by the 
  rules) with which you can interact, and which can interact with you. 
   Second, “Struggle toward a goal ”: Again, we see the idea of a goal, and strug-
  gle implies some kind of conflict. But it implies more — it implies challenge. Partly, 
  Costikyan seems to be trying not just to define what makes a game, but what makes 
  a good game. Bad games have little challenge, or too much challenge. Good games 
  have just the right amount. 
   Third,  “endogenous meaning ”: Endogenous is an excellent term that Costikyan 
  brought from the world of biology to game design, and it means  “caused by fac-
  tors inside the organism or system, ” or “internally generated. ” So what is “endog-
  enous meaning ”? Costikyan is making the very important point that things that 
  have value inside the game have value  only inside the game. Monopoly money 
  only has meaning in the context of the game of Monopoly. It is the game itself that 
  gave it that meaning. When we play the game, the money is very important to us. 
  Outside the game it is completely unimportant. This idea and term are very use-
  ful to us, because they are often an excellent measure of how compelling a game 
  really is. The game of roulette does not have to be played with real money — it 
  can be played with tokens or play money. But the game, on its own, generates little 
  endogenous value. People will only play it when real money is at stake, because it 
  just isn’t that compelling a game. The more compelling a game is, the greater the 
  “endogenous value ” that is created within the game. Some massively multiplayer 
  role playing games have proved so compelling to people that imaginary game items 
  are actually bought and sold for real money outside the game. Endogenous value is 
  such a useful perspective that it becomes Lens #5.
   Lens #5: The Lens of Endogenous Value 
   To use this lens, think about your players’ feelings about items, objects, and 
  scoring in your game. Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What is valuable to the players in my game? 
   ●  How can I make it more valuable to them? 
   ●  What is the relationship between value in the game and the player’s 
  motivations?  
   Remember, the value of the items and score in the game is a direct reflection 
  of how much players care about succeeding in your game. By thinking about 
  what the players really care about and why, you can often get insights about 
  how your game can improve.  
  
  33
   An example of the Lens of Endogenous Value: The game Bubsy for the SNES and 
  Sega Genesis is a fairly standard platform game. You play a cat who tries to navigate 
  to the end of levels, defeating enemies and avoiding obstacles, and collecting yarn 
  balls for extra points. However, the points serve no purpose other than to measure 
  how many things you have collected. No other in-game reward is given for earning 
  points. Most players gather yarn balls at first, with the expectation that they are val-
  uable, but after playing a short while, they completely ignore them, focusing only 
  on defeating enemies, avoiding obstacles, and getting to the end of the level. Why? 
  Because the player’s motivation (see Lens #4: The Lens of Curiosity) is merely to 
  complete the levels. A higher score doesn’t help that, and thus the yarn balls have 
  no endogenous value. Theoretically, a player who defeated all the levels might have 
  a new motivation: defeat them again, but this time getting the highest score possi-
  ble. In practice, the game itself was so difficult that the number of players who actu-
  ally completed the game must have been small indeed. 
   Sonic the Hedgehog 2, for the Sega Genesis, was a similar platform game, but 
  did not suffer from this problem. In Sonic 2, you collect rings instead of yarn balls, 
  and the number of rings collected is very important to players — the rings have a 
  lot of endogenous value. Why? Because carrying rings helps protect you from ene-
  mies, and every time you collect one hundred rings, you receive an extra life, which 
  increases the chances you will be able to complete all the levels. In the end, Sonic 
  2 was a much more compelling game than Bubsy, and one of the reasons was this 
  mechanism, which clearly shows its importance through endogenous value. 
   Costikyan’s definition gives us three new qualities that we can add to our list: 
   Q6.   Games are interactive. 
   Q7.   Games have challenge. 
   Q8.   Games can create their own internal value.  
   Let’s consider one more definition of game:
   A game is a closed, formal system, that engages players in structured conflict, 
  and resolves in an unequal outcome.
   – Tracy Fullerton, Chris Swain, and Steven Hoffman  
   Most of this has been covered by the previous definitions, but there are two parts of 
  this one I want to pick out: 
   First,  “engages players ”: It is a good point that players find games to be engaging, 
  that is, they make players feel  “mentally immersed. ” Technically, we might argue 
  this is a quality of good games, though not all games, but it is an important point. 
   Second, “a closed, formal system ”: This implies a lot of things.  “ System ”  means 
  games are made of interrelated elements that work together.  “ Formal ”  is just a 
  way of saying that the system is clearly defined, that is, it has rules.  “ Closed ”  is 
  the interesting part here. It means that there are boundaries to the system. This 
  NO, SERIOUSLY, WHAT IS A GAME?
  
  CHAPTER THREE • THE EXPERIENCE RISES OUT OF A GAME
  34
  hasn’t been mentioned explicitly yet in the other definitions, although the idea of 
  endogenous value does imply it. Much has been made of this boundary at the edge 
  of the game. Johan Huizinga called it  “the magic circle, ” and it does indeed have a 
  kind of magical feeling to it. When we are mentally  “in the game ” we have very dif-
  ferent thoughts, feelings, and values than when we are  “out of the game. ” How can 
  games, which are nothing more than sets of rules, have this magical effect on us? To 
  understand, we have to look to the human mind. 
   Let’s review the list of game qualities we have picked out of these various 
  definitions: 
   Q1.   Games are entered willfully. 
    Q2.   Games have goals. 
   Q3.   Games have conflict. 
   Q4.   Games have rules. 
   Q5.   Games can be won and lost. 
   Q6.   Games are interactive. 
   Q7.   Games have challenge. 
   Q8.   Games can create their own internal value. 
   Q9.   Games engage players. 
   Q10.   Games are closed, formal systems.  
   That’s a lot, isn’t it? Alan Kay, the computer researcher, once advised me:  “If 
  you’ve written a software subroutine that takes more than ten arguments, look 
  again. You probably missed a few. ” This was his way of saying that if you need a 
  long list to convey what you mean, you should find a better way to regroup your 
  ideas. And indeed, this list of ten things does not seem complete. It is likely that we 
  have missed a few. 
   It does seem odd that something as simple, compelling, and innate to us as the 
  playing of games would require such an unwieldy definition. But maybe we’re 
  approaching this the wrong way. Instead of approaching the gameplay experience 
  from the outside in; that is, focusing on how games relate to people, as we have 
  been doing, perhaps we should look from the other direction: How do people relate 
  to games? 
   What is it that people like so much about games? People give many answers 
  to this question that are true for some but not all games:  “I like playing with my 
  friends, ” “I like the physical activity, ” “I like feeing immersed in another world, ”
  and many more. But there is one answer that people often give when they talk 
  about playing games, which seems to apply to all games:  “I like solving problems. ”
   That’s kind of weird, isn’t it? Normally, we think of problems as something neg-
  ative. But we really do get pleasure from solving them. And, as humans, we are 
  really good at solving problems. Our big complex brains can solve problems better 
  
  35
  than any of the other animals, and this is our primary advantage as a species. So, it 
  should not seem strange that it is something we enjoy. The enjoyment of problem 
  solving seems to be an evolved survival mechanism. People who enjoy solving prob-
  lems are going to solve more problems, and probably get better at solving problems, 
  and be more likely to survive. 
   But is it really true that most games involve problem solving? One is hard 
  pressed to come up with a game that does not. Any game with a goal effectively 
  has presented you with a problem to solve. Examples might be: 
   ●  Find a way to get more points than the other team. 
   ●  Find a way to get to the finish line before the other players. 
   ●  Find a way to complete this level. 
   ●  Find a way to destroy the other player before he destroys you.  
   Gambling games, at first, seem like a possible exception. Is someone playing 
  craps really trying to solve a problem? Yes. The problem is how to take the right 
  calculated risks and make as much money as possible. Another tricky example is a 
  game where the outcome is completely random, such as the children’s card game 
  of War. In War, the two players each have a stack of playing cards. In unison, they 
  each flip over the top card from their stack to see who has the higher card. The 
  player with the higher card wins the round keeping both cards. In the case of a tie, 
  more cards are flipped, and the winner gets a larger take. Play continues until one 
  player has all the cards. 
   How could a game like that possibly involve any problem solving? The outcome 
  is predetermined — the players make no choices, they just gradually reveal who the 
  winner will be. Nonetheless, children play this game just as happily as any other, 
  and draw no special distinction about this game differing somehow from other 
  games. This baffled me for some time, so I took the cultural anthropologist point 
  of view. I played the game with some children and tried hard to remember what 
  it felt like to be a child playing War. And the answer quickly became obvious. For 
  children, it is a problem-solving game. The problem they are trying to solve is  “ Can 
  I control fate, and win this game? ” and they try all kinds of ways to do it. They 
  hope, they plead to the fates, they flip over the cards in all kinds of crazy ways —
  all superstitious behaviors, experimented with in an attempt to win the game. 
  Ultimately, they learn the lesson of War: You cannot control fate. They realize the 
  problem is unsolvable, and at that point, it is no longer a game, just an activity, and 
  they soon move on to games with new problems to solve. 
   Another possible objection one might raise is that not every activity associated 
  with gameplaying is a problem-solving activity. Often, the things people enjoy most 
  about games, such as social interaction or physical exercise, have nothing to do with 
  problem solving. But while these other activities might improve a game, they are 
  not essential to the game. When problem solving is removed from a game, it ceases 
  to be a game and becomes just an activity. 
  NO, SERIOUSLY, WHAT IS A GAME?
  
  CHAPTER THREE • THE EXPERIENCE RISES OUT OF A GAME
  36
   So, if all games involve some kind of problem solving, and problem solving is 
  one of the things that defines us as a species, perhaps we should look more closely 
  at the mental mechanisms we use for problem solving to see if they have anything 
  to do with the properties of games. 
   Problem Solving 101 
   Let’s consider what we do when we solve a problem and how it might relate to our 
  numbered list of game qualities. 
   One of the first things we do is to state the problem we are trying to solve, that 
  is, define a clear goal (Q2). Next, we frame the problem. We determine its bounda-
  ries and the nature of the problem space. We also determine what methods we are 
  allowed to use to solve the problem; that is, we determine the rules of the problem 
  (Q4). How we do this is kind of hard to describe. It is not a completely verbal proc-
  ess. It is almost as if our minds are equipped to set up an internal, minimized, sim-
  plified version of reality that only includes the necessary interrelationships needed 
  to solve the problem. This is like a cleaner, smaller version of the real-world situa-
  tion, which we can more easily consider and manipulate, or interact with (Q6). In a 
  sense, we are establishing a closed, formal system (Q10) with a goal. We then work 
  to reach that goal, which is usually challenging (Q7), because it involves some kind 
  of conflict (Q3). If we care about the problem, we quickly become engaged (Q9) 
  in solving it. When we are occupied in doing so, we kind of forget about the real 
  world, since we are focused on our internal problem space. Since this problem space 
  is not the real world, and just a simplified version of it, and solving the problem is 
  important to us, elements in the problem space quickly gain an internal importance, 
  if they get us closer to our goal of solving the problem, and this importance does 
  not need to be relevant outside the context of the problem (Q8). Eventually, we 
  defeat the problem, or are defeated by it, thus winning or losing (Q5). 
   Now we see the magic circle for what it really is: our internal problem solving 
  system. This does not make it any less magical. Somehow, our minds have the abil-
  ity to create miniature realities based on the real world. These micro-realities have 
  so effectively distilled the essential elements of reality for a particular problem that 
  manipulations of this internal world, and conclusions drawn from it, are valid and 
  meaningful in the real world. We have little idea of how this really works — but it 
  does work very, very well. 
   Could our definition of game possibly be this simple:
   A game is a problem-solving activity.  
   That can’t be right. It might be a true statement, but it is too broad. There are lots 
  of problem-solving activities that are not play. Many of them feel more like work. 
  Many of them ( “How can we reduce the production costs of these widgets by 
  8%?”) literally are work. But we’ve already determined that the difference between 
  a play activity and a work activity has nothing to do with the activity itself, but 
  
  37
  one’s motivation for doing the activity. Astute readers will notice that only nine 
  of our ten qualities were covered in our problem-solving analysis. A key quality:
  “Games are entered willfully ” (Q1) was omitted. No, games cannot simply be 
  problem-solving activities. One who plays them must also have that special, hard-to-
  define attitude that we consider essential to the nature of play. So, a definition that 
  nicely covers all ten qualities might be:
   A game is a problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude.  
   This is a simple, elegant definition, which has the advantage of no fancy jargon. 
  Whether you accept this definition or not, viewing your game as a problem to be 
  solved is a useful perspective, and that perspective is Lens #6.
   
   Lens #6: The Lens of Problem Solving 
   To use this lens, think about the problems your players must solve to suc-
  ceed at your game, for every game has problems to solve. Ask yourself these 
  questions: 
   ●  What problems does my game ask the player to solve? 
   ●  Are there hidden problems to solve that arise as part of gameplay? 
   ●  How can my game generate new problems so that players keep coming 
  back?  
   The Fruits of Our Labors 
   So, we have embarked on a long journey of defining our terms. Let’s review what 
  we came up with: 
   ●  Fun is pleasure with surprises. 
   ●  Play is manipulation that satisfies curiosity. 
   ●  A toy is an object you play with. 
   ●  A good toy is an object that is fun to play with. 
   ●  A game is a problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude.  
   So, are these the keys to the secrets of the universe? No. They only have value 
  if they give you some insight into how to make better games. If they do, great! If 
  not, then we had best move on, and find something that will. You might not even 
  agree with these definitions — if that’s the case, then good for you! It means you 
  THE FRUITS OF OUR LABORS
  
  CHAPTER THREE • THE EXPERIENCE RISES OUT OF A GAME
  38
  are thinking. So, keep thinking! See if you can come up with better examples than 
  what I have here. The whole point of defining these terms is gain new insights — it 
  is the insights that are the fruits of our labors, not the definitions. Perhaps your new 
  definitions will lead to new and better insights that can help us all. One thing I feel 
  certain of:
   The whole truth regarding play cannot be known until the whole truth regarding 
  life itself is known.
   – Lehman and Witty  
   So let’s not dawdle here. We’ve spent enough time thinking about what a game is. 
  Now let’s go see what a game is made of.  
  
  CHAPTER
  39
   The Game Consists of 
  Elements 
  39
   FOUR 
  F I G U R E
  4.1
  
  CHAPTER FOUR • THE GAME CONSISTS OF ELEMENTS
  40
   What Are Little Games Made Of? 
  F I G U R E
  4.2
   When my daughter was three years old, she became quite curious one day about 
  what different things were made of. She ran around the room, excitedly pointing to 
  things, trying to stump me with her questions:
   “Daddy, what is the table made of? ” 
  “Wood. ”  
  “Daddy, what is the spoon made of? ”  
  “Metal.”  
  “Daddy, what is this toy made of? ” 
  “Plastic. ” 
   As she looked around for a new object, I turned it around on her, with a ques-
  tion of my own.
   “What are  you made of? ”  
   She paused to consider. She looked down at her hands, turning them over, and 
  studying them. And then, brightly, she announced:
   “I’m made of skin!”  
   And for a three-year-old, this is a perfectly reasonable conclusion. As we get 
  older, of course, we learn more about what people are really made of — the com-
  plex relations between bones, muscles, organs, and the rest. Even as adults, though, 
  our understanding of human anatomy is incomplete (can you point to your spleen, 
  
  41
  for instance? Or describe what it does, or how?), and this is acceptable for most of 
  us, because we generally know enough to get by. 
   But we expect more from a doctor. A doctor needs to know, really know, how 
  everything works inside us, how it all interrelates, and when something goes wrong, 
  how to figure out the source of the problem, and how to fix it. 
   If you have just been a game player up until now, you probably haven’t thought 
  too much about what a game is made of. Thinking about a videogame, for example,
  you might, like most people, have a vague idea that a game is this kind of story 
  world, with some rules, and a computer program lurking around somewhere in 
  there that somehow makes it all go. And that’s enough for most people to know in 
  order to get by. 
   But guess what? You’re a doctor now. You need to know, intimately, what your 
  patients (games) are really made of, how their pieces all fit together, and what 
  makes them tick. When things go wrong, you’ll need to spot the true cause, and 
  come up with the best solution, or your game will surely die. And if that doesn’t 
  sound hard enough, you’ll be asked to do things that most doctors are never asked: 
  to create new kinds of organisms (radically new games) no one has ever seen 
  before, and bring them to life. 
   Much of this book is devoted to developing this essential understanding. Our 
  study of anatomy begins with an understanding of the four basic elements that 
  comprise every game. 
   The Four Basic Elements 
   There are many ways to break down and classify the many elements that form a 
  game. I have found that the categories shown in Figure 4.3, which I call the  ele-
  mental tetrad, are very useful. Let’s look briefly at each of the four, and how they 
  relate to the others: 
   1.   Mechanics: These are the procedures and rules of your game. Mechanics 
  describe the goal of your game, how players can and cannot try to achieve it, 
  and what happens when they try. If you compare games to more linear enter-
  tainment experiences (books, movies, etc.), you will note that while linear expe-
  riences involve technology, story, and aesthetics, they do not involve mechanics, 
  for it is mechanics that make a game a game. When you choose a set of mechan-
  ics as crucial to your gameplay, you will need to choose technology that can 
  support them, aesthetics that emphasize them clearly to players, and a story that 
  allows your (sometimes strange) game mechanics to make sense to the players. 
  Mechanics will be given detailed attention in Chapters 10–12. 
   2.   Story: This is the sequence of events that unfolds in your game. It may be linear 
  and pre-scripted, or it may be branching and emergent. When you have a story 
  you want to tell through your game, you have to choose mechanics that will 
  THE FOUR BASIC ELEMENTS
  
  CHAPTER FOUR • THE GAME CONSISTS OF ELEMENTS
  42
  both strengthen that story and let that story emerge. Like any storyteller, you 
  will want to choose aesthetics that help reinforce the ideas of your story, and 
  technology that is best suited to the particular story that will come out of your 
  game. Story, and its special relationship with game mechanics, will be studied in 
  Chapters 15 and 16. 
   3.   Aesthetics: This is how your game looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels. 
  Aesthetics are an incredibly important aspect of game design since they have 
  the most direct relationship to a player’s experience. When you have a certain 
  look, or tone, that you want players to experience and become immersed in, you 
  will need to choose a technology that will not only allow the aesthetics to come 
  through, but amplify and reinforce them. You will want to choose mechanics 
  that make players feel like they are in the world that the aesthetics have defined, 
  and you will want a story with a set of events that let your aesthetics emerge at 
  the right pace and have the most impact. The skill of choosing aesthetics that 
  reinforce the other elements of the game to create a truly memorable experience 
  will be examined in Chapter 20. 
   4.  Technology: We are not exclusively referring to  “high technology ” here, but to 
  any materials and interactions that make your game possible such as paper and 
  pencil, plastic chits, or high-powered lasers. The technology you choose for your 
  game enables it to do certain things and prohibits it from doing other things. 
  The technology is essentially the medium in which the aesthetics take place, in 
  More visible
  Less visible
  Mechanics
  Technology
  Story
  Aesthetics
  F I G U R E
  4.3
  
  43
  which the mechanics will occur, and through which the story will be told. We 
  will talk in detail about how to choose the right technology for your game in 
  Chapter 26.  
   It is important to understand that  none of the elements is more important than 
  the others. The tetrad is arranged here in a diamond shape not to show any rela-
  tive importance, but only to help illustrate the  “visibility gradient ”; that is, the fact 
  that technological elements tend to be the least visible to the players, aesthetics 
  are the most visible, and mechanics and story are somewhere in the middle. It can 
  be arranged in other ways. For example, to highlight the fact that technology and 
  mechanics are  “left brain ” elements, whereas story and aesthetics are  “right brain ” 
  elements, you might arrange the tetrad in a square. To emphasize the strong con-
  nectedness of the elements to one another, they could be arranged as a tetrahedral 
  pyramid — it really doesn’t matter. 
   The important thing to understand about the four elements is that they are all 
  essential. No matter what game you design, you will make important decisions about 
  all four elements. None is more important than the others, and each one powerfully 
  influences each of the others. I have found that it is hard to get people to believe in 
  the equality of the four elements. Game designers tend to believe that mechanics are 
  primary; artists tend to believe the same about aesthetics; engineers, technology; and 
  writers, story. I suppose it is human nature to believe your piece is the most impor-
  tant. But, believe me, as a game designer,  they are all your piece. Each has an equally 
  powerful effect on the player’s experience of your game, and thus, each deserves 
  equal attention. This point of view is crucial when using Lens #7.
   Lens #7: The Lens of the Elemental Tetrad 
   To use this lens, take stock of what your game is truly made of. Consider each 
  element separately, and then all of them together as a whole. 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  Is my game design using elements of all four types? 
   ●  Could my design be improved by enhancing elements in one or more of the 
  categories? 
   ●  Are the four elements in harmony, reinforcing each other, and working 
  together toward a common theme?  
   Consider the design of the game Space Invaders (Taito, 1978) by Toshihiro 
  Nishikado. If (somehow) you aren’t familiar with the game, do a quick Web search 
  so that you understand the basics. We will consider the design from the points of 
  view of the four basic elements. 
  THE FOUR BASIC ELEMENTS
  
  CHAPTER FOUR • THE GAME CONSISTS OF ELEMENTS
  44
   Technology: All new games need to be innovative in some way. The technology 
  behind Space Invaders was custom designed for the game. It was the first video-
  game that allowed a player to fight an advancing army, and this was only possible 
  due to the custom motherboard that was created for it. An entirely new set of game-
  play mechanics was made possible with this technology. It was created solely for 
  that purpose. 
   Mechanics: The gameplay mechanic of Space Invaders was new, which is always 
  exciting. But more than that, it was interesting and well-balanced. Not only does a 
  player shoot at advancing aliens that shoot back at him, the player can hide behind 
  shields that the aliens can destroy (or that the player can choose to destroy himself). 
  Further, there is the possibility to earn bonus points by shooting a mysterious flying 
  saucer. There is no need for a time limit, because the game can end two ways: the 
  player’s ships can be destroyed by alien bombs, or the advancing aliens will eventu-
  ally reach the player’s home planet. Aliens closest to the player are easier to shoot 
  and worth fewer points. Aliens farther away are worth more points. One more inter-
  esting game mechanic: the more of the 48 aliens you destroy, the faster the invading 
  army gets. This builds excitement and makes for the emergence of some interesting 
  stories. Basically, the game mechanics behind Space Invaders are very solid and 
  well-balanced and were very innovative at the time. 
   Story: This game didn’t need to have a story. It could have been an abstract 
  game where a triangle shoots at blocks. But having a story makes it far more excit-
  ing and easier to understand. The original story for Space Invaders, though, was not 
  a story of alien invaders at all. It was originally a game where you fired at an army 
  of advancing human soldiers. It is said that Taito decided this sent a bad message, 
  so the story was changed. The new story, a story about advancing aliens, works 
  much better for several reasons: 
   ●  Several war-themed games had already been released (Sea Wolf, 1976, for example).
  A game where you could be in a space battle was actually novel at the time. 
   ●  Some people are squeamish about war games where you shoot people (Death 
  Race, 1976, had made violence in videogames a sensitive issue). 
   ●  The “high tech ” computer graphics lent themselves well to a game with a futur-
  istic theme.  
   Marching soldiers are necessarily walking on the ground, which means the game 
  would have had a  “top down ” view. Space Invaders gives the sense that the aliens 
  are gradually lowering toward the surface of your planet, and you are shooting up 
  at them. Somehow, hovering, flying aliens are believable, and make for a more dra-
  matic story — “if they touch down, we’re doomed! ” A change in story allowed for a 
  change in camera perspective with a dramatic impact on aesthetics. 
   Aesthetics: Some may sneer at the visuals, which now seem so primitive, but 
  the designer did a lot with a little. The aliens are not all identical. There are three 
  different designs, each worth a different amount of points. They each perform a 
  
  45
  simple two-frame  “ marching ”  animation that is very effective. The display was not 
  capable of color — but a simple technology change took care of that! Since the 
  player was confined to the bottom of the screen, the aliens to the middle, and the 
  saucer to the top, colored strips of translucent plastic were glued to the screen so 
  that your ship and shields were green, the aliens were white, and the saucer was 
  red. This simple change in the technology of the game worked only because of the 
  nature of the game mechanics, and greatly improved the aesthetics of the game. 
  Audio is another important component of aesthetics. The marching invaders made 
  a sort of heartbeat noise, and as they sped up, the heartbeat sped up, which had a 
  very visceral effect on the player. There were other sound effects that helped tell the 
  story, too. The most memorable was a punishing, buzzing crunch noise when your 
  ship was hit with an alien missile. But not all aesthetics are in the game! The cabi-
  net for Space Invaders had a design that was attractive and eye-catching that helped 
  tell the story of the evil alien invaders. 
   Part of the key to the success of Space Invaders was that each of the four basic 
  elements were all working hard toward the same goal — to let the player experience 
  the fantasy of battling an alien army. Each of the elements made compromises for 
  the other, and clearly deficits in one element often inspired the designer to make 
  changes in another. These are the sort of clever insights you are likely to have when 
  you view your design through the Lens of the Elemental Tetrad. 
   Skin and Skeleton 
   We will be discussing the four basic elements in more detail throughout this book 
  as well as many other aspects of game anatomy. It is a wonderful thing to learn 
  enough so that you can see past the skin of a game (the player’s experience) into 
  the skeleton (the elements that make up the game). But you must beware of a ter-
  rible trap that many designers fall into. Some designers, thinking constantly about 
  the detailed internal workings of games, forget about the player experience. It is 
  not enough to merely understand the various game elements and how they inter-
  relate with one another — you must always consider how they relate to the expe-
  rience. This is one of the great challenges of game design: to simultaneously feel 
  the experience of your game while understanding which elements and elemental 
  interactions are causing that experience, and why. You must see skin and skeleton 
  at once. If you focus only on skin, you can think about how an experience feels, 
  but not understand why it feels that way or how to improve it. If you focus only on 
  skeleton, you can make a game structure that is beautiful in theory, but potentially 
  horrible in practice. If you can manage to focus on both at once, you can see how it 
  all works while feeling the power of your game’s experience at the same time. 
   In Chapter 2, we discussed the importance and the challenge of observing and 
  analyzing your own experiences. As challenging as that is, it is not enough. You 
  must also be able to think about the elements in your game that make the experi-
  ence possible. This takes practice, just as the observation techniques of Chapter 2 
  SKIN AND SKELETON
  
  46
  take practice. Essentially, the skill you need to develop is the ability to observe your 
  own experience  while thinking about the underlying causes of that experience. 
   This important skill is called holographic design, and it is detailed in Lens #8.
   
   Lens #8: The Lens of Holographic Design 
   To use this lens, you must see everything in your game at once: the four ele-
  ments and the player experience, as well as how they interrelate. It is accepta-
  ble to shift your focus from skin to skeleton and back again, but it is far better 
  to view your game and experience holographically. 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What elements of the game make the experience enjoyable? 
   ●  What elements of the game detract from the experience? 
   ●  How can I change game elements to improve the experience?  
   In future chapters, we will say much more about the elements that make up a game. 
  Now let’s turn our attention to the reason these elements need to work together.  
  CHAPTER FOUR • THE GAME CONSISTS OF ELEMENTS
  
  CHAPTER
  47
   The Elements Support 
  a Theme 
  47
   FIVE 
  F I G U R E
  5.1
  
  CHAPTER FIVE • THE ELEMENTS SUPPORT A THEME
  48
   To write a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.  
  – Herman Melville
   Mere Games 
   Great themes and deep meanings are often associated with literature or with great 
  works of art. Is it pretentious for a  “mere game ” to aspire to the same levels of 
  greatness? 
   As game designers, we must confront the painful truth that many people 
  view games, in all their forms, as meaningless diversions. Usually, when I press 
  people who hold this view, I can get them to admit some game that is very impor-
  tant to them. Sometimes it is a sport, either one they have played, or one they 
  watch religiously. Sometimes it is a card or board game that formed the cornerstone 
  of their relationship with someone important to them. Sometimes it is a videog-
  ame with a storyline and characters that they identify with. When I point out the 
  hypocrisy of games as meaningless, but a game as meaningful, they explain,  “Well, 
  it really wasn’t the game I cared about — it was the experience that went with the 
  game. ” But as we’ve discussed, experiences aren’t just associated with games at 
  random, they are what emerge when players interact with a game. The parts of 
  the experience that are important to people, such as the drama of a sporting event, 
  the camaraderie between bridge players, or the rivalry of chess enthusiasts, all are 
  determined by the design of the game. 
   Some people make the argument that games, especially videogames, cannot be 
  deep and meaningful because they are simply too primitive in nature. The same 
  argument was made about film at the beginning of the twentieth  century when 
  it was silent, and black and white. As technology increased, this argument faded 
  away. And the same is happening for games. In the 1970s, videogames were so sim-
  plified as to be almost completely abstract. Today, they can include text, pictures, 
  video, sound, music, and more. As technology advances, more and more aspects of 
  human life and expression will be integrated into games. There is nothing that can-
  not be part of a game. You can put a painting, a radio broadcast, or a movie into a 
  game, but you cannot put a game into these other things. All these other types of 
  media, and all media that is to come, are subsets of games. At their technological 
  limit, games will subsume all other media. 
   Really, the problem is that games have only recently emerged as anything like a 
  serious medium of expression. It will take time for the world to grow used to this 
  idea. But we have no reason to wait. We can create games with powerful themes 
  right now. But why? Why do this? Out of a selfish need for artistic expression? No. 
  Because we are designers. Artistic expression is not our goal. Our goal is to create 
  powerful experiences. It is possible to create games that do not have themes or that 
  have very weak themes. However, if our games have unifying, resonant themes, the 
  experiences we create will be much, much stronger. 
  
  49
    Unifying Themes 
    The primary benefit of basing your design around a single theme is that all of the 
  elements of your game will reinforce one another, since they will all be working 
  toward a common goal. Sometimes it is best to let a theme emerge as you are crea-
  ting the game. The sooner you have settled on a theme, the easier things will be 
  for you, because you will have an easy method of deciding if something belongs in 
  your game or not: If it reinforces the theme, it stays, but if it doesn’t, it goes. 
    There are two simple steps to using a theme to strengthen the power of your 
  game’s experience. 
    Step 1: Figure out what your them49e is. 
    Step 2: Use every means possible to reinforce that theme.  
    Sounds easy, but what is a theme? The theme is what your game is about. It is 
  the idea that ties your entire game together — the idea that all the elements must 
  support. If you don’t know what your theme is, it is very likely that your game is 
  not engaging people as much as it could. Most game themes are  experience-based ; 
  that is, the goal of the design is to deliver an essential experience to the player. 
    Designer Rich Gold describes an elementary example of theming in his book 
  The Plenitude. As a child, he had a book about elephants. The idea of the book 
  was simple: to deliver an experience to children that let them understand what ele-
  phants were. In a sense, you could say the theme was  “What are elephants? ” So, 
  step one is done. This brings us to step two: use every means possible to reinforce 
  that theme. The authors did the obvious — the book contained text about elephants 
  and pictures of elephants. But they took it a step further, and cut the entire book, 
  cover and pages, into the  shape of an elephant, as well. At every turn, you need to 
  look for opportunities to reinforce your theme in clever and unexpected ways. 
    Let me give a more detailed example based on a virtual reality game I worked on 
  for Disney called  Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Buccaneer Gold. Our team 
  (the Disney VR Studio) was given the assignment of creating an interactive adapta-
  tion of the popular Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride, which can be seen in 
  various incarnations at all the Disney parks. We knew we were going to put it in a 
  Computer Augmented Virtual Environment (CAVE), which is basically a small room 
  with 3D projections on the walls at DisneyQuest (Disney’s virtual reality center 
  at Disneyworld), and the experience had to be about five minutes long, but no 
  storyline or specific game goals had been set. 
    We already had the beginnings of a theme: this attraction was going to be about 
  pirates, which narrowed things down, but we were hoping to be more specific. 
  What point of view did we want to take about pirates? There are several we could 
  have taken: 
    ●  A historical documentary about pirates 
    ●  A battle between competing pirate ships 
  UNIFYING THEMES
  
  CHAPTER FIVE • THE ELEMENTS SUPPORT A THEME
  50
   ●  A search for hidden pirate treasure 
   ●  Pirates are villains, and must be destroyed  
   Several others came to mind as well. You can see that even with something as 
  narrow as  “pirates, ” we still didn’t really have a theme, because there are many 
  possible experiences around the idea of pirates that we could create. We started 
  doing research, looking for game ideas, aesthetic ideas, and hopefully a clear, unify-
  ing theme. 
   We read a lot about the history of pirates, and we looked at pirate-themed video-
  games other people had made. We talked to people who had been involved in the 
  creation of the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride. We got lots of good details, 
  but were not getting much closer to a theme. One day, we all piled into a car and 
  headed down to Disneyland to study the ride up close. We rode the ride dozens of 
  times before park hours frantically scribbling notes and snapping pictures. There 
  is a huge amount of detail in the ride — it is incredibly compelling. We could see 
  that details were going to be very important. But what about the story? Weirdly, the 
  Pirates of the Caribbean ride doesn’t tell a coherent story. It just features several 
  immersive tableaus of pirates doing pirate things. In a sense, this is a real strength: 
  the story is left to the rider’s imagination. 
   So, we learned some good things from riding, but we still didn’t have a theme. 
  We interviewed park employees, and when the park opened, we chatted with guests 
  about their feelings about the ride. We got lots of great details about how the ride 
  looks, how it makes people feel, and what their favorite parts were, but none of it 
  really clued us into a solid point of view for our theme. 
   On the way home in the car, as we talked over the thousands of details we had 
  observed, we fretted a little that we still didn’t have a clear path forward. As we sat 
  and thought, it was almost impossible not to hum the catchy theme song from the 
  ride, having heard it so many times … “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me. ” And sud-
  denly it became clear! The Pirates of the Caribbean ride is not about  pirates, it is about 
  being a pirate! The whole goal of the ride is to fulfill the fantasy of what it is like to 
  throw aside the rules of society and just start being a pirate! It might sound obvious 
  in retrospect, but this shift in our thinking crystallized everything. This was not a his-
  torical re-creation, and it was not about destroying pirates. It was about fulfilling the 
  pirate fantasy that everyone has bubbling just below the surface, and what better way 
  to create this feeling of being a pirate than through an immersive, interactive experi-
  ence? We now had our experience-based theme:  The fantasy of being a pirate . 
   And so step one was completed. We knew our theme. Now for step two: use 
  every means possible to reinforce that theme. And we really did work hard to use 
  everything we could to do just that. Some examples include: 
   ●  CAVE shape: In the past, we had used square and hexagonal CAVES. We 
  created a new, four-screen CAVE shape that was better suited to a pirate ship 
  simulation. 
  
  51
    ●  Stereoptics: Not every CAVE experience uses stereoptics, but we chose to do so, 
  because the sense of depth they give. Letting your eyes focus on infinity really 
  helped make it feel like you were out at sea. 
    ●  Modified 3D Glasses: Many off-the-shelf 3D glasses for theaters have blinders 
  on the side to reduce distractions when watching a movie. We knew that a per-
  son’s sense of motion is strongly influenced by their peripheral vision, so these 
  blinders were a problem — they were detracting from our theme, since players 
  weren’t getting enough of a sense of sailing at sea. We made arrangements with 
  the manufacturer to have the blinders cut off. 
   ●  Motion Platform: We wanted to give the feeling of a rocking, swaying boat. 
  A motion platform seemed like a good idea, but what kind? Eventually, we custom
  built a platform using pneumatics, because it felt the most like a ship at sea. 
    ●  Interface: Part of the pirate fantasy is steering a ship, and part of it is firing can-
  nons. We could have used joysticks, or other off-the-shelf hardware, but that 
  wouldn’t be very good theming. Instead, the ship is steered with a ship’s wheel, 
  and we had real metal cannons that players would use to aim and fire. 
    ●  Visuals: We had to make things look beautiful. The ride features a kind of 
  “ hyper-real ”  look, which fits perfectly with our theme. We used high-end 
  graphics hardware and rich textures and models to achieve a similar look. 
    ●  Music: Through some pains, we got permission to use the music from the ride. 
  It captures the theme so well, and connects the game to the ride, in a powerful 
  nostalgic way. 
   ●  Audio: Our sound designers created a custom ten-speaker sound system that 
  could play sounds from all directions, making you feel like you were out at sea. 
  Some of the speakers were designed only to play cannon blasts, and were placed 
  at precisely the right distance from the boat so that the waveform would hit you 
  in the stomach, so you would not just hear, but  feel the cannons firing. 
    ●  A Feeling of Freedom: Piracy is all about freedom. Our gameplay mecha-
  nics were designed to let players sail wherever they chose, but at the same time 
  ensure the players have an exciting time. Details of how this was accomplished 
  will be discussed in detail in Chapter 16. 
   ●  Dead Men Tell No Tales: How to handle death in the game was a real question. 
  Some advocated that this was a videogame, and we should handle it like video-
  games traditionally do: if you die, there is some penalty, and then you come 
  back to life, to play again. This didn’t fit in well with our theme of living the 
  pirate fantasy — in the fantasy, you don’t die, or if you do, it is in an incredibly 
  dramatic way, and you do not return. Further, we were trying very hard to main-
  tain a dramatic interest curve (explained in Chapter 14) for our five-minute 
  UNIFYING THEMES
  
  CHAPTER FIVE • THE ELEMENTS SUPPORT A THEME
  52
  experience, since drama is part of the pirate fantasy. If the players could suddenly 
  die in the middle of the game, it would spoil that. Our solution was to make play-
  ers invulnerable throughout the majority of the game, but if they took too many 
  hits over the course of the experience, their ship would sink dramatically at the 
  end of the final battle. This broke with videogame tradition, but theme is more 
  important than tradition. 
   ●  Treasure: Collecting vast hordes of treasure is an essential part of the pirate 
  fantasy. Unfortunately, piles of gold are actually pretty hard to render convinc-
  ingly in a videogame. We came up with a special technique that made flat, hand-
  painted treasures seem to be solid, dimensional objects that sat prominently on 
  the ship’s deck. 
   ●  Lighting: We needed to light the room the players stood in. How could we 
  theme that? We used special filters on the light that made it look like it was light 
  reflected off of water. 
   ●  A Place for my Stuff: People who step up to the controls need a place to put 
  their bags, purses, etc. We could have just made a shelf. Instead, we created bags 
  out of fishing nets that really look like they belong on a boat. 
   ●  Air Conditioning: The people in charge of facilities in the building where the 
  game was going to go asked if we cared where the air conditioning vents in the 
  room were placed. Our first thought was  “who cares? ” But then we thought, 
  “How can we use this to reinforce our theme? ” The vents were placed at the 
  front of the ship, blowing back, so players feel a breeze as they sail their ship. 
   ●  The Eyes of Bluebeard: One thing we never figured out how to theme was 
  the 3D glasses. We experimented with making them look like pirate hats, and 
  bandanas, but it didn’t really work. One witty gentleman suggested that play-
  ers should be forced to wear eye patches, so the 3D effect was unnecessary. In 
  the end, we gave up, and let that detail go unthemed. To our surprise, when 
  the game had been installed at Disneyworld, and we went to try it out, the cast 
  member who was about to lead us on board proclaimed  “Before ye board, ye 
  must wear the  Eyes of Bluebeard.” This was surprising, because it was not in the 
  “official script ” given to cast members. The ride attendants succeeded where we 
  had failed. It was a simple and effective way to theme a detail that escaped us, 
  and a powerful illustration that when you have a strong unifying theme, it makes 
  it easier for everyone on the team to make useful contributions.  
   This is not a complete list. Everything we did and every decision we made was 
  focused on whether it would reinforce the theme and deliver the essential experience 
  we wanted to get across. You might argue that without a big budget, you can’t afford 
  to do fancy theming. But many theming details are really quite inexpensive. They can 
  be a line of text, or a color choice, or a sound effect. And theming is fun — once you 
  get in the habit of trying to make as many things as possible fit your theme, it’s hard 
  to stop. But why would you stop? And this gives us Lens #9.
  
  53
   Resonance 
    A unifying theme is good — it focuses your design toward a single goal. But some 
  themes are better than others. The best themes are ones that resonate with players — 
  themes that touch players deeply. The  “fantasy of being a pirate ” theme is powerful 
  because it is a fantasy that everyone — kids, adults, men, and women — has had at 
  one time or another. In a sense, it resonates with our desire to be free — free from 
  our obligations, free from our worries and cares, free to do what we want, when we 
  want to. 
    When you manage to tap into one of these resonant themes, you have something 
  deep and powerful that has a true ability to move people and to give them an expe-
  rience that is both transcendent and transforming. Earlier we discussed that some 
  themes are experience-based, that is, they are all about delivering a certain essential 
  experience. When this experience is one that resonates with the fantasies and desires 
  of your players, it will be an experience that quickly becomes important to them. 
  But there is another kind of theme that can be just as resonant as an experience-
  based theme; sometimes more so. This is the  truth-based theme. 
    Consider the movie  Titanic. This film deeply moved audiences the world over. 
  Why? Sure, it was well-executed, and it had great special effects and a sweet (though 
  sometimes schmaltzy) love story, but lots of movies have those things. What was 
  special here was a deep and resonant theme reinforced by every element of the film. 
  So, what was the theme? At first, you might say that the theme was the Titanic 
  itself and its tragic accident. And that is an important component of the movie. In 
  fact, you could argue that it is  a theme of the movie, but it is not the  main theme. 
  The main theme is not experience-based. Instead, it is a simple statement, which I 
  would phrase as something like  “Love is more important than life, and stronger than 
  death. ”  This is a powerful statement. But it is a statement that many of us believe 
   Lens #9: The Lens of Unification 
    To use this lens, consider the reason behind it all. Ask yourself these 
  questions: 
    ●  What is my theme? 
    ●  Am I using every means possible to reinforce that theme?  
     The Lens of Unification works very well with the Lens of the Elemental 
  Tetrad. Use the tetrad to separate out the elements of your game, so you can 
  more easily study them from the perspective of a unified theme.  
  RESONANCE
  
  CHAPTER FIVE • THE ELEMENTS SUPPORT A THEME
  54
  deeply in our heart of hearts. It is certainly not a scientific truth, but for many, it is a 
  deeply held, though rarely expressed, personal truth. 
   Many Hollywood insiders did not believe this movie could possibly be successful: 
  audiences would know the ending. But where better to tell a story that fits this power-
  ful theme than in a place where we know almost everyone is going to die? The expen-
  sive special effects were not gratuitous — to fully grasp the import of this theme, we 
  must feel like it is all real, like we are right there, like we are dying ourselves. 
   Truth-based themes can sometimes be hard to spot. Part of the power of these 
  deep truths is that they are hidden. Often, a designer might not even consciously 
  know they have chosen a particular theme or be able to express it verbally — they 
  just have a certain feeling about how the experience should be. But it is worth the 
  trouble to explore your feelings about these things to the point that you can express 
  your theme concretely. It will make it much easier for you to decide what should 
  and shouldn’t go into your game, and make it easier for you to explain the rationale 
  of these decisions to others on your team. 
   Another example of a truth-based theme is the  Hercules story. The VR Studio 
  team was asked to create a game based upon Disney’s version of the ancient 
  Hercules myth. When a story stays alive, told and retold, for thousands of years 
  like this story has, it is a pretty good clue that there is a truth-based theme hiding 
  inside it. Sure, Hercules was a strong man, but that doesn’t seem quite important 
  enough that it would so deeply resonate with people. We looked at the various 
  versions of the story. Interestingly, there was not one canonical telling, even in 
  ancient times. Sometimes Hercules had ten labors, sometimes twelve, and some-
  times twenty. But there were certain aspects of the story that were always the 
  same. In every story, Hercules is a man so virtuous that he defeats death. And 
  this is a truth so deep that it is at the heart of many religions: If you are virtu-
  ous enough, you can defeat death. The Disney animators embodied this theme in 
  Hercules ’ conflict with Hades, Lord of the Underworld. We continued this theme 
  in our game, by having it take place mostly in the Underworld, until the end, 
  when you triumphantly break through to the world of the living for a final aer-
  ial battle against Hades. There were sub-themes too, such as a theme about the 
  importance of teamwork, but ultimately, we placed these sub-themes in the serv-
  ice of the main theme. 
   Sometimes you figure out your theme a piece at a time. Another Disney story: 
  when we started work on the Toontown Online project (Disney’s first massively 
  multiplayer game), we were again unsure of our theme. We had done our home-
  work on Toontown, studying both the  Who Framed Roger Rabbit? movie and the 
  Toontown section of Disneyland. Curiously, Toontown was not well-defined in 
  either place. We could see Toontown was powerful, though. The reason it was so 
  ill-defined was that everyone seemed to already have a sense of what it was —
  as if they had known all along that there was a special place where cartoon char-
  acters lived when they weren’t on the screen. This (slightly creepy) fact gave us 
  a sense we were tapping into something fundamental and hidden. We started 
  
  55
  making lists of things we thought Toontown should be about. Three big ones 
  stood out: 
    1.   Having fun with your friends 
    2.   Escaping from reality 
    3.   Simplicity and transcendence  
    The first one lent itself really well to online networked play, and we liked that. 
  The second one made a lot of sense — cartoons are a good form of escapism. The 
  third one (which we’ll be exploring in more detail in Chapter 17) is basically the 
  idea that things are simpler in Toontown than they are in the real world, but you 
  are also more powerful in Toontown than you are in the real world. 
   All of this helped clarify what we wanted to see in the game, but none 
  of it really established a clear theme. These felt more like sub-themes. At some 
  point, we realized that these three things together strongly characterize some-
  thing: play. Play is about having fun with your friends and escaping from reality, 
  and a play world is simpler than the real world, but you have much more power. 
  But we didn’t feel like play was a powerful theme on its own. We needed some-
  thing with more bite, with more conflict. This led us to play’s natural opponent: 
  work. And then it was clear —  “work vs. play ” would be a very strong theme. 
  Stated in more detail,  “Work wants to destroy play, but play must survive, because 
  play is more important, ” was the truth-based theme we arrived at. Replace  “ work ” 
  and “ play ” with “ slavery ” and “ freedom ”  as we did in Chapter 3, and the power 
  of this theme becomes clear. It really felt right. We wanted to create a game that 
  kids and parents could play together, with a theme they could both relate to — 
  how better to do that than by playfully exploring one of the primary conflicts in 
  their lives? And so we did. The story of Toontown Online became a story of 
  robot executives (the Cogs) trying to turn colorful Toontown into a dingy office 
  park. The Toons team up to fight off the Cogs with gags and practical jokes, and 
  the Cogs fight back with office supplies. This story was strange enough that it 
  raised some eyebrows inside the company, but we were confident it would work 
  because it was an expression of a theme that we knew would resonate with our 
  audience. 
   Resonant themes elevate your work from craft to art. An artist is someone 
  who takes you where you could never go alone, and theme is the vehicle for 
  getting there. Not every theme needs to be a resonant theme, of course. But 
  when you find a deep resonant theme, it makes sense to use it for all it is 
  worth. Some will be experience-based, others will be truth-based. You can never 
  tell which themes are resonant just through logic — you have to feel the reso-
  nance, deep inside yourself. It is an important form of self-listening, and is also 
  Lens #10.
  RESONANCE
  
  CHAPTER FIVE • THE ELEMENTS SUPPORT A THEME
  56
   Back to Reality 
   You may think that all this talk of resonant themes is too lofty for game design. And 
  for some games, maybe it is. Does  Super Monkey Ball have a deep resonant theme? 
  Maybe not, but it certainly does have a unifying theme which helped to drive the 
  design. Resonant themes can add great power to your work, but even if your game 
  doesn’t seem to have one, it will still be strengthened by a unifying theme to focus 
  the experience. 
   Some designers reject the notion of theme, because they say  “the players will 
  never notice. ” And it is certainly true that the players cannot always state clearly 
  the theme of a work that truly moves them — and that is because theme often oper-
  ates at a subconscious level. Players know they like a game, but they can’t quite say 
  why. Often, the reason is that all of the elements are reinforcing a theme that is 
  interesting or important to them. Theme is not about some puzzle-based symbolism 
  where the designer intends a secret message. Theme is about focusing your work 
  toward something that holds meaning for your players. 
   Different designers use theme in different ways as part of their design process. 
  Now it is time for us to explore the many other aspects of the overall process of 
  game design.  
   Lens #10: The Lens of Resonance 
   To use the Lens of Resonance, you must look for hidden power. 
    Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What is it about my game that feels powerful and special? 
   ●  When I describe my game to people, what ideas get them really excited? 
   ●  If I had no constraints of any kind, what would this game be like? 
   ●  I have certain instincts about how this game should be. What is driving 
  those instincts?  
   The Lens of Resonance is a quiet, delicate instrument. It is a tool for listening 
  to yourself and listening to others. We bury important things deep inside our-
  selves, and when something causes them to resonate, it shakes us to our very 
  core. The fact that these things are hidden gives them power, but also makes 
  them hard for us to find.  
  
  CHAPTER
  57
   The Game Begins 
  with an Idea 
  57
   SIX 
  F I G U R E
  6.1
  
  CHAPTER SIX • THE GAME BEGINS WITH AN IDEA
  58
   Hopefully, this book will inspire you to try designing some games of your own. 
  When you do that (maybe you have already), you might be thinking that you aren’t 
  going about it the right way, not using the methods that  “real ” game designers use. 
  I’m guessing the method you used to design your games was something like 
   1.  Think of an idea. 
   2.  Try it out. 
   3.   Keep changing it and testing it until it seems good enough.  
   Which sounds kind of amateurish. Well, guess what? That is exactly what real 
  game designers do. And this chapter would end here, except for the fact that some 
  ways to do these things are better than others. You already know  what to do. In this 
  chapter and the next, we are going to discuss  how to do it as well as possible. 
   Inspiration 
   As I mentioned earlier, I worked for several years as a professional juggler. When 
  I was about fourteen years old, and my repertoire of tricks was limited to two, I 
  attended my first juggling festival. If you haven’t attended one, they are remark-
  able to see — they mainly consist of jugglers of all levels of skill and ability stand-
  ing around in a large gymnasium, talking about, experimenting with, and sharing 
  new techniques. It is a place where you can attempt the impossible and drop with-
  out shame. But attending alone, my first time, it didn’t feel that way. I was incred-
  ibly nervous — after all, I wasn’t a  “real ” juggler. I mostly walked around, eyes 
  wide, hands in my pockets, terrified that someone would point and shout  “Hey! 
  What’s HE doing here? ” But of course, that didn’t happen. Everyone at the festival 
  had learned just like I had — they had taught themselves. Once I grew comfortable, 
  I took out my beanbags and did a little practicing of my own. I watched other peo-
  ple do tricks, and I tried imitating them — sometimes I could do it. But as I looked 
  around for more examples of techniques to try, there was one juggler who stood out 
  from the rest. He was an old man in a powder blue jumpsuit, and his tricks were 
  not like the others at all. He used patterns and rhythms that were unique, and his 
  tricks, though not astonishing in their difficulty, were simply beautiful to watch. 
  I had to watch a long time before I realized that some of the tricks that seemed so 
  special and unique when he did them were things  I could already do — but when 
  he did them they had such a different style, a different feeling, that they seemed like 
  something completely new. I watched him for about twenty minutes, and suddenly 
  he looked at me, and said  “Well? ”
   “Well, what? ” I said, kind of embarrassed. 
   “Aren’t you going to try to copy me? ”
   “I — I don’t think I would know how, ” I stammered out. 
   He laughed. “Yeah, they never can. Know why my tricks look so different? ”
  
  59
   “ Uh, practice? ” I managed. 
   “No — everybody practices. Look around! They’re all practicing. No, my tricks 
  look different because of where I get them. These guys, they get their tricks from 
  each other. Which is fine — you can learn a lot that way. But it will never make you 
  stand out. ”  
   I thought about it.  “ So where do you get them? ” I asked.  “ Books? ”
   “ Ha! Books. That’s a good one. No, not books. You wanna know the secret? ”
   “ Sure. ”
   “The secret is: don’t look to other jugglers for inspiration —  look everywhere 
  else. ”  He proceeded to do a beautiful looping pattern, where his arms kind of spi-
  raled, and he turned occasional pirouettes.  “I learned that one watching a ballet in 
  New York. And this one …” he did a move that involved the balls popping up and 
  down as his hands fluttered delicately back in forth.  “I learned that from a flock of 
  geese I saw take off from a lake up in Maine.  And this, ” he did a weird mechan-
  ical looking movement where the balls almost appeared to move at right angles. 
  “I learned that from a paper punch machine on Long Island. ” He laughed a little, 
  and stopped juggling for a minute.  “People try to copy these moves, but they can’t. 
  They always try … yeah, look at that fella, over there! ” He pointed to a juggler with 
  a long ponytail across the gym who was doing the  “ ballet ”  move. But it just looked 
  dumb. Something was missing, but I couldn’t say what. 
   “See, these guys can copy my moves, but they can’t copy my inspiration. ” He 
  juggled a pattern that made me think of a spiraling double helix. Just then, the PA 
  announced a beginner’s workshop — I thanked him, and ran off. I didn’t see him 
  again, but I never forgot him. I wish I knew his name, because his advice changed 
  my approach to creativity forever.
   Lens #11: The Lens of Infinite Inspiration 
   When you know how to listen, everybody is the guru.  
  – Ram Dass  
   To you use this lens, stop looking at your game, and stop looking at games 
  like it. Instead,  look everywhere else . 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What is an experience I have had in my life that I would want to share with 
  others? 
   ●  In what small way can I capture the essence of that experience and put it 
  into my game?  
  INSPIRATION
  
  CHAPTER SIX • THE GAME BEGINS WITH AN IDEA
  60
   Inspiration is one of the secrets behind the strongest games. But how can you 
  turn inspiration into a great game design? 
   The first step is admitting you have a problem. 
   State the Problem 
   The purpose of design is to solve problems, and game design is no exception. Before 
  you start coming up with ideas, you need to be certain of why you are doing it, and 
  a problem statement is a way to state that clearly. Good problem statements tell 
  both your goal and your constraints. For example, your initial problem statement 
  might be: 
   “How can I make a Web-based game that teenagers will really like? ”
   This makes clear both your goal (something teenagers will really like) and your 
  constraints (it must be a Web-based game). One advantage of stating things so 
  clearly is that it can make you realize that you might be mistakenly over- constraining 
  the real problem. Maybe you’ve been thinking  “Web-based game, ” but really, there 
  is no reason that what you create has to be a game at all — maybe some kind of 
  Web-based toy or activity would be okay as long as teenagers really like it. So, you 
  might restate your problem in broader terms: 
   “How can I make a Web-based experience that teenagers really like? ”
   It is crucial that you get the problem statement right — if you make it too broad, 
  you might come up with designs that don’t meet your true goal, and if you make it 
  too narrow (because you were focusing on solutions instead of the problem) you 
   Using this lens requires an open mind and a big imagination. You need to 
  search you feelings and observe everything around you. You must be willing to 
  try the impossible — for surely it is impossible for a roll of the dice to capture 
  the excitement of a swordfight, or for a videogame to make a player feel afraid 
  of the dark — isn’t it? Use this lens to find the non-game experiences that will 
  inspire your game. Your choices in the different quadrants of the tetrad (tech-
  nology, mechanics, story, and aesthetics) can each be united by a single inspi-
  ration, or each can build on different inspirations, blending them together to 
  create something entirely new. When you have concrete visions based on real 
  life that guide your decision making, your experience will acquire an undeni-
  able power, strength, and uniqueness. 
   This lens works hand in hand with Lens #1: Essential Experience. Use the 
  Lens of Infinite Inspiration to seek and find beautiful experiences, and the 
  Lens of Essential Experience to bring them into your game.  
  
  61
  might cut yourself off from some clever solutions because you assumed that a cer-
  tain kind of solution was the only valid one for your problem. People who come up 
  with clever solutions are almost always the same people who take the time to figure 
  out the real problem. 
   Three advantages of clearly stating your problem: 
   1.   Broader creative space. Most people jump to solutions too fast and start their 
  creative process there. If you start your process at the problem instead of at a 
  proposed solution, you will be able to explore a broader creative space and find 
  solutions that are hiding where no one else is looking. 
   2.   Clear measurement. You have a clear measurement of the quality of proposed 
  ideas: How well do they solve the problem? 
   3.   Better communication. When you are designing with a team, communication is 
  much easier if the problem has been clearly stated. Very often, collaborators will 
  be trying to solve quite different problems and not realize it if the problem has 
  not been clearly stated.  
   Sometimes, you will have already explored several ideas before you realize what 
  the problem  “ really ” is. That’s fine! Just make sure you go back and restate the 
  problem clearly, once you see what it is. 
   A completed game design will cover all four elements of the elemental tetrad: 
  technology, mechanics, story, and aesthetics. Often, your problem statement will 
  constrain you to some established decisions about one (or more) of the four ele-
  ments, and you will have to build from there. As you try to state your problem, it 
  can be useful to examine it from the point of view of the tetrad to check where you 
  have design freedom, and where you don’t. Take a look at these four problem state-
  ments: Which ones have already made decisions in what parts of the tetrad? 
   1.   How can I make a board game that uses the properties of magnets in an interest-
  ing way? 
   2.   How can I make a videogame that tells the story of Hansel and Gretel? 
    3.   How can I make a game that feels like a surrealist painting? 
   4.   How can I improve on Tetris?  
   What if, by some miracle, you have no constraints? What if somehow you have 
  the liberty to make a game about anything, anything at all, using any medium you 
  like? If that is the case (and it seems highly unlikely!) you need to decide some 
  constraints. Pick a story you might like to pursue or a game mechanic you would 
  like to explore. The moment you pick something, you will have a problem state-
  ment. Viewing your game as the solution to a problem is a useful perspective and 
  Lens #12.
  STATE THE PROBLEM
  
  CHAPTER SIX • THE GAME BEGINS WITH AN IDEA
  62
   How to Sleep 
   We have stated our problem and are ready to brainstorm! At least we will be, once 
  we have properly prepared. Sleep is crucial to the process of idea generation — 
  a good designer uses the tremendous power of sleep to its maximum advantage. No 
  one explains this better, I think, than surrealist painter Salvador Dali. The following 
  (Dali’s Secret #3) is an excerpt from his book  Fifty Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship .
   In order to make use of the slumber with a key you must seat yourself in a 
  bony armchair, preferably of Spanish style, with your head tilted back and rest-
  ing on the stretched leather back. Your two hands must hang beyond the arms 
  of the chair, to which your own must be soldered in a supineness of complete 
  relaxation... 
  In this posture, you must hold a heavy key which you will keep suspended, 
  delicately pressed between the extremities of the thumb and forefinger of your 
  left hand. Under the key you will previously have placed a plate upside down 
  on the floor. Having made these preparations, you will have merely to let your-
  self be progressively invaded by a sense of serene afternoon sleep, like the spir-
  itual drop of anisette of your soul rising in the cube of sugar of your body. The 
  moment the key drops from your fingers, you may be sure that the noise of its 
  fall on the upside-down plate will awaken you, and you may be equally sure 
  that this fugitive moment during which you cannot be assured of having really 
  slept is totally sufficient, inasmuch as not a second more is needed for your 
  whole physical and psychic being to be revivified by just the necessary amount 
  of repose.  
   Lens #12: The Lens of the Problem Statement 
   To use this lens, think of your game as the solution to a problem. 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What problem, or problems, am I really trying to solve? 
   ●  Have I been making assumptions about this game that really have nothing 
  to do with its true purpose? 
   ●  Is a game really the best solution? Why? 
   ●  How will I be able to tell if the problem is solved?  
   Defining the constraints and goals for your game as a problem statement can 
  help move you to a clear game design much more quickly.  
  
  63
   Your Silent Partner 
   Is Dali crazy? The benefits of a good night’s sleep are easy to believe — but what 
  possible benefit could there be in a nap that lasts only a fraction of a second? The 
  answer becomes clear only when you consider where your ideas come from. Most 
  of our good, clever, creative ideas are not arrived at through a process of logical, 
  reasoned argument. No, the really good ideas just seem to pop up out of nowhere; 
  that is, they come from somewhere below the surface of our consciousness — 
  a place we call the subconscious. The subconscious mind is not well understood, 
  but it is a source of tremendous, and possibly all, creative power. 
   Proof of this power is evident when we consider our dreams. Your subconscious 
  has been creating these fascinating little comedies and dramas, each one different, 
  three shows nightly, since  before you were born. Far from a sequence of random 
  images, most people frequently have dreams that are quite meaningful. There are 
  many known instances of important problems solved in dreams. One of the most 
  famous is the story of the chemist Friedrich Von Kekule who had long been puz-
  zling over the structure of benzene (C 6H6). No matter how he tried to make the 
  chains of atoms fit together, it didn’t work. Nothing about them made sense, and 
  some scientists were wondering if this pointed to a fundamental misunderstanding 
  about the nature of molecular bonding. And then, his dream:
   Again the atoms danced before my eyes. My mind’s eye, sharpened by many 
  previous experiences, distinguished larger structures of diverse forms, long 
  series, closely joined together; all in motion, turning and twisting like serpents. 
  But see what was that? One serpent had seized its own tail and this image 
  whirled defiantly before my eyes. As by a lightning flash, I awoke.  
   And upon awakening, he knew that benzene’s structure was a ring shape. Now, 
  would you say the Kekule himself thought of the solution? From his description, 
  he merely watched the solution play out in front of him and recognized it when he 
  saw it. It was as if the author of the dreams had solved the problem and was merely 
  presenting it to Kekule. But who is the author of these dreams? 
   On one level, the subconscious mind is part of us, but on another, it seems to be 
  quite separate. Some people become quite uncomfortable at the idea of regarding 
  one’s subconscious mind as another person. It is an idea that sounds, well, kind of 
  crazy. But creativity is crazy, so that shouldn’t stop us — in fact, it should encourage 
  us. So, why not treat it like a separate entity? No one has to know — it can be your 
  little secret. Bizarre as it sounds, treating your subconscious like another person can 
  be quite useful, because as humans, we like to anthropomorphize things, because it 
  gives us a well-understood model for thinking about and interacting with them . You 
  won’t be alone in this practice — creative minds have been doing it for thousands of 
  years. Stephen King describes his silent partner in his book  On Writing :
   There is a muse (traditionally, the muses were women, but mine’s a guy; I’m 
  afraid we’ll just have to live with that), but he’s not going to come fluttering 
  YOUR SILENT PARTNER
  
  CHAPTER SIX • THE GAME BEGINS WITH AN IDEA
  64
  down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your type-
  writer or computer station. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You 
  have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish 
  an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other 
  words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies 
  and pretends to ignore you. Do you think this is fair? I think it’s fair. He may 
  not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conver-
  sationalist (what I get out of mine is mostly surly grunts, unless he’s on duty), 
  but he’s got the inspiration. It’s right that you should do all the work and burn 
  all the midnight oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got 
  a bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life. 
  Believe me, I know.  
   So, if we pretend our creative subconscious is another person, what is that per-
  son like? You might already have a mental picture of yours. Here are some common 
  characteristics of the creative subconscious that most people seem to share: 
   ●  Can’t talk, or at least chooses not to. Not in words, anyway. Tends to communi-
  cate through imagery and emotions. 
   ●  Impulsive. Tends not to plan ahead, tends to live in the moment. 
   ●  Emotional. Gets swept up in whatever you are feeling — happy, angry, excited, 
  afraid — the subconscious seems to feel things more deeply and more powerfully 
  than the conscious mind. 
   ●  Playful. It has a constant curiosity, and loves wordplay and pranks. 
   ●  Irrational. Not bound by logic and rationality, the subconscious comes up with 
  ideas that often make no sense. Need to go to the moon? Perhaps a long ladder 
  will work. Sometimes these ideas are a useless distraction, but sometimes they 
  are the clever perspective you have sought all along — whoever heard of a ring 
  molecule, for example?  
   I sometimes wonder if the long-term appeal of the character of Harpo Marx, from 
  the Marx Brothers films has to do with the fact that he matches the profile of the 
  creative subconscious almost perfectly — perhaps this is his resonant theme. Harpo 
  doesn’t speak (or doesn’t care to), is impulsive (eats whatever he sees, chases girls, 
  gets into fights), is very emotional (always laughing, crying, or having fits of anger), 
  is always playful, and is certainly irrational. However, his crazy solutions to problems 
  often save the day, and in quiet moments, he plays music of angelic beauty — not 
  for the praise of others, but simply for the joy of doing it. I like to think of Harpo as 
  the patron saint of the creative subconscious (see Figure 6.2). 
   Sometimes, though, working with the creative subconscious can make you feel 
  like you have a deranged four-year-old living inside your head. Without the rational 
  mind to plan things out, take precautions, and set things straight, this guy would 
  never survive on his own. For this reason, many people get in the habit of ignoring 
  
  65
  what the subconscious mind suggests. If you are doing your taxes, that is probably 
  a good idea. But if you are brainstorming about games, your silent partner is more 
  powerful than you are. Keep in mind that he has been creating entertaining virtual 
  worlds for you each night, since before you were born, and he is more in touch 
  with the essence of experience than you can ever hope to be. Here are some tips for 
  getting the most out of this unusual creative partnership. 
   Subconscious Tip #1: Pay Attention 
   As usual, the key is listening, this time to your  self (sort of). The subconscious is no 
  different than anyone else: If you get in the habit of ignoring it, it is going to stop 
  making suggestions. If you get in the habit of listening to it, seriously considering its 
  ideas, and thanking it when you get a good one, it will start to offer more and bet-
  ter suggestions. So, how do you listen to something that can’t talk? What you must 
  do is pay closer attention to your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, and your 
  dreams, for those are the ways the subconscious communicates. This sounds really 
  strange, but it really does work — the more you pay attention to what the subcon-
  scious has to say, the more work it will do for you. 
   For example, say you are brainstorming ideas for a surfing game. You are thinking 
  about which beaches it should be set at and what kind of camera systems are going 
  to be best for a surfing game. Suddenly, you have this inkling of an idea:  “What if the 
  surfboards were bananas? ” which is crazy, of course — and where do you think it 
  came from? Now, you could say to yourself,  “That’s stupid — let’s constrain this to 
  reality, please. ” Or, you could take a few moments, and seriously consider the idea: 
  “Okay, so what if the surfboards  were bananas? ” And then another thought comes: 
  “With monkeys surfing on them. ” And suddenly, this doesn’t seem so dumb — maybe 
  YOUR SILENT PARTNER
  Salvador Dali paints a portrait of Harpo Marx on a dinner plate. 
  F I G U R E
  6.2
  
  CHAPTER SIX • THE GAME BEGINS WITH AN IDEA
  66
  this banana surfing monkey game could be something different, something new, 
  something that might gain you a wider audience than the more realistic game you 
  had originally planned. And even if you ultimately reject the idea, your subconscious 
  might feel a little more respected and take part more seriously in the brainstorming 
  process because of the time you spent considering suggestions — and what did it cost 
  you? Only a few seconds of quiet reflection. 
   Subconscious Tip #2: Record Your Ideas 
   Certainly you will record your ideas during a brainstorming session, but why not 
  record them all the time? The human memory is terrible. By recording all of your 
  ideas, two things happen. First, you’ll have a record of many ideas that you would 
  likely have forgotten otherwise, and second, you’ll free up your mind to think of 
  other things. When you think of an important idea, and you don’t write it down, 
  it kind of bangs around up there, taking up space and mental energy, because your 
  mind recognizes it as important and doesn’t want to forget the important idea. 
  Something magic happens when you record it — it is like your mind doesn’t feel the 
  need to think about the idea as much. I find it makes my mind feel clean and open, 
  as opposed to cluttered and cramped. It leaves the freedom to think seriously about 
  the design of the day, without tripping over the clutter of important unrecorded 
  ideas. It sounds weird, but that is how it feels. An inexpensive voice recorder can be 
  an invaluable tool for a game designer. Whenever an interesting idea comes to you 
  just speak it into the recorder and deal with it later. You have to have the discipline 
  to periodically transcribe those recordings, but really, that is a small price to pay for 
  a huge idea collection and a clean mental workspace. 
   Subconscious Tip #3: Manage Its Appetites (Judiciously) 
   Let’s be honest here — the subconscious mind has appetites, some of which are pri-
  mal. These appetites seem to be part of its job — just as it is the rational mind’s job 
  to determine which appetites can be safely fed, and how to go about doing that. If 
  the subconscious mind feels one of these appetites too strongly, it will obsess about 
  it. When it is obsessing, it can’t do good creative work. If you are trying to come 
  up with new ideas for a real-time strategy game, and all you can think about is 
  candy bars or how your girlfriend left you, or how much you hate your roommate, 
  you aren’t going to be able to get much good work done, because these intrusive 
  thoughts will distract you, and the source of these intrusive thoughts, your subcon-
  scious mind, isn’t getting any work done either, and he’s the one who has to do 
  the heavy lifting. Maslow’s hierarchy, which we’ll discuss in Chapter 9, is a pretty 
  good guide here — if you don’t have food, safety, and healthy personal relation-
  ships, it will be hard to do self-actualizing creative work. So, make it a priority to 
  
  67
  get these things worked out, and come up with compromises that will keep your 
  subconscious satisfied so it can spend its time coming up with genius ideas. Use 
  good judgment, of course — some appetites are dangerous and should be curbed, 
  not fed, for if you feed them, they tend to grow, which makes everything much 
  worse in the long term. It is possible that the tendency for so many creative types 
  to self-destruct may be the result of a close, but poorly managed, relationship with 
  their subconscious mind. 
    Subconscious Tip #4: Sleep 
   As Salvador Dali points out, sleep is crucial, and not just the slumber with a key. 
  We used to think that sleep was for the body — but it has become clear that sleep 
  is primarily for the benefit of the mind. Some strange process of sorting, filing, and 
  reorganizing seems to be going on when we sleep. Clearly, the subconscious is 
  wide awake and active for at least a part of the sleep cycle — the part that features 
  dreams. I have built up my relationship with my own creative subconscious to the 
  point that I sometimes get a sense of when he “is around ” or “is not around, ” and 
  I certainly find that when I haven’t had enough sleep, often he isn’t around. It feels 
  like he takes naps when I (we?) haven’t had enough sleep, or at least he isn’t par-
  ticipating much in what I’m doing, and this absence shows in my work. I have been 
  in more than one brainstorming meeting where I was contributing almost nothing 
  useful, and then just following a feeling of him  “showing up, ” a flood of useful 
  ideas came forth. 
    Subconscious Tip #5: Don’t Push Too Hard 
   Did you ever try to think of a name during a conversation, maybe someone you 
  know, maybe some movie star, and you know you know it, but just can’t think of it? 
  So you squint your eyes and try and force the answer out of your mind — but it just 
  doesn’t come. So, you give up and move on, talking about something else. A few 
  minutes later, suddenly the answer pops into your mind. Now, where do you think 
  that came from? It is as if the subconscious was working on the problem of finding 
  that name in the background while you moved on to other things. When it found 
  the answer, it gave it to you. No amount of concentration or straining was going to 
  move it along faster; in fact, this seems to slow the process down, because who can 
  work with someone looming over their shoulder? The same goes for your creative 
  work. Don’t expect immediate answers from your subconscious. Give it a problem 
  to solve (one more advantage of a clear problem statement!), make clear the prob-
  lem is important, and leave it to do its work. The answer might come quickly, it 
  might come slowly, it might not come at all. But nagging and looming won’t make 
  it come any faster — it will just slow things down. 
  YOUR SILENT PARTNER
  
  69
  you remember them more easily, the pictures you draw will trigger more ideas. Try 
  this out. You’ll be surprised at how well it works. Need to make a game about mice? 
  Start drawing some mice — real rough — just crude little mouse blobs. I guarantee 
  you will find ideas popping into your head that simply weren’t there a minute ago. 
   Brainstorm Tip #4: Toys 
   Another way to get your mind visually engaged in your problem is to bring some 
  toys to the table. Pick some that have something to do with your problem, and some 
  that have nothing to do with it! Why do you think that restaurants like TGI Friday’s 
  have all that crazy stuff on the walls? Is it just decoration? No. When people see it, 
  they think of things to talk about, and the more things they think of to talk about, 
  the more enjoyable their restaurant experience. If it works for restaurateurs, it can 
  work for you. Toys don’t just visually engage your creativity — they also engage it 
  in a tactile way. Even better, why not bring a big lump of clay, or Play-Doh, so you 
  can make little sculptures of your ideas? It sounds silly, but  creativity is silly .  
   Brainstorm Tip #5: Change Your Perspective 
   The whole point of the lenses in this book is that they get you looking at your game 
  from different perspectives. But why stop there? Don’t just brainstorm sitting in 
  your chair — stand up on your chair — things look different up there! Go different 
  places — immerse yourself in different things. Brainstorm on the bus, at the beach, 
  at the mall, in a toy store, while standing on your head — anything that sparks your 
  imagination and makes you think of new things is worth doing. 
   Brainstorm Tip #6: Immerse Yourself 
   You’ve stated your problem, now immerse yourself in it! Find people in your target 
  audience at the mall — what are they buying? Why? Eavesdrop on them — what 
  are they talking about? What is important to them? You need to know these peo-
  ple intimately. Have you settled on a technology already? Learn everything you can 
  about it — cover your walls with its specs — find that secret thing it can do that no 
  one has noticed yet. Are you locked into a theme or storyline? Find other adapta-
  tions of similar stories and read or watch them. Do you need to do something new 
  with an old gameplay mechanic? Play as many games that use that mechanic as you 
  can find — and some that don’t! 
   Brainstorm Tip #7: Crack Jokes 
   Some people are nervous about using humor to do serious work, but when you 
  are brainstorming, sometimes jokes are what get the job done. Jokes (Can you be 
  FIFTEEN NITTY-GRITTY BRAINSTORMING TIPS
  
  CHAPTER SIX • THE GAME BEGINS WITH AN IDEA
  70
  a closet claustrophobic?) loosen up our minds (Is it possible to be totally partial?), 
  and make us see things from a perspective that we missed before (Save the whales! 
  Collect the whole set!) — and new perspectives are how great ideas happen! Be 
  warned, though! Jokes can get you off track, especially in a group setting. It’s fine 
  to get off track sometimes (the good ideas might not be on the track), just make it 
  your responsibility to get things back on track. A brainstorming commandment to 
  live by:  “He who derails, rerails. ” 
   Brainstorm Tip #8: Spare No Expense 
   From childhood, most of us are trained not waste resources:  “Don’t use the good 
  markers! ” “Don’t waste paper! ” “Don’t waste money! ” Brainstorming is not the 
  time to be frugal. Never let materials get in the way of your creativity. You are going 
  to be trying to find the million dollar ideas — you can’t let a few pennies for paper 
  or ink get in the way. When brainstorming, I like to use a fancy pen and heavy 
  gauge paper, and I like to write in big letters, only using one side of the paper. 
  Why? Partly because I can lay out all the sheets on the table, or on the floor, and 
  consider all the ideas from a distance if I need to. Partly because it gives the process 
  a certain dignity. But partly because it just feels right! And when brainstorming, you 
  need to do what feels right for you — every little thing you do that makes you a lit-
  tle more creatively comfortable increases the chances that the great idea will come. 
  And what is right for one person isn’t right for everyone — you must constantly 
  experiment to find what works best. But if you can’t get the materials you prefer, 
  don’t you dare whine about it — use what you’ve got! There is work to be done! 
   Brainstorm Tip #9: The Writing on the Wall 
   You might prefer writing on a whiteboard to writing on paper. If so, do it! If you are 
  brainstorming in a team setting, you will need some kind of solution that everyone 
  can see at once. Some people like to use index cards to write down their ideas. These 
  can be tacked to a bulletin board and have the advantage of being easily repositioned. 
  The downside is that they are sometimes too small for a big idea. I find I prefer giant 
  (2  ft.   � 2.5  ft.) Post-It sheets (expensive, but we spare no expense!), or sheets of 
  butcher paper with masking tape. This way, you can write lists on the wall, but eas-
  ily reposition them when you run out of room. Even better, you can take them down, 
  stack them, roll them up, and store them. A year later, when someone says,  “Hey, 
  what were some of those robot game ideas we had last year? ” you can go pull them 
  out, stick them up, and restart your brainstorming session as if it had never stopped. 
   Brainstorm Tip #10: The Space Remembers 
   This excellent phrase is from the book  The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley. One 
  more reason to put things on the wall: our memory for lists is bad, but our memory 
  
  71
  for where things are positioned around us is very good. By posting your ideas in the 
  room all around you, you can more easily remember where they are. This is crucial, 
  since you will be trying to find connections between dozens of different ideas, and 
  you need any help you can get — particularly if you will be brainstorming over 
  several sessions. It is quite remarkable. If you put a bunch of ideas up on the walls, 
  and you go away for a few weeks, you will forget most of it. But walk back into that 
  room where the ideas are posted, and it feels like you never left. 
   Brainstorm Tip #11: Write Everything 
   The best way to have a good ideas is to have a lot of ideas.  
   – Linus Pauling  
   You’ve got your fancy pens, your fancy paper, your fancy coffee, some toys, 
  some modeling clay, everything you think you might need to be creative. Now you 
  are waiting for that brilliant idea to come. Mistake! Don’t wait — just start writ-
  ing down everything you can think of that is remotely connected to your problem. 
  Write down every stupid idea that comes into your head. And a lot of them will be 
  stupid. But you have to get the stupid ones out of the way before the good ones 
  start showing up. And sometimes a stupid idea becomes the inspiration for a genius 
  idea, so write it all down. Don’t censor yourself. You have to give up your fear of 
  being wrong and your fear of looking silly. This is hard for most of us to do, but it 
  comes with practice. And if you are brainstorming with other people, certainly don’t 
  censor them — their stupid ideas are just as good as your stupid ideas! 
   Brainstorm Tip #12: Number Your Lists 
   Much of your brainstorming will consist of lists. When you make lists, number 
  them! This does two things: First, it makes the lists easier to discuss ( “I like ideas 3 
  through 7, but 8 is my favorite! ”), secondly, and this is  extremely weird, when a list 
  of things is numbered, the numbers somehow give a certain dignity to the things in 
  the list. Consider these two lists: 
   ●  chicken broth 
   ●  umbrellas 
   ●  wind 
   ●  spatulas  
   1.   chicken broth 
   2.   umbrellas 
   3.   wind 
   4.   spatulas  
  FIFTEEN NITTY-GRITTY BRAINSTORMING TIPS
  
  CHAPTER SIX • THE GAME BEGINS WITH AN IDEA
  72
   Don’t the items in the numbered list seem more important, somehow? If one of 
  them suddenly disappeared, you would be much more likely to notice. This dignity 
  will make you (and others) more likely to take the ideas on the list seriously. 
      Brainstorm Tip #13: Mix and Match Categories 
   It’s great when game ideas, Athena-like, spring forth from your head, fully formed. 
  But it doesn’t happen that way every time. A great technique for helping ideas come 
  together is to brainstorm in categories. The elemental tetrad comes in handy here. 
  For example, you might have decided you want to make a game for teenage girls. 
  You might make separate lists, which you can start to mix and match. Something 
  like 
   Technology Ideas 
   1.   Cell phone platform 
   2.   Handheld game 
   3.  PC 
   4.   Integrated with instant messaging 
   5.  Game console  
   Mechanics Ideas 
   1.   Sims-like game 
   2.   Interactive fiction game 
   3.  The winner makes the most friends 
    4.   Try to spread rumors about the other players 
   5.  Try to help as many people as possible 
   6.   Tetris-like game  
   Story Ideas 
   1.  High school drama 
   2.   College-themed 
   3.   You play cupid 
   4.  You’re a TV star 
   5.   Hospital theme 
  
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   6.   Music theme 
   a.   You’re a rock star 
   b.   You’re a dancer  
   Aesthetic Ideas 
   1.   Cel shaded 
   2.   Anime style 
   3.   All characters are animals 
   4.   R & B music defines the game 
   5.   Edgy rock/punk music defines the feel  
   Once you have lists like these (though you should have dozens more entries on 
  each list!) you are free to start mixing and matching ideas — maybe a cell-phone-
  based Tetris-like game, which has a hospital theme, where all the characters are 
  animals … . Or how about a Sims-like console game based on high school with 
  an anime style? By having all these lists of partial ideas that can easily be mixed 
  and matched, fully formed game ideas that you might never have thought of start 
  springing up all over the place, each taking on a life of their own. Don’t be afraid to 
  make up other categories, either, as you need them! 
   Brainstorm Tip #14: Talk To Yourself 
   There is tremendous social stigma against talking to yourself. But when brainstorm-
  ing alone, some people find it really helpful — there is something about saying 
  things out loud that makes them more real than just thinking them in your head. 
  Find a place where you can freely talk to yourself without getting funny looks. 
  Another trick, if you are brainstorming in a public place: hold a cell phone next to 
  your head while you talk to yourself — it’s silly, but it works. 
   Brainstorm Tip #15: Find a Partner 
   When you brainstorm with other people, it is a very different experience than 
  brainstorming alone. Finding the right brainstorming partner can make a world of 
  difference — sometimes the two of you can get to great solutions many times faster 
  than either of you could alone, as you bounce ideas back and forth and complete one 
  another’s sentences. Just having someone to talk out loud to, even if they say nothing, 
  can sometimes move the process along faster. Do keep in mind that adding more and 
  more people doesn’t necessarily help, though. Usually, small groups of no more than 
  FIFTEEN NITTY-GRITTY BRAINSTORMING TIPS
  
  CHAPTER SIX • THE GAME BEGINS WITH AN IDEA
  74
  four are best. Groups work best when brainstorming a narrow problem, not a broad, 
  open-ended one. Also, certain people make bad brainstorming partners — these are 
  usually people who try to poke holes in every idea, or people who have very narrow 
  tastes. These people are best avoided, and you’ll be more productive without them. 
  Team brainstorming can have tremendous benefits and tremendous perils, which we 
  will discuss in greater detail in Chapter 23.  
   Look At All These Ideas! Now What? 
   Our goal with this chapter was to  “Think of an idea. ” After a little brainstorming, 
  you probably have a hundred! And this is how it should be. A game designer must 
  be able to come up with dozens of ideas on any topic. As you practice, you will 
  be able to come up with more and better ideas in less time. But this is just the 
  beginning of your design process. The next step is to narrow down this broad list of 
  ideas, and start doing something useful with them.  
  
  CHAPTER
  75
   The Game Improves 
  Through  Iteration 
  75
   SEVEN 
  F I G U R E
  7.1
  
  CHAPTER SEVEN • THE GAME IMPROVES THROUGH ITERATION
  76
    Choosing an Idea 
   After a painfully rapturous brainstorming session, you have a huge list of ideas in 
  front of you. This is where many designers trip up. They have so many ideas they 
  like, they aren’t sure what to pick. Or, they have a lot of mediocre ideas, but noth-
  ing spectacular, so again they aren’t sure what to pick. So they float around for 
  too long, in a vague haze of indecision, hoping that the  “right idea ” will suddenly 
  become clear, if they just wait a little longer. 
   But something magic happens when you pick an idea and decide you are going 
  to make it happen. As Steinbeck says in  Of Mice and Men, “A plan is a real thing. ”
  Once you make the internal decision,  “Yes, I’m going to do this, ” flaws you missed 
  before suddenly become evident, as do benefits. It is kind of like flipping a coin to 
  make a decision — when the coin comes down, you suddenly know what you really 
  want. There is something inside us that makes us think about things differently 
  before we’ve decided to do them than after we’ve committed. So, take advantage of 
  this quirk of human nature — make snap decisions about your design, commit to 
  sticking with them, and immediately start thinking about the consequences of the 
  choice you have just made. 
   But what if, with the enlightenment that suddenly comes with commitment, you 
  realize you’ve made the wrong choice? The answer is easy: be ready to reverse your 
  decision when you realize it is wrong. Many people find this difficult — once they 
  have made a design decision, they are uncomfortable letting it go. You can’t afford 
  this kind of sentimentality. Ideas are not like fine china, ideas are like paper cups — 
  they are cheap to manufacture, and when one has holes in it, go get another one. 
   Some people are quite disconcerted by this combination of snap decisions com-
  bined with sudden reversals. But it is the most efficient way to make full use of your 
  decision-making power, and game design is all about making decisions — you need 
  to make the best decisions possible, as fast as possible, and this slightly eccentric 
  behavior is the way to do it. It’s always better to commit to an idea sooner, rather 
  than later — you will get to a good decision much faster than if you bide your time 
  considering potential alternatives. Just don’t fall in love with your decision, and be 
  ready to reverse it the moment it isn’t working for you. 
   So, how do you pick? In one sense, the answer is  “Best guess, Mr. Sulu. ” More 
  analytically, there are many factors you will need to consider as you start develop-
  ing a seed idea. It can pay to keep in mind what your idea must grow into before 
  you even choose a seed. 
   The Eight Filters 
   Your finished design will eventually have to make it through eight tests, or filters. 
  Only when it passes all of them is your design  “good enough. ” Whenever it fails 
  one of these tests, you will have to change the design, and then run it through all 
  eight tests, or  “filters, ” again, because a change that makes it past one filter might 
  
  77
  make it fail another one. In a sense, the design process mainly consists of stating 
  your problem, getting an initial idea, and finding a way to get it past all eight filters. 
   The eight filters are 
  THE EIGHT FILTERS
  Filter  # 1: Artistic Impulse : This is the most personal of the filters. You, as the designer, 
  basically ask yourself whether the game  “ feels right ”  to you, and if it does, it passes the 
  test. If it doesn’t, something needs to change. Your gut feelings are important. They won’t 
  always be right, but the other filters will balance that out. 
  Key Question :  “ Does this game feel right? ” 
  Filter  # 2: Demographics : Your game is likely to have an intended audience. This might 
  be an age bracket, or a gender, or some other distinct audience (e.g.,  “ golf enthusiasts ” ). 
  You have to consider whether your design is right for the demographic you are targeting. 
  Demographics will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 8. 
  Key Question :  “ Will the intended audience like this game enough? ” 
  Filter  # 3: Experience Design : To apply this filter, take into account everything you know 
  about creating a good experience, including aesthetics, interest curves, resonant theme, 
  game balancing, and many more. Many of the lenses in this book are about experience 
  design — to pass this filter, your game must stand up to the scrutiny of many lenses. 
  Key Question :  “ Is this a well-designed game? ” 
  Filter  # 4: Innovation : If you are designing a new game, by definition there needs to be 
  something new about it, something players haven’t seen before. Whether your game is 
  novel enough is a subjective question, but a very important one. 
  Key Question :  “ Is this game novel enough? ” 
  Filter  # 5: Business and Marketing : The games business is a business, and designers 
  who want their games to sell must consider the realities of this and integrate them into 
  their game’s design. This involves many questions. Are the theme and story going to be 
  appealing to consumers? Is the game so easily explainable that one can understand what 
  it is about just by looking at the box? What are the expectations consumers are going to 
  have about this game based on the genre? How do the features of this game compare 
  to other similar games in the marketplace? Will the cost of producing this game be so 
  high as to make it unprofitable? Will retailers be willing to sell this game? The answers to 
  these and many other questions are going to have an impact on your design. Ironically, 
  the innovative idea that drove the initial design may prove to be completely untenable 
  when viewed through this filter. This will be discussed in detail in Chapter 29. 
  Key Question :  “ Will this game sell? ” 
  Filter  # 6: Engineering : Until you have built it, a game idea is just an idea, and ideas are 
  not necessarily bound by the constraints of what is possible or practical. To pass this filter, 
  you have to answer the question  “ How are we going to build this? ”  The answer may be 
  that the limits of technology do not permit the idea as originally envisioned to be con-
  structed. Novice designers often grow frustrated with the limits that engineering imposes 
  on their designs. However, the engineering filter can just as often grow a game in new 
  
  CHAPTER SEVEN • THE GAME IMPROVES THROUGH ITERATION
  78
  directions, because in the process of applying this filter, you may realize that engineer-
  ing makes possible features for your game that did not initially occur to you. The ideas 
  that appear during the application of this filter can be particularly valuable, since you can 
  be certain that they are practical. More issues of engineering and technology will be dis-
  cussed in Chapter 26. 
  Key Question :  “ Is it technically possible to build this game? ” 
  Filter  # 7: Social/Community : Sometimes, it is not enough for a game to be fun. Some of 
  the design goals may require a strong social component, or the formation of a thriving 
  community around your game. The design of your game will have a strong impact on 
  these things. This will be discussed in detail in Chapters 21 and 22. 
  Key Question :  “ Does this game meet our social and community goals? ” 
  Filter  # 8: Playtesting : Once the game has been developed to the point that it is playable, 
  you must apply the playtesting filter, which is arguably the most important of all the fil-
  ters. It is one thing to imagine what playing a game will be like, and quite another to actu-
  ally play it, and yet another to see it played by your target audience. You will want to get 
  your game to a playable stage as soon as possible, because when you actually see your 
  game in action, important changes that must be made will become obvious. In addition 
  to modifying the game itself, the application of this filter often changes and tunes the 
  other filters as you start to learn more about your game mechanics and the psychology 
  of your intended audience. Playtesting will be discussed in detail in Chapter 25. 
  Key Question :  “ Do the playtesters enjoy the game enough? ” 
   Sometimes, in the course of design, you may find a need to change one of the 
  filters — perhaps originally you targeted one demographic (say, males ages 18–35), 
  but while designing, you stumbled into something that better fits another demo-
  graphic (say, females over 50). Changing the filters is fine, when your design con-
  straints will allow it. The important thing is that somehow, by changing the filters 
  or by changing your design, you find a way to get through all eight. 
   You will be using these filters continuously throughout the rest of the design and 
  development process of your game. When picking an initial idea, it makes sense 
  to evaluate which of your ideas is going to have the best shot of being molded and 
  shaped to the point it can survive this gauntlet. The perspective of the eight filters is 
  a very useful way to evaluate your game, so let’s make it Lens  #13.
   Lens  # 13: The Lens of the Eight Filters 
   To use this lens, you must consider the many constraints your design must 
  satisfy. You can only call your design finished when it can pass through all 
  eight filters without requiring a change. 
  
  79
   Ask yourself the eight key questions: 
   ●  Does this game feel right? 
   ●  Will the intended audience like this game enough? 
   ●  Is this a well-designed game? 
   ●  Is this game novel enough? 
   ●  Will this game sell? 
   ●  Is it technically possible to build this game? 
   ●  Does this game meet our social and community goals? 
   ●  Do the playtesters enjoy this game enough?  
   In some situations, there may be still more filters; for example, an educa-
  tional game will also have to answer questions like  “Does this game teach what 
  it is supposed to? ” If your design requires more filters, don’t neglect them.  
    The Rule of the Loop 
   It is somewhat daunting to consider that all of Chapter 6 and the first part of this 
  one have merely been an elaboration of  “1. Think of an idea. ” On the other hand, 
  ideas are at the root of design, and their production is so mysterious as to be almost 
  magical, so perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us that there is so much to say about this 
  single step. 
   At this point in the process, you have thought of many ideas, and chosen one, 
  and now it is time to move on to the next step:  “2. Try it out. ” And many designers 
  and developers do just that — leap in and try out their game. And if your game is 
  simple — such as a card game, board game, or very simple computer game — and 
  you have plenty of time to test it and change it, over and over, until it is great, you 
  probably should do just that. 
   But what if you can’t just build a working prototype of your game in an hour 
  or two? What if your game vision requires months of artwork and programming 
  before you will even be able to try it out? If this is the case (as it is for many 
  modern videogame designs), you need to proceed cautiously at this point. The 
  process of game design and development is necessarily iterative, or looping. It is 
  impossible to accurately plan how many loops it is really going to take before 
  your game passes all eight filters and is  “good enough. ” This is what makes game 
  development so incredibly risky — you are gambling that you will be able to get 
  your game to pass all eight filters on a fixed budget, when you really don’t know if 
  it will. 
  THE RULE OF THE LOOP
  
  CHAPTER SEVEN • THE GAME IMPROVES THROUGH ITERATION
  80
   The naïve strategy, that many still use today, is to start slapping the 
  game together and hope for the best. Sometimes this works. But when it 
  doesn’t, you are in a horrible mess. You either have to ship a game that you know 
  isn’t good enough, or suffer the expense of continuing development until it is. 
  And often, this extra time and expense is enough to make the project completely 
  unprofitable. 
   In truth, this is a problem for all software projects. Software projects are so com-
  plex that it is very difficult to predict how long they will take to build, and how 
  long it will take to find and fix all of the bugs that will surely appear during devel-
  opment. On top of all that, games have the added burden of needing to be fun — 
  game developers have a couple of extra filters that non-game software developers 
  don’t need to worry about. 
   The real problem here is the Rule of the Loop.
   The Rule of the Loop: The more times you test and improve your design, the 
  better your game will be.  
   The Rule of the Loop is not a lens, because it is not a perspective — it is an abso-
  lute truth. There are no exceptions to the Rule of the Loop. You will try, at times in 
  your career, to rationalize it away, to convince yourself that  “this time, the design is 
  so good, we don’t have to test and improve, ” or “we really have no choice — we’ll 
  have to hope for the best, ” and you will suffer for it each time. The horrible thing 
  about computer games is that the amount of time and money it takes to test and 
  adjust the system is so much greater than for traditional games. It means computer 
  game developers have no choice but to loop fewer times, which is a terribly risky 
  thing to do. 
   If you are indeed embarking on the design of a game that is likely to involve long 
  “test and improve ” loops, you need to answer these two questions: 
   ●  Loop Question 1: How can I make every loop count? 
   ●  Loop Question 2: How can I loop as fast as possible?  
   The software engineering people have thought about this problem a lot over the 
  last forty years, and they have come up with some useful techniques. 
   A Short History of Software Engineering 
   Danger — Waterfall — Keep Back 
   In the 1960s, when software development was still relatively new, there was very 
  little in the way of formal process. Programmers just made their best guesses 
  about how long things would take, and they would start coding. Often the guesses 
  
  81
  were wrong, and many software projects went disastrously over budget. In the 
  1970s, in an attempt to bring some order to this unpredictable process, many 
  developers (usually at the behest of non-technical management) tried to adopt 
  the “waterfall model ” of software development, which was an orderly seven-step 
  process for software development. It was generally presented looking something 
  like this: 
  A SHORT HISTORY OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
   And it certainly looks appealing! Seven orderly steps, and when each is 
  complete, nothing remains but to move on to the next one — the very name  “ water-
  fall ”  implies that no iteration is needed, since waterfalls generally do not flow 
  uphill. 
   The waterfall model had one good quality: it encouraged developers to spend 
  more time in planning and design before just jumping into the code. Except for that, 
  it is complete nonsense, because it violates the Rule of the Loop. Managers found it 
  incredibly appealing, but programmers knew it to be absurd — software is simply 
  too complex for such a linear process to ever work. Even Winston Royce, who wrote 
  System
  requirements
  Software
  requirements
  Analysis
  Program
  design
  Coding
  Testing 
  Operations
  F I G U R E
  7.2
  
  CHAPTER SEVEN • THE GAME IMPROVES THROUGH ITERATION
  82
  the paper which was the foundation for all of this, disagreed with the waterfall 
  model as it is commonly understood. Interestingly, his original paper emphasizes 
  the importance of iteration and the ability to go back to previous steps as needed. 
  He never even used the word  “waterfall ”! But what was taught at universities and 
  corporations everywhere was this linear approach. The whole thing seems to have 
  been wishful thinking, mostly promulgated by people who did not actually have to 
  build real systems themselves. 
   Barry Boehm Loves You 
   Then, in 1986, Barry Boehm (pronounced  “beam”) presented a different model, 
  which was based more closely on how real software development actually hap-
  pens. It is usually presented as a somewhat intimidating diagram, where develop-
  ment starts in the middle, and spirals out clockwise, passing through four quadrants 
  again and again (Figure 7.3). 
   His model has a lot of complex detail, but we don’t need to go into all of that. 
  There are basically three great ideas wrapped up in here: risk assessment, proto-
  types, and looping. In brief, the spiral model suggests that you: 
   1.  Come up with a basic design. 
   2.  Figure out the greatest risks in your design. 
   3.   Build prototypes that mitigate those risks. 
   4.   Test the prototypes. 
   5.  Come up with a more detailed design based on what you have learned. 
   6.  Return to step 2.  
   And basically, you repeat this loop until the system is done. This beats the water-
  fall model hands down, because it is all about the Rule of the Loop. Also, it answers 
  the questions we stated earlier: 
   ●  Loop Question 1: How can I make every loop count? 
   Spiral Model Answer: Assess your risks and mitigate them.  
   ●  Loop Question 2: How can I loop as fast as possible? 
   Spiral Model Answer: Build many rough prototypes.  
   There have been many descendants of the spiral model, which you may want to 
  investigate. Although these have their differences, they all feature risk assessment 
  and prototyping at their core.  
  
  83
    Risk Assessment and Prototyping 
   Example: Prisoners of Bubbleville 
   Let’s say you and your team have decided you want to make a videogame all about 
  parachuting into a city. You have a brief design description that you based on the 
  elemental tetrad: 
   Prisoners of Bubbleville — Design Brief  
   Story: You are  “ Smiley, ”  a parachuting cat. The good people of Bubbleville are 
  trapped in their houses by an evil wizard. You must find a way to defeat the wizard, 
  by repeatedly parachuting into the city and sliding down chimneys to visit the citi-
  zens and get clues about how to stop the wizard. 
   Mechanics: As you parachute toward the city, you are trying to grab magic bub-
  bles that rise up from the city and use their energy to shoot rays at evil vultures that 
  Determine
  objectives,
  alternatives,
  constraints
  Review
  Plan next phases
  Develop, verify
  next-level product
  Integration
  and test
  Unit
  test
  Code
  Detailed
  design
  Software
  product
  design
  Software
  requirements
  Requirements
  validation
  Development
  plan
  Integration
  and test
  plan
  Design validation
  and verification
  Concept of
  operation
  Risk
  analy-
  sis
  Requirements plan
  life-cycle plan
  Operational
  prototype
  Prototype 3
  Prototype 2
  Prototype 1
  Risk
  analysis
  Risk
  analysis
  Risk
  analysis
  Evaluate alternatives,
  identify, resolve risks
  Cumulative
  cost
  Progress
  through
  steps
  Acceptance
  test
  Implementation
  Commitment
  partition
  Simulations, models, benchmarks
        The spiral model of software development    
  RISK ASSESSMENT AND PROTOTYPING
  F I G U R E
  7.3
  
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  84
  try to pop the bubbles and rip your parachute. Simultaneously, you must navigate 
  down to one of several target buildings in the city. 
   Aesthetics: A cartoony look and feel. 
   Technology: Multiple platform 3D console game using a third-party engine. 
   One approach you could take would be to just start building the game. Start writ-
  ing code, designing detailed levels, animating the characters, while you wait for it 
  all to come together, to see what it will really be like. But this could be incredibly 
  dangerous. Assuming this is an eighteen-month project, it might take as long as six 
  months before you even have anything you can playtest. What if you learned, at 
  that point, that your game idea wasn’t fun? Or your game engine wasn’t up to the 
  job? You would be in real trouble. You would be one-third of the way through the 
  project and would only have completed a single loop! 
   Instead, the right thing is to sit down with your team, and do a risk analysis. 
  This means making a list of all the things that might jeopardize the project. A sam-
  ple list for this game might be: 
   Prisoners of Bubbleville — Risk List
   Risk #1: The bubble collecting/vulture shooting mechanic might not be as fun 
  as we think. 
   Risk #2: The game engine might not be able to handle drawing an entire city 
  and all those bubbles and vultures at once. 
   Risk #3: Our current thinking is that we need thirty different houses to make a 
  full game — creating all the different interiors and animated characters might take 
  more time than we have. 
    Risk #4: We aren’t sure people will like our characters and story. 
   Risk #5: There is a chance the publisher might insist we theme this game to a 
  new summer movie about stunt parachuting. 
   In reality, you will probably have many more risks, but for the sake of our exam-
  ple, we’ll just consider these. So, what do you do about these risks? You could just 
  cross your fingers and hope these things don’t happen, or you could do the smart 
  thing: risk mitigation. The idea is to reduce or eliminate the risks as soon as possi-
  ble, often by building small prototypes. Let’s look at how each of these risks could 
  be mitigated: 
   Prisoners of Bubbleville — Risk Mitigation
   Risk #1: The bubble collecting/vulture shooting mechanic might not be as fun 
  as we think. 
   Game mechanics can often be abstracted and played in a simpler form. Have a 
  programmer make a very abstract version of this gameplay mechanic, perhaps in 
  2D, with simple geometric shapes instead of animated characters. You can prob-
  ably have a working game in a week or two, and start answering questions about 
  whether it is fun right away. If it isn’t, you can make quick modifications to the 
  simple prototype, until it is fun, and then begin work on the elaborate 3D version. 
  You’ll be doing more loops sooner, wisely taking advantage of the Rule of the Loop. 
  You might object to this approach, thinking that throwing out the 2D prototyping 
  code, which the players will never see, is wasteful. In the long run, though, you will 
  
  85
  have saved time, because you will be coding the right game sooner, and not end-
  lessly coding and recoding the wrong game. 
   Risk #2: The game engine might not be able to handle drawing an entire city 
  and all those bubbles and vultures at once. 
   If you wait for all the final artwork to answer this question, you could put your-
  self in a horrible situation: If the game engine can’t handle it, you now have to 
  ask the artists to redo their work so it is less strain on the game engine, or ask the 
  programmers to spend extra time trying to find tricks to render everything more 
  efficiently (or most likely, both of these things). To mitigate the risk, build a quick 
  prototype, right away, that does nothing but show the approximate number of 
  equivalent items on screen, to see if the engine can handle it. This prototype has no 
  gameplay; it is purely to test technical limits. If it can handle it, great! If it can’t, you 
  can figure out a solution now, before any art has been generated. Again, this proto-
  type will be a throwaway. 
   Risk #3: Our current thinking is that we need thirty different houses to make a 
  full game — creating all the different interiors and animated characters might take 
  more time than we have. 
   If you get halfway into development before you realize that you don’t have the 
  resources to build all the artwork, you are doomed. Have an artist create one house 
  and one animated character immediately to see how long it takes, and if it takes 
  longer than you can afford, change your design immediately — maybe you could 
  have fewer houses, or maybe you could reuse some the interiors and characters. 
   Risk  # 4: We aren’t sure people will like our characters and story. 
   If you really are concerned about this, you cannot wait until the characters and 
  story are in the game to find out. What kind of prototype do we build here? An art 
  prototype — it might not even be on a computer — just a bulletin board. Have your 
  artists draw some concept art, or produce test renders of your characters and set-
  tings. Create some storyboards that show how the story progresses. Once you have 
  these, start showing them to people (hopefully people in your target demographic) 
  and gauge their reactions. Figure out what they like, don’t like, and why. Maybe 
  they like the look of the main character, but hate his attitude. Maybe the villain is 
  exciting, but the story is boring. You can figure most of this out completely inde-
  pendent of the game. Each time you do this, and make a change, you’ve completed 
  another loop and gotten one step closer to making a good game. 
   Risk #5: There is a chance we might have to theme this game to a new summer 
  movie about stunt parachuting. 
   This risk might sound absurd, but this kind of thing happens all the time. When it 
  happens in the middle of a project, it can be horrible. And you can’t ignore this kind 
  of thing — you must seriously consider every risk that might threaten your project. 
  Will a prototype help in this case? Probably not. To mitigate this risk, you can lean 
  on management to get a decision as fast as possible, or you could decide to make a 
  game that could more easily be re-themed to the movie. You might even come up 
  with a plan for making two different games — the key idea is that you consider the 
  risk immediately and take action now to make sure it doesn’t endanger your game. 
  RISK ASSESSMENT AND PROTOTYPING
  
  CHAPTER SEVEN • THE GAME IMPROVES THROUGH ITERATION
  86
   Risk assessment and mitigation is such a useful perspective to take, it becomes 
  Lens #14.
   Lens  # 14: The Lens of Risk Mitigation 
   To use this lens, stop thinking positively, and start seriously considering the 
  things that could go horribly wrong with your game. 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What could keep this game from being great? 
   ●  How can we stop that from happening?  
   Risk management is hard. It means you have to face up to the problems 
  you would most like to avoid, and solve them immediately. But if you disci-
  pline yourself to do it, you’ll loop more times, and more usefully, and get a 
  better game as a result. It is tempting to ignore potential problems and just 
  work on the parts of your game you feel most confident about. You must resist 
  this temptation and focus on the parts of your game that are in danger.  
    Eight Tips for Productive Prototyping 
   It is widely understood that rapid prototyping is crucial for quality game develop-
  ment. Here are some tips that will help you build the best, most useful prototypes 
  for your game. 
   Prototyping Tip  # 1: Answer a Question 
   Every prototype should be designed to answer a question and sometimes more than 
  one. You should be able to state the questions clearly. If you can’t, your prototype 
  is in real danger of becoming a time-wasting boondoggle, instead of the time-saving 
  experiment it is supposed to be. Some sample questions a prototype might answer: 
   ●  How many animated characters can our technology support in a scene? 
   ●  Is our core gameplay fun? Does it stay fun for a long time? 
   ●  Do our characters and settings fit together well aesthetically? 
   ●  How large does a level of this game need to be?  
  
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   Resist the temptation to overbuild your prototype, and focus only on making it 
  answer the key question. 
   Prototyping Tip  # 2: Forget Quality 
   Game developers of every stripe have one thing in common: they are proud of 
  their craft. Naturally, then, many find the idea of doing a  “quick and dirty ” pro-
  totype completely abhorrent. Artists will spend too much time on early concept 
  sketches — programmers will spend too much time on good software engineering 
  for a piece of throwaway code. When working on a prototype all that matters is 
  whether it answers the question. The faster it can do that, the better — even if it 
  just barely works and looks rough around the edges. In fact, polishing your proto-
  type may even make things worse. Playtesters (and colleagues) are more likely to 
  point out problems with something that looks rough than with something that looks 
  polished. Since your goal is to find problems immediately so you can solve them 
  early, a polished prototype can actually defeat your purpose by hiding real prob-
  lems, thus lulling you into a false sense of security. 
   There is no getting around the Rule of the Loop. The faster you build the proto-
  type that answers your question, the better, despite how ugly it may look. 
   Prototyping Tip  # 3: Don’t Get Attached 
   In The Mythical Man Month, Fred Brooks made the famous statement  “Plan to 
  throw one away — you will anyway. ” By this he means that whether you like it or 
  not, the first version of your system is not going to be a finished product, but really 
  a prototype that you will need to discard before you build the system the  “ right ”
  way. But in truth, you may throw away many prototypes. Less experienced devel-
  opers often have a hard time doing this — it makes them feel like they have failed. 
  You need to enter the prototyping work with the mindset that it is all temporary — 
  all that matters is answering the question. Look at each prototype as a learning 
  opportunity — as practice for when you build the  “ real ” system. Of course, you 
  won’t throw out everything — you’ll keep little pieces here and there that really 
  work and you’ll combine them to make something greater. This can be painful. As 
  designer Nicole Epps once put it,  “ You must learn how to cut up your babies. ”  
   Prototyping Tip  # 4: Prioritize Your Prototypes 
   When you make your list of risks, you might realize that you need several prototypes 
  to mitigate all the risks that you face. The right thing to do is to prioritize them, 
  so that you face the biggest risks first. You should also consider dependence — 
  if the results of one prototype have the potential to make the other prototypes mean-
  ingless, the  “ upstream ” prototype is definitely your highest priority. 
  EIGHT TIPS FOR PRODUCTIVE PROTOTYPING
  
  CHAPTER SEVEN • THE GAME IMPROVES THROUGH ITERATION
  88
   Prototyping Tip  # 5: Parallelize Prototypes Productively 
   One great way to get more loops in is to do more than one at a time. While the system 
  engineers work on prototypes to answer technology questions, the artists can work on 
  art prototypes, and the game scripters can work on gameplay prototypes. Having lots 
  of small, independent prototypes can help you answer more questions faster. 
      Prototyping Tip  # 6: It Doesn’t Have to be Digital 
   Your goal is to loop as usefully and as frequently as possible. So, if you can manage 
  it, why not just get the software out of the way? If you are clever, you can prototype 
  your fancy videogame idea as a simple board game, or what we sometimes call a 
  paper prototype. Why do this? Because you can make board games  fast, and often 
  capture the same gameplay. This lets you spot problems sooner — much of the 
  process of prototyping is about looking for problems, and figuring out how to fix 
  them, so paper prototyping can be a real time saver. If your game is turn-based to 
  start with, this becomes easy. The turn-based combat system for Toontown Online 
  was prototyped through a simple board game, which let us carefully balance the 
  many types of attacks and combos. We would keep track of hit points on paper or 
  on a whiteboard, and play again and again, adding and subtracting rules until the 
  game seemed balanced enough to try coding up. 
   Even real-time games can be played as paper prototypes. Sometimes they can be 
  converted to a turn-based mode that still manages to capture the gameplay. Other 
  times, you can just play them in real-time, or nearly. The best way to do it is to have 
  other people help you. We’ll consider two examples. 
   Tetris: A Paper Prototype 
   Let’s say you wanted to make a paper prototype of Tetris. You could cut out little 
  cardboard pieces, and put them in a pile. Get someone else to draw them at ran-
  dom, and start sliding them down the  “board ” (a sketch you’ve drawn on a piece of 
  paper), while you grab them, and try to rotate them into place. To complete a line, 
  you have to just use your imagination, or pause the game while you cut the pieces 
  with an X-acto knife. This would not be the perfect Tetris experience, but it might 
  be close enough for you to start to see if you had the right kinds of shapes, and also 
  enough to give you some sense of how fast the pieces should drop. And you could 
  get the whole thing going in about 15 minutes. 
   Doom: A Paper Prototype 
   Would it be possible to make a paper prototype of a first person shooter? Sure! You 
  need different people to play the different AI characters as well as different play-
  ers. Draw out the map on a big piece of graph paper, and get little game pieces to 
  represent the different players and monsters. You need one person to control each 
  
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  of the players and one for each of the monsters. You could then either make some 
  turn-based rules about how to move and shoot, or get yourself a metronome! It 
  is easy to find free metronome software online. Configure your metronome to tick 
  once every five seconds, and make a rule that you can move one square of graph 
  paper with every tick. When there is a line of sight, you can take a shot at another 
  player or monster, but only one shot per tick. This will give the feeling of playing 
  the whole thing in slow motion, but that can be a good thing, because it gives you 
  time to think about what is working and not working while you are playing the 
  game. You can get a great sense of how big your map should be, the shapes of hall-
  ways and rooms that make for an interesting game, the properties your weapons 
  should have, and many other things — and you can do it all lightning fast!  
   Prototyping Tip  # 7: Pick a  “ Fast Loop ”  Game Engine 
   The traditional method of software development is kind of like baking bread: 
   1.   Write code 
   2.   Compile and link 
   3.   Run your game 
   4.   Navigate through your game to the part you want to test 
   5.   Test it out 
   6.   Go back to step 1  
   If you don’t like the bread (your test results), there is no choice but to start the 
  whole process over again. It takes way too long, especially for a large game. By 
  choosing an engine with the right kind of scripting system, you can make changes 
  to your code while the game is running. This makes things more like working with 
  clay — you can change them continuously: 
   1.   Run your game 
   2.   Navigate through your game to the part you want to test 
   3.   Test it out 
   4.   Write code 
   5.   Go back to step 3  
   By recoding your system while it is running, you can get in more loops per day, and 
  the quality of your game goes up commensurately. I have used Scheme, Smalltalk, 
  and Python for this in the past (I’m a big fan of Panda3D:  www.panda3d.com ), 
  but any late-binding language will do the job. If you are afraid that these kinds of 
  languages run too slowly, remember that it is okay to write your games with more 
  EIGHT TIPS FOR PRODUCTIVE PROTOTYPING
  
  CHAPTER SEVEN • THE GAME IMPROVES THROUGH ITERATION
  90
  than one kind of code: write the low-level stuff that doesn’t need to change much 
  in something fast but static (Assembly, C  � �, etc.), and write the high-level stuff in 
  something slower but dynamic. This may take some technical work to pull off, but it 
  is worth it because it lets you take advantage of the Rule of the Loop. 
   Prototyping Tip  # 8: Build the Toy First 
   Back in Chapter 3, we distinguished between toys and games. Toys are fun to 
  play with for their own sake. In contrast, games have goals and are a much richer 
  experience based around problem solving. We should never forget, though, that 
  many games are built on top of toys. A ball is a toy, but baseball is a game. A little 
  avatar that runs and jumps is a toy, but Donkey Kong is a game. You should make 
  sure that your toy is fun to play with before you design a game around it. You might 
  find that once you actually build your toy, you are surprised by what makes it fun, 
  and whole new ideas for games might become apparent to you. 
   Game designer David Jones says that when designing the game  Lemmings , 
  his team followed exactly this method. They thought it would be fun to make a 
  little world with lots of little creatures walking around doing different things. They 
  weren’t sure what the game would be, but the world sounded fun, so they built it. 
  Once they could actually play with the  “toy, ” they started talking seriously about 
  what kinds of games could be built around it. Jones tells a similar story about the 
  development of  Grand Theft Auto: “Grand Theft Auto was not designed as Grand 
  Theft Auto. It was designed as a medium. It was designed to be a living, breathing 
  city that was fun to play. ” Once the “medium” was developed, and the team could 
  see that it was a fun toy, they had to decide what game to build with it. They real-
  ized the city was like a maze, so they borrowed maze game mechanics from some-
  thing they knew was good. Jones explains:  “GTA came from Pac-Man. The dots are 
  the little people. There’s me in my little, yellow car. And the ghosts are policemen. ”
   By building the toy first, and then coming up with the game, you can radically 
  increase the quality of your game, because it will be fun on two levels. Further, 
  if the gameplay you create is based on the parts of the toy that are the most fun, 
  the two levels will be supporting each other in the strongest way possible. Game 
  designers often forget to consider the toy perspective. To help us remember, we’ll 
  make it Lens  #15.
   Lens  # 15: The Lens of the Toy 
   To use this lens, stop thinking about whether your game is fun to play, and 
  start thinking about whether it is fun to play  with . 
  
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   Closing the Loop 
   Once you have built your prototypes, all that remains is to test them, and then 
  based on what you have learned, start the whole process over again. Recall the 
  informal process we discussed earlier: 
   The Informal Loop: 
   1.   Think of an idea. 
   2.   Try it out. 
   3.   Keep changing it and testing it until it seems good enough.  
   Which we have now made a bit more formal: 
   The Formal Loop: 
   1.   State the problem. 
   2.   Brainstorm some possible solutions. 
   3.   Choose a solution. 
   4.   List the risks of using that solution. 
   5.   Build prototypes to mitigate the risks. 
   6.   Test the prototypes. If they are good enough, stop. 
   7.   State the new problems you are trying to solve, and go to step 2.  
   With each round of prototyping, you will find yourself stating the problems in 
  more detail. To give an example, let’s say you are given the task of creating a racing 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  If my game had no goal, would it be fun at all? If not, how can I change 
  that? 
   ●  When people see my game, do they want to start interacting with it, even 
  before they know what to do? If not, how can I change that?  
   There are two ways to use the Lens of the Toy. One way is to use it on an 
  existing game, to figure out how to add more toy-like qualities to it — that is, 
  how to make it more approachable, and more fun to manipulate. But the sec-
  ond way, the braver way, is to use it to invent and create new toys before you 
  even have any idea what games will be played with them. This is risky if you 
  are on a schedule — but if you are not, it can be a great  “divining rod ” to help 
  you find wonderful games you might not have discovered otherwise.  
  CLOSING THE LOOP
  
  CHAPTER SEVEN • THE GAME IMPROVES THROUGH ITERATION
  92
  game — but there has to be something new and interesting about it. Here is a sum-
  mary of how a few loops of that process might play out. 
   Loop 1:  “ New Racing Game ” 
   ●  Problem Statement: Come up with a new kind of racing game 
   ●  Solution: Underwater submarine races (with torpedoes!) 
   ●  Risks: 
   ❍  Not sure what underwater racetracks should look like 
   ❍  This might not feel innovative enough 
   ❍  Technology might not be able to handle all the water effects 
   ●  Prototypes: 
   ❍  Artists working on concept sketches of underwater racetracks 
   ❍  Designers prototyping (using paper prototypes and by hacking an existing 
  racecar game) novel new effects (subs that can also rise out of water and fly, 
  tracking missiles, depth charges, racing through a minefield) 
   ❍  Programmers testing out simple water effects 
   ●  Results: 
   ❍  Underwater racetracks look okay if there is a  “glowing path ” in the water. 
  Underwater tunnels will be cool! So will flying submarines following tracks 
  that go in and out of the water! 
   ❍  Early prototypes seem fun, provided the submarines are very fast and maneu-
  verable. It will be necessary to make them be  “racing subs. ” The mix of flying 
  and swimming feels very novel. Subs should go faster when flying, so we will 
  need to find a way to limit the amount of time they can spend in the air. The 
  little playtesting we have done makes it clear this game must support net-
  worked multiplay. 
   ❍  Some water effects are easier than others. Splashes look good, so do under-
  water bubbles. Making the whole screen waver takes too much CPU, and is 
  kind of distracting anyway.  
   Loop 2:  “ Racing Subs ” Game 
   ●  New Problem Statement: Design a  “racing sub ” game, where subs can fly. 
   ●  Detailed problem statements: 
   ❍  Not sure what  “racing subs ” look like. We need to define the look of both 
  subs and racetracks. 
  
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   ❍  Need to find a way to balance the game, so that subs spend the right amount 
  of time in and out of the water. 
   ❍  Need to figure how to support networked multiplay. 
   ●  Risks: 
   ❍  If the racing subs look  “too cartoony ” they might turn off older players. If they 
  look too realistic, they might just seem silly with this kind of gameplay. 
   ❍  Until we know how much time we are spending in and out of the water, it is 
  impossible to design levels, or to do the artwork for the landscapes. 
   ❍  The team has never done networked multiplay for a racing game. We aren’t 
  completely sure we can do it. 
   ●  Prototypes: 
   ❍  Artists will sketch different kinds of subs, in a number of different styles: 
  cartoony, realistic, hyper-realistic, subs that are living creatures. The team 
  will vote on them, and we will also informally survey members of our target 
  audience. 
   ❍  Programmers and designers will work together on a very crude prototype that 
  lets them experiment with how much time should be spent in and out of the 
  water, and different mechanics for managing that. 
   ❍  Programmers will build a rough framework for networked multiplay that 
  should handle all the kinds of messages this kind of game will need. 
   ●  Results: 
   ❍  Everyone loves the  “ dino-sub ”  designs. There is strong agreement between 
  team members and potential audience members that  “swimming dinosaurs ” 
  are the right look and feel for this game. 
   ❍  After several experiments, it becomes clear that for most levels, 60% of time 
  should be spent underwater, 20% in the air, and 20% near the surface, where 
  players who grab the right powerups can fly above the water for a speed 
  advantage. 
   ❍  The early networked experiments show that mostly the racing is not a prob-
  lem for multiplay, but if we can avoid using rapid-fire machine guns, multi-
  play will be a lot easier.  
   Loop 3:  “ Flying Dinos ” Game 
   ●  Problem Statement: Design a  “flying dinos ” game where dinosaurs race in and 
  above the water. 
   ●  Detailed Problem Statements: 
   ❍  We need to figure out if we can schedule all the animation time needed for the 
  dinosaurs. 
  CLOSING THE LOOP
  
  CHAPTER SEVEN • THE GAME IMPROVES THROUGH ITERATION
  94
   ❍  We need to develop the  “right” number of levels for this game. 
   ❍  We need to figure out all the powerups that will go into this game. 
   ❍  We need to determine all the weapons that this game should support (and 
  avoid rapid-fire machine guns because of networking constraints). 
   Notice how the problem statements gradually evolved and got more specific with 
  each loop. Also notice how ugly problems bubbled to the surface quickly: What if 
  the team hadn’t tried out all the different character designs so early? What if three 
  levels of the game had already been designed and modeled before anyone noticed 
  the problem of keeping players in the air for the right amount of time? What if the 
  machine gun system had already been coded up, and the whole gameplay mechanic 
  centered around it, before anyone realized it would break the networking code? 
  These problems got addressed quickly because of so many early loops. It looks like 
  just two complete loops, and the beginning of a third one, but because of the wise 
  use of parallelism, there were really six design loops. 
   Also notice how the whole team was involved in important design decisions. 
  There is no way that a lone designer could have done this — much of the design 
  was informed by the technology and the aesthetics. 
   How Much is Enough? 
   You might wonder how many loops are needed before the game is done. This is a 
  very hard question to answer, and it is what makes game development so difficult 
  to schedule. The Rule of the Loop implies that one more loop will always make your 
  game a little better. So, as the saying goes, the work is never finished — only aban-
  doned. The important thing is to make sure you get enough loops in to produce a 
  game you are proud of before you’ve used up the entire development budget. 
   So, when you stand there at the beginning of the first loop, is it possible to make 
  an accurate estimate of when you will have a finished, high-quality game? No. It 
  is simply not possible. Experienced designers, after a time, get better at guessing, 
  but the large number of game titles that ship later than originally promised, or with 
  lower quality than originally promised, is testament to the fact that there is just no 
  way to know. Why is this? Because at the beginning of the first loop, you don’t yet 
  know what you are going to build! With each loop, though, you get a more solid 
  idea of what the game will really be, and this allows for more accurate estimates. 
   Game designer Mark Cerny has described a system for game design and develop-
  ment that he calls “The Method. ” Not surprisingly, this features a system of iteration 
  and risk mitigation. But The Method makes an interesting distinction between what 
  Cerny calls  “pre-production ” and “production ” (terms borrowed from Hollywood). 
  He argues that you are in pre-production until you have finished two publishable 
  levels of your game, complete with all necessary features. In other words, until 
  you have two completely finished levels, you are still figuring out the fundamental 
  
  95
  design of your game. Once you reach this magic point, you are now in production. 
  This means that you know enough about what your game really is that you can 
  safely schedule the rest of development. Cerny states that usually this point is gen-
  erally reached when 30% of the necessary budget has been spent. So, if it costs you 
  $1 million to get to this point, it will probably cost you another  $2.3 million to actu-
  ally complete the game. This is a great rule of thumb, and realistically, this might be 
  the most accurate way to really plan the release date for a game. The problem with 
  it is that you won’t really know what the game will cost or when it will be complete 
  until you have already spent 30% of what it will take to get there. In truth, this 
  problem is unavoidable — The Method just guides you toward reaching a point of 
  predictability as soon as is realistically possible. 
   The principles of iteration described here might sound special to game design, 
  but they are not. Gradual, evolutionary development is the key to any kind of 
  design. 
   Now that we have discussed how games should be made, let’s consider who we 
  are making them for.  
   
  HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
  
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  CHAPTER
  97
   The Game is Made 
  for a  Player 
  97
  EIGHT
  F I G U R E
   8.1 
  
  CHAPTER EIGHT • THE GAME IS MADE FOR A PLAYER
  98
   Einstein’s Violin 
   At one point in his career, Albert Einstein was asked by a small local organization 
  to be the guest of honor at a luncheon and to give a lecture about his research. 
  He agreed to do so. The luncheon was quite pleasant, and when the time came, 
  the host anxiously announced that Albert Einstein, the famous scientist, was here 
  to talk about his theories of special and general relativity. Einstein took the stage, 
  and looking out a largely non-academic audience consisting of mostly old ladies, 
  he explained to them that he certainly could talk about his work, but it was a bit 
  dull, and he was thinking perhaps instead the audience would prefer to hear him 
  play the violin. The host and audience both agreed that it sounded like a fine idea. 
  Einstein proceeded to play several pieces he knew well, creating a delightful experi-
  ence the entire audience was able to enjoy, and surely one they remembered for the 
  rest of their lives. 
  F I G U R E
   8.2
   Einstein was able to create such a memorable experience because he  knew his 
  audience. As much as he loved thinking and talking about physics, he knew that it 
  wasn’t something that his audience would be really interested in. Sure, they asked 
  him to talk about physics, because they thought it would be the best way to get 
  what they really wanted — an intimate encounter with the famous Albert Einstein. 
   To create a great experience, you must do the same as Einstein. You must know 
  what your audience will and will not like, and you must know it even better than 
  they do. You would think that finding out what people want would be easy, but it 
  isn’t, because in many cases, they don’t really know. They might think they know, 
  but often there is a big difference between what they think they want, and what it 
  is they will actually enjoy. 
    As with everything else in game design, the key here is a kind of listening. You 
  must learn to listen to your players, thoroughly and deeply. You must become intimate 
  with their thoughts, their emotions, their fears, and their desires. Some of these will 
  be so secret that your players themselves are not even consciously aware of them — 
  and as we discussed in Chapter 5, it is often these that are the most important. 
  
  99
   Project Yourself 
   So, how can you do this kind of deep listening? One of the best ways is to use 
  your power of empathy (discussed further in Chapter 9)  to put yourself into their 
  place. In 1954, when Disneyland Park was being constructed, Walt Disney would 
  frequently walk around the park inspecting the progress. Often, he would be seen to 
  walk for a distance, stop, and suddenly crouch to the ground, peering at something 
  in the distance. Then he would get up, walk a few steps, and crouch again. After 
  seeing him do this repeatedly, some of his designers asked what he was doing — 
  was something wrong with his back? His explanation was simple: how else could 
  he know what Disneyland would look like to children? 
   In retrospect, this seems obvious — things look different at different eye heights, 
  and the perspective of children at Disneyland is just as important, if not more, than the 
  perspective of adults. And physical perspective is not enough — you must adopt their 
  mental perspective as well, actively projecting yourself into the mind of your player. 
  You must actively try to become them, trying to see what they see, hear what they 
  hear, and think what they think. It is very easy to get stuck in the high and mighty 
  mind of the designer and forget to project yourself into the mind of the player — it is 
  something that requires constant attention and vigilance, but you can do it if you try. 
   If you are creating a game for a target audience that you used to be part of (a 
  woman creating a game for teen girls, for example), you have an advantage — you 
  can get in touch with your memories about how you thought, what you liked, and 
  how things felt when you were that age. People are surprisingly good at forget-
  ting what things were really like when they were younger. As a designer, you can’t 
  afford to forget. Work hard to bring back your old memories, and make them vivid 
  and strong again. Keep these old memories well oiled — they are some of your most 
  valuable tools. 
   But what if you are making something for an audience that you have never been 
  a part of, and perhaps never will be (a young man creating a game for middle-
  aged women, for example)? Then you must use a different tactic — you must think 
  hard about people you have known who are in the target demographic, and imag-
  ine what it is like to be them. Like a cultural anthropologist, you should spend time 
  with your target audience, talking with them, observing them, imagining what it is 
  like to be them. Everyone has some innate power to do this — but if you practice 
  it, you will improve. If you can mentally become any type of player, you can greatly 
  expand the audience for your games, because your designs will be able to include 
  people that other designers have ignored. 
   Demographics 
   We know that all individuals are each unique, but when creating something meant 
  to be enjoyed by vast numbers of people, we have to consider ways that groups of 
  DEMOGRAPHICS
  
  CHAPTER EIGHT • THE GAME IS MADE FOR A PLAYER
  100
  people are the same. We call these groups  demographics, or sometimes market seg-
  ments. There is no  “official” means of establishing these groups — different profes-
  sions have different reasons for grouping them differently. For game designers, the 
  two most significant demographic variables are age and gender. We all play differ-
  ently as we get older, and males and females play differently than one another at 
  all ages. What follows is an analysis of some of the typical age demographics that a 
  game designer has to consider. 
  F I G U R E
   8.3
   ●  0–3: Infant/Toddler. Children in this age bracket are very interested in toys, but the 
  complexity and problem solving involved in games is generally too much for them. 
   ●  4–6: Preschooler. This is the age where children generally show their first inter-
  est in games. The games are very simple, and played with parents more often 
  than with one another, because the parents know how to bend the rules to keep 
  the games enjoyable and interesting. 
  
  101
  DEMOGRAPHICS
   ●  7–9: Kids. The age of seven has long been called the  “age of reason. ” At this 
  age, children have entered school, are generally able to read, are able to think 
  things through, and solve hard problems. Naturally, they become very interested 
  in game playing. This is also the age where children start making their own deci-
  sions about what kinds of toys and games they like and dislike, no longer just 
  accepting whatever their parents choose for them. 
   ●  10–13: Preteen or  “ Tween ”. It is only recently that marketers have started to rec-
  ognize this group as distinct from both  “ kids ”  and “ teens. ”  Children this age are 
  going through a period of tremendous neurological growth and are suddenly able 
  to think about things more deeply and with more nuance than they were a few 
  years back. This age is sometimes called the  “age of obsession, ” because children 
  this age start to get quite passionate about their interests. For boys especially, 
  these interests are often games. 
   ●  13–18: Teen. The job of a teenager is to start getting ready for adulthood. At this 
  age we generally see a significant divergence between male and female interests. 
  Boys continue to be interested (and often get more interested) in competition and 
  mastery, whereas girls become more focused on real-world issues and communi-
  cation. This makes boy and girl game interests very different at this age. Teens of 
  both genders are very interested in experimenting with new kinds of experiences, 
  though, and some of those can happen through gameplay. 
   ●  18–24: Young Adult. This is the first  “adult ” age grouping, and the mark of an 
  important transition. Adults, in general, play less than children do. Most adults 
  do continue to play, but at this point, with their teenage experiments out of the 
  way, they have established certain tastes about the kind of play and entertain-
  ment they enjoy. Young adults usually have both time and money on their hands, 
  which makes them big consumers of games. 
   ●  25–35: Twenties and Thirties. At this age, time starts to become more precious. 
  This is the age of “peak family formation. ” As the responsibilities of adulthood 
  start to add up, most adults in this age bracket are only casual game players, play-
  ing games as an occasional amusement, or playing games with their young chil-
  dren. On the other hand,  “hardcore gamers ” in this age bracket — that is, people 
  for whom playing games is their primary hobby — are an important target market 
  because they purchase a lot of games, and are often quite vocal about what they do 
  and don’t like, potentially influencing the buying decisions of their social network. 
   ●  35–50: Thirties and Forties. Sometimes referred to as the  “family maturation ” 
  stage, most adults in this bracket are very caught up in career and family respon-
  sibilities and are only casual game players. As their children become older, adults 
  in this age group are often the ones who make decisions about expensive game 
  purchases, and when possible, they look for game playing opportunities the 
  whole family can enjoy together.  
   ●  50 � : Fifties and Up. Often called the “empty nesters, ” adults in this age bracket 
  suddenly have a lot of time on their hands — their children have moved out, and 
  
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  they will soon be facing retirement. Some return to games they enjoyed when 
  younger, and others, looking for a change, turn to new game experiences. Adults 
  in this age group are particularly interested in game experiences that have a strong 
  social component, such as golf, tennis, bridge, and online multiplayer games.  
   There are other ways to break up groups by age, but these nine groups are how 
  the game industry usually does it, because they reflect changes in play patterns. It is 
  interesting to consider the transitional experiences that separate each group from the 
  next. Most of the younger groups are separated by periods of mental  development, 
  while the older groups are primarily separated by family transitions. 
   Something important to remember when creating games for any age group: all 
  play activities are connected to childhood, since childhood is centered around play. 
  Therefore, to create games for someone of a particular age, you must be in tune 
  with the games and themes that were popular when they were children. To put it 
  another way: to truly communicate with someone, you must speak the language of 
  their childhood. 
   The Medium is the Misogynist? 
   PETER PAN: We have fun, don’t we? I taught you to fly and to fight! What 
  more could there be? 
  WENDY: There is so much more. 
  PETER PAN: What? What else is there? 
  WENDY: I don’t know. I guess it becomes clearer as you grow up.  
   Males and females are different. They have different interests, different tastes, 
  and different skills and abilities. Which of these are innate and which are learned is 
  often difficult to say — and to a designer, it doesn’t much matter — what matters is 
  acknowledging and designing for these differences. 
   These differences show up in sharp relief when one examines videogame sales. 
  The majority of videogames are played by boys and men. Some have suggested this 
  is largely because of the male-oriented aesthetics of these games, which often fea-
  ture aggressive male characters, graphic violence, and hyper-sexualized female char-
  acters. But experiments to change these aesthetics, while maintaining the same core 
  gameplay mechanics, have largely failed. It would seem there are some deeper qual-
  ity of games is the driving factor. 
   Raph Koster, in his book  A Theory of Fun, suggests that the core of playing and 
  winning games is mastering abstract formal systems, which is something generally 
  enjoyed more by boys and men than it is by girls and women. If this is the case 
  (and it does seem to be true), then games at their core are an inherently more male 
  than female activity. 
   So how can we explain the fact that some games are very popular with girls 
  and women? The answer is that just because games contain abstract formal sys-
  tems at their core, it does not mean that finding and mastering these systems is the 
  
  103
  only experience that games can create. Instead, this core can support a wide variety 
  of experiences that appeal to both genders, such as story, creativity, learning, and 
  socialization. In this way, games are like apples: you can still enjoy the fruit even if 
  you don’t like the core. 
   Entire books have been written about the differences between how males and 
  females play, and there is great debate about which kinds of play are really  “ more 
  male ”  or “more female. ” There is certainly no definitive master list of what each 
  gender prefers. The important thing is that you realize that there are some impor-
  tant differences, and that you carefully consider whether your game has the right 
  features to delight the audience you are designing for. What follows is a short list 
  of a few of the strongest differences between how males and females like to play. 
  These are generalizations, certainly not true for every individual, but when making 
  games for large audiences, generalizations are useful. 
   Five Things Males Like to See in Games 
   If you are a woman and you don’t understand men, chances are you are think-
  ing too hard.  
  – Louis Ramey  
   1.   Mastery. Males enjoy mastering things. It doesn’t have to be something impor-
  tant or useful — it only has to be challenging. Females tend to be more inter-
  ested in mastery when it has a meaningful purpose. 
   2.   Competition. Males really enjoy competing against others to prove that they are 
  the best. For females, the bad feelings that can come from losing the game (or 
  causing another player to lose) often outweigh the positive feelings that come 
  from winning. 
   3.   Destruction. Males like destroying things. A lot. Often, when young boys play 
  with blocks, the most exciting part for them is not the building, but knocking 
  down the tower once it is built. Videogames are a natural fit for this kind of 
  gameplay, allowing for virtual destruction of a magnitude far greater than would 
  be possible in the real world. 
   4.   Spatial Puzzles. Studies have shown that males generally have stronger skills of 
  spatial reasoning than females, and most people would agree that this matches 
  anecdotal evidence. Accordingly, puzzles that involve navigating 3D spaces are 
  often quite intriguing to males, while they can sometimes prove frustrating for 
  females. 
   5.   Trial and Error. Women often joke that men hate reading directions, and there 
  is some truth to that. Males tend to have a preference for learning things through 
  trial and error. In a sense, this makes it easy to design interfaces for them, since 
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  they actually sometimes prefer an interface that requires some experimentation 
  to understand, which ties into the pleasure of mastery.  
   Five Things Females Like to See in Games 
   Females want experiences where they can make emotional and social discoveries 
  that they can apply to their own lives.
  – Heidi Dangelmeier  
   1.   Emotion. Females like experiences that explore the richness of human emotion. 
  For males, emotion is an interesting component of an experience, but seldom 
  an end in itself. A somewhat crass but telling example of this contrast can be 
  found at the ends of the “romantic relationship media ” spectrum. At one end 
  are romance novels (one-third of all fiction books sold are romance novels), 
  which focus primarily on the emotional aspects of romantic relationships, and 
  are purchased almost exclusively by women. At the other end of the spectrum is 
  pornography, which focuses primarily on the physical aspects of romantic rela-
  tionships, and is purchased almost exclusively by men. 
    2.  Real World. Females tend to prefer entertainment that connects meaningfully 
  to the real world. If you watch young girls and young boys play, girls will more 
  frequently play games that are strongly connected to the real world (playing 
  “house, ” pretending to be a veterinarian, playing dress up, etc.), whereas boys 
  will more frequently take on the role of fantasy characters. One of the all-time 
  best-selling computer game titles for girls was  Barbie Fashion Designer, which 
  lets girls design, print, and sew custom clothes for their real-world Barbie dolls. 
  Compare this to  Barbie as Rapunzel, an adventure game in a fantasy setting. 
  Although it featured the same character (Barbie), it did not have a real-world 
  component, and was not nearly as popular. 
   
   This trend continues through adulthood — when things are connected to the real 
  world in a meaningful way, women become more interested. Sometimes this is 
  through the content (the Sims games, for example, have more female players than 
  male, and their content is a simulation of the day-to-day life of ordinary people), 
  and sometimes it is through the social aspects of the games. Playing with virtual 
  players is  “just pretend, ” but playing with real players can build real relationships. 
   3.  Nurturing. Females enjoy nurturing. Girls enjoy taking care of baby dolls, toy 
  pets, and children younger than themselves. It is not uncommon to see girls sac-
  rifice a winning position in a competitive game to help a weaker player, partly 
  because the relationships and feelings of the players are more important than 
  the game, but partly out of the joy of nurturing. In the development of Toontown 
  Online, a  “healing” game mechanic was required for the combat system. We 
  
  105
  observed that healing other players was very appealing to girls and women we 
  discussed the game with, and it was important to us that this game work equally 
  well for males and females, so we made a bold decision. In most role-playing 
  games, players mostly heal themselves, but have the option of healing others. In 
  Toontown,  you cannot heal yourself — only others. This increases the value of a 
  player with healing skill and encourages nurturing play. A player who wants to 
  can make healing their primary activity in Toontown. 
   4.   Dialog and Verbal Puzzles. It is often said that what females lack in spatial skills 
  they make up for in increased verbal skills. Women purchase many more books 
  than men do, and the audience for crossword puzzles is mostly female. Very few 
  modern videogames do much very interesting or meaningful with dialog or ver-
  bal puzzles at this point in time, and this may be an untapped opportunity. 
   5.   Learning by Example. Just as males tend to eschew instructions, favoring a trial- 
  and-error approach, females tend to prefer learning by example. They have a 
  strong appreciation for clear tutorials that lead you carefully, step-by-step, so that 
  when it is time to attempt a task, the player knows what she is supposed to do.  
   There are many other differences, of course. For example, males tend to be very 
  focused on one task at a time, whereas females can more easily work on many 
  parallel tasks, and not forget about any of them. Games that make use of this multi-
  tasking skill (the Sims, for example) can sometimes have a stronger female appeal. 
  You must look closely at your game to determine its strengths and weaknesses on 
  a gender basis. Sometimes this leads to fascinating discoveries. The designers of 
  Hasbro’s  Pox, a wireless electronic handheld game, knew that their game was going 
  to be an inherently social experience, and so they reasoned that it should have fea-
  tures that girls would like as well as boys. As they observed children playing in 
  playgrounds, however, they noticed something very interesting: girls almost never 
  play games spontaneously in large groups. There is no female equivalent of a pick-
  up game of touch football. On the surface, this is strange — girls tend to be more 
  social, so you might expect that games involving large gatherings would appeal to 
  them more. The problem seems to lie in conflict resolution. When a group of boys 
  play a game, and there is a dispute, play stops, there is a (sometimes heated) dis-
  cussion, and the dispute is resolved. At times, this involves one boy going home 
  in tears, but despite that, play continues. When a group of girls play a game, and 
  there is a dispute, it is a different story. Most of the girls will take sides on the dis-
  pute, and it generally cannot be resolved right away. Play stops, and often cannot 
  continue. Girls will play team sports when they are formally organized, but two 
  informal competing teams puts too much stress on their personal relationships to 
  be worth the trouble. The Hasbro designers realized that though their game concept 
  was social, it was also inherently competitive, and ultimately they decided to design 
  it for boys only. 
   The introduction of digital technology has done a great deal to make clear gender 
  differences in gameplay. In the past, most games were very social, played in the real 
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  CHAPTER EIGHT • THE GAME IS MADE FOR A PLAYER
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  world, with real people. The introduction of affordable computers gave us a type of 
  game that: 
   ●  Had all social aspects removed 
   ●  Had most verbal and emotional aspects removed 
   ●  Was largely divorced from the real world 
   ●  Was generally hard to learn 
   ●  And offered the possibility for unlimited virtual destruction  
   It is hardly surprising that early computer and videogames were primarily popular 
  with a male audience. As digital technology has evolved to the point that videogames 
  can now support emotional character portrayals, richer stories, and the opportunity 
  to play against real people while talking to them, the female audience for videog-
  ames has been commensurately growing. It will be interesting to see which upcom-
  ing technological and design advances attract even more female gamers. 
   Whether you consider age, gender, or other factors, the important thing is that 
  you put yourself in the perspective of the player, so you can carefully consider what 
  will make the game the most fun for them. This important perspective is Lens #16.
   Lens #16: The Lens of the Player 
   To use this lens, stop thinking about your game, and start thinking about your 
  player. 
   Ask yourself these questions about the people who will play your game: 
   ●  In general, what do they like? 
   ●  What don’t they like? Why? 
   ●  What do they expect to see in a game? 
   ●  If I were in their place, what would I want to see in a game? 
   ●  What would they like or dislike about my game in particular?  
   A good game designer should always be thinking of the player, and should 
  be an advocate for the player. Skilled designers hold The Lens of the Player 
  and the Lens of Holographic Design in the same hand, thinking about the 
  player, the experience of the game, and the mechanics of the game all at the 
  same time. Thinking about the player is useful, but even more useful is watch-
  ing them play your game. The more you observe them playing, the more eas-
  ily you’ll be able to predict what they are going to enjoy.  
  
  107
   When developing  Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Buccaneer Gold for 
  DisneyQuest, we had to consider a wide range of demographics. Many arcades and 
  interactive location-based entertainment centers have a somewhat narrow demo-
  graphic: teenage boys. DisneyQuest’s goal was to support the same demographic 
  as the Disney theme parks: pretty much everybody, particularly families. Further, 
  DisneyQuest’s goal is to get the whole family playing games together. With such 
  a broad range of skill levels and interests within any given family, this was quite 
  a challenge. But by carefully considering the interests of each potential player, we 
  found a way to make it work. Roughly, we broke it down this way: 
   Boys: We had little worry that boys would enjoy playing this game. It is an excit-
  ing “adventure and battle fantasy ” where players can pilot a pirate ship, and man 
  powerful cannons. Early tests showed that boys enjoyed it a great deal, and tended 
  to play offensively — trying to seek out and destroy every pirate ship they could 
  find. They engaged in some communication, but always stayed very focused on the 
  task of destroying the enemy as skillfully as possible. 
   Girls: We were not so confident that girls would like this game, since they don’t 
  usually have the same zeal for  “blowing up bad guys. ” To our surprise, girls seemed 
  to like the game a great deal, but they played it in a different way. Girls gener-
  ally tended to play more defensively — they were more concerned about protecting 
  their ship from invaders than chasing down other ships. When we became aware of 
  this, we made sure to create a balance of invading ships and enemies that could be 
  chased to support offensive as well as defensive play. The girls seemed very excited 
  about the treasures you could gather, so we made sure to pile them up conspicu-
  ously on the deck and make them visually interesting. Further, we designed the 
  final battle so that flying skeletons would charge the ship and snatch the treasures 
  off of the deck. This made the skeleton shooting task much more important and 
  rewarding to the girls. The girls also seemed to enjoy the social aspects of the game 
  more than the boys did — they would constantly shout warnings and suggestions 
  to each other, occasionally having face-to-face  “ huddles ”  where they would divide 
  up responsibilities. 
   Men: We sometimes joked that men were just  “tall boys with credit cards. ” They 
  seemed to like the game in the same ways the boys did, although they tended to 
  play the game in a slightly more reserved way — often carefully puzzling out the 
  optimal way to play the game.
  Women: We had very little confidence that women, mothers in particular, would 
  find much to enjoy with this game. Mothers tend to have a different theme park 
  experience than the rest of the family, because their main concern is not how much 
  fun they personally have, but how much fun the rest of the family has. In early tests 
  of Pirates, we noticed that women, and mothers in particular, tended to gravitate 
  toward the back of the ship, while the rest of the family moved toward the front. 
  This usually meant that the family members manned the cannons, and that mom 
  steered the ship, since the ship’s wheel was in the back. At first, this seemed a 
  recipe for disaster — mom doesn’t have much videogame experience, and a poorly 
  steered ship has the potential to ruin the experience for everyone. 
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  CHAPTER EIGHT • THE GAME IS MADE FOR A PLAYER
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   But this isn’t what happened at all. Since mom wants to see everyone have a 
  good time, she suddenly has a vested interest in steering the ship as well as possi-
  ble. Being at the helm, which has the best view, she has a chance to keep an eye on 
  everyone, to steer the ship to interesting places, and to slow things down if her fam-
  ily is overwhelmed. Further, she is in a good position to manage her crew, warning 
  them of oncoming dangers, and giving orders ( “Dylan! Give your sister a turn on 
  that side! ”) designed to make sure everyone has fun. This was a great way to make 
  mom really care about how the game turned out. 
   Accepting the fact that women would be steering the ship more often than boys, 
  girls, or men meant that we had to be sure that steering the ship was easy for some-
  one who was not a frequent videogame player, but this was a small price to pay to 
  include a key part of our audience. Frequently, we would hear kids comment when 
  coming off the ride: “Wow, Mom, you were really good at that! ”
   By paying close attention to the desires and behaviors of our various target 
  demographics, we were able to balance the game to suit all of them. In the begin-
  ning, we just had ideas about where there might be problems making the game 
  appeal to all four of these groups — it was only through attentive prototyping and 
  playtesting that we started to realize the possible solutions to these problems. We 
  watched closely to see how each demographic group tried to play our game, and 
  then we changed it to support each group’s style of play.  
   Psychographics 
   Of course, age and gender aren’t the only ways to group potential players. There are 
  many other factors you can use. Demographics generally refer to external factors 
  (age, gender, income, ethnicity, etc.), and those can sometimes be a useful way to 
  group your audience. But really, when we group people by these external factors, 
  we are trying to get at something internal: what each group finds pleasurable. A 
  more direct approach is to focus less on how players appear on the outside and 
  more on how they think on the inside. This is called  psychographics . 
   Some psychographic breakdowns have to do with  “lifestyle” choices, such as 
  “dog lover, ” “baseball fan, ” or “hardcore FPS player. ” These are easy to understand, 
  since they are tied to concrete activities. If you are creating a game about dogs, 
  baseball, or shooting people in tunnels, you will naturally want to pay close atten-
  tion to the preferences of each of these  lifestyle groups. 
   But other kinds of psychographics aren’t so tied to concrete activities. They have 
  more to do with what a person enjoys the most — the kind of pleasures they look 
  for when participating in a game activity, or really, any activity. This is important, 
  for ultimately, the motivation for every human action can be traced back to some 
  kind of pleasure seeking. It is a tricky business, though, for there are many kinds of 
  pleasures in the world, and no one seeks only one kind. But it is certainly true that 
  people have their pleasure preferences. Game designer Marc LeBlanc has proposed 
  a list of eight pleasures that he considers the primary  “game pleasures. ”
  
  109
   LeBlanc’s Taxonomy of Game Pleasures 
   1.   Sensation. Pleasures of sensation involve using your senses. Seeing something 
  beautiful, hearing music, touching silk, and smelling or tasting delicious food 
  are all pleasures of sensation. It is primarily the aesthetics of your game that will 
  deliver these pleasures. Greg Costikyan tells a story about sensation:  
  As an example of the difference that mere sensation can make, consider 
  the board game Axis  & Allies. I first bought it when it was published by Nova 
  Games, an obscure publisher of hobby games. It had an extremely garish board, 
  and ugly cardboard counters to represent the military units. I played it once, 
  thought it was pretty dumb, and put it away. Some years later, it was bought and 
  republished by Milton Bradley, with an elegant new board, and with hundreds 
  of plastic pieces in the shapes of aircraft, ships, tanks, and infantrymen — I’ve 
  played it many times since. It’s the sheer tactile joy of pushing around little 
  military figures on the board that makes the game fun to play.  
   Sensory pleasure is often the pleasure of the toy (see Lens #15). This pleasure 
  cannot make a bad game into a good one, but it can often make a good game into a 
  better one. 
   2.   Fantasy. This is the pleasure of the imaginary world, and the pleasure of imag-
  ining yourself as something that you are not. We will discuss this pleasure fur-
  ther in Chapters 17 and 18. 
   3.   Narrative. By the pleasure of narrative, LeBlanc does not necessarily mean the 
  telling of a prescribed, linear story. He means instead a dramatic unfolding of 
  a sequence of events, however it happens. We’ll be talking more about this in 
  Chapters 14 and 15. 
   4.   Challenge. In some sense, challenge can be considered one of the core pleas-
  ures of gameplay, since every game, at its heart, has a problem to be solved. For 
  some players, this pleasure is enough — but others need more. 
   5.   Fellowship. Here, LeBlanc is referring to everything enjoyable about friendship, 
  cooperation, and community. Without a doubt, for some players, this is the 
  main attraction of playing games. We will discuss this further in Chapters 21 
  and 22. 
   6.   Discovery. The pleasure of discovery is a broad one: any time you seek and find 
  something new, that is a discovery. Sometimes this is the exploration of your 
  game world, and sometimes it is the discovery of a secret feature or clever strat-
  egy. Without a doubt, discovering new things is a key game pleasure. 
   7.   Expression. This is the pleasure of expressing yourself and the pleasure of creat-
  ing things. In the past, this is a pleasure that was generally neglected in game 
  design. Today, games allow players to design their own characters, and build and 
  share their own levels. Often, the  “expression ” that takes place in a game does 
  PSYCHOGRAPHICS
  
  CHAPTER EIGHT • THE GAME IS MADE FOR A PLAYER
  110
  little to achieve the goals of the game. Designing new outfits for your character 
  doesn’t help you advance in most games — but for some players, it may be the 
  very reason they play. 
   8.   Submission. This is the pleasure of entering the magic circle — of leaving the 
  real world behind, and entering into a new, more enjoyable, set of rules and 
  meaning. In a sense, all games involve the pleasure of submission, but some 
  game worlds are simply more pleasing and interesting to enter than others. In 
  some games, you are forced to suspend your disbelief — in others, the game 
  itself seems to suspend your disbelief effortlessly, and your mind easily enters 
  and stays in the game world. It is these games that make submission truly a 
  pleasure.  
   It is useful to examine these different pleasures, because different individuals 
  place different values on each one. Game designer Richard Bartle, who has spent 
  many years designing MUDs and other online games, observes that players fall into 
  four main groups in terms of their game pleasure preferences. Bartle’s four types 
  are easy to remember, because they have the suits of playing cards as a convenient 
  mnemonic. It is left as an exercise to the reader to understand why each card suit 
  was chosen to represent each category. 
   Bartle’s Taxonomy of Player Types 
   1.   ♦ Achievers want to achieve the goals of the game. Their primary pleasure is 
  Challenge. 
   2.   ♠ Explorers want to get to know the breadth of the game. Their primary pleas-
  ure is Discovery. 
   3.  ♥ Socializers are interested in relationships with other people. They primarily 
  seek the pleasures of Fellowship. 
   4.   ♣ Killers are interested in competing with and defeating others. This category 
  does not map well to LeBlanc’s taxonomy. For the most part, it seems killers 
  enjoy a mix of the pleasures of competition and destruction. Interestingly, Bartle 
  characterizes them as primarily interested in  “imposing themselves on others, ”
  and includes in this category people who are primarily interested in helping 
  others.
  Bartle also proposes a fascinating graph (Figure 8.4) that shows how the four 
  types neatly cover a sort of space:   that is, Achievers are interested in acting on the 
  world, Explorers are interested in interacting with the world, Socializers are inter-
  ested in interacting with players, and Killers are interested in acting on players. 
  
  111
   We must use caution when trying to make such simple taxonomies to describe 
  something as complex as human desire. Under close scrutiny, both LeBlanc’s and 
  Bartle’s taxonomies (and other similar lists) have gaps, and when misused can gloss 
  over subtle pleasures that might easily be missed, such as  “ destruction ”  and “ nur-
  turing, ”  which we encountered in our discussion of gender. Below is a list of a few 
  more pleasures to be considered. 
   ●  Anticipation. When you know a pleasure is coming, just waiting for it is a kind 
  of pleasure. 
   ●  Delight in Another’s Misfortune. Typically, we feel this when some unjust per-
  son suddenly gets their comeuppance. It is an important aspect of competitive 
  games. The Germans call it   schadenfreude  (pronounced  shoddenfroyd ). 
   ●  Gift Giving. There is a unique pleasure when you make someone else happy 
  through the surprise of a gift. We wrap our presents to heighten and intensify 
  this surprise. The pleasure is not just that the person is happy, but that  you made 
  them happy. 
   ●  Humor. Two unconnected things are suddenly united by a paradigm shift. It is 
  hard to describe, but we all know it when it happens. Weirdly, it causes us to 
  make a barking noise. 
   ●  Possibility. This is the pleasure of having many choices and knowing you 
  could pick any one of them. This is often experienced when shopping or at a 
  buffet table. 
   ●  Pride in an Accomplishment. This is a pleasure all its own that can persist long 
  after the accomplishment was made. The Yiddish word   naches (prounounced 
  “ nock-hess ” ) is about this kind of pleased satisfaction, usually referring to pride 
  in children or grandchildren. 
  Acting
  World
  Achievers
  Killers
  Explorers
  Socializers
  Players
  Interacting
  F I G U R E  
   8.4
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  CHAPTER EIGHT • THE GAME IS MADE FOR A PLAYER
  112
   Lens #17: The Lens of Pleasure 
   To use this lens, think about the kinds of pleasure your game does and does 
  not provide. 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What pleasures does your game give to players? Can these be improved? 
   ●  What pleasures are missing from your experience? Why? Can they be added?  
   Ultimately, the job of a game is to give pleasure. By going through lists of 
  known pleasures, and considering how well your game delivers each one, you 
  may be inspired to make changes to your game that will increase your players ’
  enjoyment. Always be on the lookout, though, for unique, unclassified pleas-
  ures not found in most games — for one of these might be what gives your 
  game the unique quality it needs.  
   ●  Purification. It feels good to make something clean. Many games take advantage 
  of the pleasure of purification — any game where you have to  “eat all the dots, ”
  “destroy all the bad guys, ” or otherwise “clear the level ” is taking advantage of 
  this pleasure. 
   ●  Surprise. As Lens #2: Surprise shows us, the brain likes surprises. 
   ●  Thrill. There is a saying among roller coaster designers that  “fear minus death 
  equals fun. ” Thrill is that kind of fun — you experience terror, but feel secure in 
  your safety. 
   ●  Triumph over Adversity. This is that pleasure that you have accomplished 
  something that you knew was a long shot. Typically this pleasure is accompanied 
  by shouts of personal triumph. The Italians have a word for this pleasure:  fiero 
  (prounounced  fee-air-o). 
   ●  Wonder. An overwhelming feeling of awe and amazement.  
   And there are many, many more. I list these pleasures that fall outside of easy 
  classification to illustrate the richness of the pleasure space. Lists of pleasures can 
  serve as convenient rules of thumb, but don’t forget to keep an open mind for ones 
  that might not be on your list. The crucial perspective of pleasure gives us Lens #17.
   Knowing your players intimately, more intimately than they know themselves, 
  is the key to giving them a game they will enjoy. In Chapter 9, we will get to know 
  them even better.  
  
  CHAPTER
  113
   The Experience is in 
  the Player’s Mind 
  113
  NINE
  F I G U R E
  9.1
  
  CHAPTER NINE • THE EXPERIENCE IS IN THE PLAYER’S MIND
  114
   We have already discussed that ultimately, experiences are what a game designer 
  creates. These experiences can only happen in one place — the human brain. 
  Entertaining the human brain is hard because it is so complex — it is the most com-
  plex object in the known universe. 
   Even worse, most of its workings are hidden from us. 
   Until you got to this sentence, were you at all conscious of the position of your 
  body, the rate of your breathing, or how your eyes were moving across the page? Do 
  you even know how your eyes move across the page? Do they move smoothly and 
  linearly, or do they take little hops? How could you have read books for so many 
  years without being sure of the answer to that question? When you speak, do you 
  really know what you are going to say before you say it? Incredibly, when you drive 
  a car, somehow you observe the curvature of the roadway and translate that into a 
  rotational angle by which you move the steering wheel. Who does that calculation? 
  Can you even remember paying attention to the curvature of the roadway? And how 
  does it happen that just because this sentence contains the words  “imagine eating a 
  hamburger with pickles ” that your mouth is watering right now? 
   Consider this pattern: 
  ?
  F I G U R E
  9.2
   Somehow, you know what comes next. How did you reach that conclusion? Was 
  it through a process of deductive logic, or did you just  “see” the answer? If you just 
  saw it, what did you see? And who drew the picture that you saw? 
   Here’s one more. Try this experiment: Find a friend, and ask them to do these 
  three things: 
   1.   Say the word  “boast” five times.  “Boast, boast, boast, boast, boast. ”  
   2.  Spell the word  “boast” out loud. “B-O-A-S-T. ” 
   3.  Answer this question:  “What do you put in a toaster? ” 
   Your friend will likely give the answer  “toast.” Generally, toast is what you take 
  out of a toaster, not what you put in. If you omit the first two steps, most people 
  will give a more correct answer, like  “bread. ” Priming the brain’s networks with 
  “boast” is enough make the word  “toast” seem like a better candidate than the cor-
  rect answer,  “bread. ” We normally think of answering a question like  “What do 
  you put in a toaster? ” as a very conscious event, but the truth is that the subcon-
  scious exerts terrific control over almost everything we say and do. Mostly it does 
  that wisely and well, and we feel like  “we ” are doing it — but from time to time it 
  makes a laughable mistake, and reveals how much control it truly has. 
  
  115
   The majority of what is going on in our brains is hidden from the conscious 
  mind. Psychologists are gradually making progress toward understanding these sub-
  conscious processes, but generally, we are in the dark as to how they really work. 
  The workings of our mind are mostly outside our understanding, and mostly out-
  side our control. But the mind is the place that game experiences happen, so we 
  must do what we can to get a working knowledge of what seems to be going on in 
  there. In Chapter 6 we talked about using the power of the creative subconscious 
  to be a better designer. Now we must consider the interaction of the conscious and 
  subconscious in the mind of the player. Everything that is known about the human 
  mind would fill many encyclopedias — we will contain our examination of the mind 
  to some of the key factors that relate to game design. 
   There are four principal mental abilities that make gameplay possible. These are 
  modeling, focus, imagination, and empathy. We will consider each in turn, and then 
  examine the secret priorities of every player’s subconscious mind. 
   Modeling 
   Reality is amazingly complex. The only way our minds are able to get by at all is 
  by simplifying reality so that we can make some sense of it. Correspondingly, our 
  minds do not deal with reality itself, but instead with models of reality. Mostly we 
  do not notice this — the modeling takes place below our awareness. Consciousness 
  is an illusion that our internal experiences are reality, when in truth they are imper-
  fect simulations of something we may never truly understand. The illusion is a very 
  good one, but at times we run into places where our internal simulations fail. Some 
  of these are visual, like this picture: 
  F I G U R E
  9.3
  MODELING
   In reality, those dots are not changing color as our eyes move around, but our brain 
  sure does make it look like they are. 
   Some examples don’t become clear until you think about them a little bit, such 
  as the visible light spectrum. From a physics point of view, visible light, infrared, 
  ultraviolet, and microwaves are all the same kind of electromagnetic radiation, just 
  at different wavelengths. Our eyes can only see a tiny fraction of this smooth spec-
  trum, and we call this fraction visible light. It would be very useful if we could 
  
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  116
  see other kinds of light. Seeing infrared light, for example, would let us easily spot 
  predators in the dark, since all living things emit infrared light. Unfortunately, the 
  insides of our eyeballs emit infrared as well, so if we could see it, we would be 
  quickly blinded by our own glow. As a result, a huge amount of useful data, that 
  is, everything outside the visible light range of the electromagnetic spectrum, is not 
  part of our perceived reality. 
   Even the visible light we can see is strangely filtered by our eyes and brains. 
  Because of the construction of our eye, this spread of visible light wavelengths looks 
  like it falls into distinct groupings, which we call colors. When we look at a rainbow 
  that comes out of a prism, we can draw lines to separate one color from another. In 
  truth, though, this is just an artifact of the mechanics of the retina. In reality, there 
  is no sharp separation of colors, just a smooth gradient of wavelengths, even though 
  our eyes tell us that blue and light blue are much more similar than say, light blue 
  and green. We evolved this eye structure because breaking up the wavelengths into 
  groups like this is a useful way to better understand the world.  “Colors ” are only an 
  illusion, not part of reality at all, but a very useful model of reality. 
   Reality is full of aspects that aren’t at all part of our day-to-day modeling. For 
  example, our bodies, our homes, and our food are teeming with microscopic bacte-
  ria and mites. Many are single celled, but others, such as the  Demodex follicularum , 
  that lives in our eyelashes, pores, and hair follicles, are almost large enough (up to 
  0.4 mm) to be seen with the naked eye. These tiny creatures are everywhere around 
  us, but are generally not part of our mental models at all, because mostly, we don’t 
  need to know about them. 
  F I G U R E
  9.4
   One good way to get a grasp on some of our mental models is to look for things 
  that feel natural to us until we think about them. Consider this picture of Charlie 
  Brown. At first glance, nothing seems too unusual about him — he’s just a boy. But 
  upon reflection, he looks nothing like a real person. His head is nearly as big as his 
  body! His fingers are little bumps! Most distressing of all, he is made of lines. Look 
  around you — nothing is made of lines — everything is made of lumps. His unreal-
  ity doesn’t become apparent until we stop and consciously think about it, and this 
  is a clue to how the brain models things. 
  
  117
   Charlie Brown seems like a person even though he doesn’t look like anyone we 
  know because he matches some of our internal models. We accept his giant head 
  because our minds store much more information about heads and faces than the 
  rest of the body, since so much information about a person’s feelings come from 
  their face. If instead, he had a small head, and giant feet, he would immediately 
  look ridiculous, because he wouldn’t match our internal models at all. 
   And what about his lines? It is a challenging problem for the brain to look at a 
  scene and pick out which objects are separate from each other. When it does, below 
  our conscious level, our internal visual processing system draws lines around each 
  separate object. Our conscious mind never sees these lines, but it does get a feeling 
  about which things in a scene are separate objects. When we are presented with a 
  picture already drawn with lines, it has been  “ pre-digested ” in a sense, matching 
  our internal modeling mechanisms perfectly, and saving them a lot of work. This 
  is part of why people find cartoons and comics so soothing to look at — our brain 
  needs to do less work to understand them. 
   Stage magicians amaze us by taking advantage of our mental models and then 
  breaking them. In our mind, our models  are reality, so we feel like we are seeing 
  someone do the impossible. The audible gasp that comes from an audience at the 
  culmination of a magic trick is the sound of their mental models being torn asunder. 
  It is only through our faith that  “it must be a trick ” that we are able to reason that 
  magicians don’t have supernatural powers. 
   Our brains do a tremendous amount of work to boil down the complexity of real-
  ity into simpler mental models that can be easily stored, considered, and manipu-
  lated. And this is not just the case for visual objects. It is also the case for human 
  relationships, risk and reward evaluation, and decision making. Our minds look at 
  a complex situation and try to boil it down to a simple set of rules and relationships 
  that we can manipulate internally. 
   As game designers, we care a lot about these mental models because games, 
  with their simple rules, are like Charlie Brown — they are pre-digested models that 
  we can easily absorb and manipulate. This is why they are relaxing to play — they 
  are less work for our brain than the real world, because so much of the complexity 
  has been stripped away. Abstract strategy games, like tic-tac-toe and back gammon, 
  are almost completely bare models. Other games, like computer-based RPGs, take 
  a simple model and coat it with some sugary aesthetics, so that the very act of 
  working to digest the model is pleasurable. This is so different from the real world, 
  where you have to work so hard to figure out what the rules of the game even are, 
  and then work even harder to achieve them, never sure if you are doing the right 
  thing. And this is why games can sometimes be great practice for the real world — 
  it is why they still teach chess at West Point — games give us practice digesting and 
  experimenting with simpler models, so we can work our way up to ones as complex 
  as the real world, and be competent at dealing with them when we are ready. 
   The important thing to understand is that everything we experience and think 
  about is a model — not reality. Reality is beyond our understanding and compre-
  hension. All we can understand is our little model of reality. Sometimes this model 
  MODELING
  
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  118
  breaks, and we have to fix it. The reality we experience is just an illusion, but this 
  illusion is the only reality we will ever know. As a designer, if you can understand 
  and control how that illusion is formed in your player’s mind, you will create expe-
  riences that feel as real, or more real, than reality itself. 
   Focus 
   One crucial technique our brains use to make sense of the world is the ability to 
  focus its attention selectively, ignoring some things, and devoting more mental power 
  to others. The brain’s ability to do this can be startling. One example is the  “cocktail 
  party effect, ” which is our remarkable ability to pay attention to a single conver-
  sation when a roomful of people are all talking at once. Even though the sound 
  waves from many conversations are hitting our ears simultaneously, we somehow 
  have the ability to  “tune in ” one, and  “tune out ” the others. To study this, psychol-
  ogists have performed what are sometimes called  “dichotic ear studies. ” In these 
  experiments, subjects wear headphones that deliver different audio experiences to 
  each ear. For example, a voice in a subject’s left ear might be reading Shakespeare, 
  and the voice in a subject’s right ear might be reading a stream of numbers. 
  Provided the voices are not too similar, subjects who are asked to focus on one of 
  the voices, and repeat back what they are hearing as they hear it, are generally able 
  to do so. Afterwards, when asked questions about what the other voice was saying, 
  subjects generally have no idea. Their brains focused only on selected information 
  and tuned out the rest. 
   What we focus on at any given moment is determined through a blend of our 
  unconscious desires and our conscious will. When we create games, our goal is 
  to create an experience interesting enough that it holds the player’s focus as long 
  and as intensely as possible. When something captures our complete attention and 
  imagination for a long period, we enter an interesting mental state. The rest of the 
  world seems to fall away, and we have no intrusive thoughts. All we are think-
  ing about is what we are doing, and we completely lose track of time. This state 
  of sustained focus, pleasure, and enjoyment is referred to as  “flow, ” and has been 
  the subject of extensive study by psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and many 
  others. Flow is sometimes defined as  “a feeling of complete and energized focus in 
  an activity, with a high level of enjoyment and fulfillment. ” It pays for game design-
  ers to make a careful study of flow, because this is exactly the feeling we want the 
  players of our games to enjoy. Some of the key components necessary to create an 
  activity that puts a player into a flow state are 
   ●  Clear goals. When our goals are clear, we are able to more easily stay focused on 
  our task. When goals are unclear, we are not  “into” our task, for we aren’t at all 
  certain whether our current actions are useful. 
   ●  No distractions. Distractions steal focus from our task. No focus, no flow. 
  
  119
   ●  Direct feedback. If every time we take an action, we have to wait before we 
  know what effect the action caused, we will quickly become distracted and lose 
  focus on our task. When feedback is immediate, we can easily stay focused. 
   ●  Continuously challenging. Human beings love a challenge. But it must be a 
  challenge we think we can achieve. If we start to think we can’t achieve it, we 
  feel frustrated, and our minds start seeking an activity more likely to be reward-
  ing. On the other hand, if the challenge is too easy, we feel bored, and again, our 
  minds start seeking more rewarding activities.  
   Flow activities must manage to stay in the narrow margin of challenge that lies 
  between boredom and frustration, for both of these unpleasant extremes cause our 
  mind to change its focus to a new activity. Csikszentmihalyi calls this margin the 
  “flow channel. ” He gives an example of the flow channel, using, not surprisingly, a 
  game.
   Let us assume that the figure below represents a specific activity — for  example, 
  the game of tennis. The two theoretically most important dimensions of the 
  experience, challenges and skills, are represented on the two axes of the dia-
  gram. The letter A represents Alex, a boy who is learning to play tennis. The 
  diagram shows Alex at four different points in time. When he first starts play-
  ing (A 1), Alex has practically no skills, and the only challenge he faces is hit-
  ting the ball over the net. This is not a very difficult feat, but Alex is likely to 
  enjoy it because the difficulty is just right for his rudimentary skills. So at this 
  point he will probably be in flow. But he cannot stay there long. After a while, 
  if he keeps practicing, his skills are bound to improve, and then he will grow 
  bored just batting the ball over the net (A 2). Or it might happen that he meets 
  a more practiced opponent, in which case he will realize that there are much 
  harder challenges for him than just lobbing the ball — at that point, he will feel 
  some anxiety (A 3) concerning his poor performance. 
  FOCUS
  Skills
  0 (Low)
  (High) �
  Flow
  channel
  �
  (High)
  (Low)
  0
  Challenges
  Boredom
  Anxiety
  A1
  A4
  A2
  A3
  F I G U R E
  9.5
  
  CHAPTER NINE • THE EXPERIENCE IS IN THE PLAYER’S MIND
  120
  Neither boredom nor anxiety are positive experiences, so Alex will be motivated 
  to return to the flow state. How is he to do it? Glancing again at the diagram, 
  we see that if he is bored (A 2) and wishes to be in flow again, Alex has essen-
  tially only one choice: to increase the challenges he is facing. (He also has a 
  second choice, which is to give up tennis altogether — in which case A would 
  simply disappear from the diagram.) By setting himself a new and more diffi-
  cult goal that matches his skills — for instance, to beat an opponent just a little 
  more advanced that he is — Alex would be back in flow (A 4).  
   If Alex is anxious (A 3), the way back to flow requires that he increase his skills. 
  Theoretically he could also reduce the challenges he is facing, and thus return 
  to the flow where he started (in A 1), but in practice it is difficult to ignore chal-
  lenges once one is aware that they exist. 
  The diagram shows that both A 1 and A 4 represent situations in which Alex is 
  in flow. Although both are equally enjoyable, the two states are quite different 
  in that A 4 is a more complex experience than A 1. It is more complex because it 
  involves greater challenges, and demands greater skill from the player. 
  But A 4, although complex and enjoyable, does not represent a stable situation 
  either. As Alex keeps playing, either he will become bored by the stale oppor-
  tunities he finds at that level, or he will become anxious and frustrated by his 
  relatively low ability. So the motivation to enjoy himself again will push him 
  to get back into the flow channel, but now at a level of complexity even higher 
  than A 4 . 
  It is this dynamic feature that explains why flow activities lead to growth and 
  discovery. Once cannot enjoy doing the same thing at the same level for long. 
  We grow either bored or frustrated; and then the desire to enjoy ourselves again 
  pushes us to stretch our skills, or to discover new opportunities for using them. 
   You can see how keeping someone in the flow channel is a delicate balance, for 
  a player’s skill level seldom stays in one place. As their skill increases, you must 
  present them with commensurate challenges. For traditional games, this challenge 
  primarily comes from seeking out more challenging opponents. In videogames, 
  there is often a sequence of levels that gradually get more challenging. This pat-
  tern of levels of increasing difficulty is nicely self-balancing — players with a lot 
  of skill can usually move through the lower levels quickly, until they come to the 
  levels that challenge them. This connection between skill and the speed of finish-
  ing a level helps keep skilled players from getting bored. However, it is the rare 
  player who is persistent enough to win the game, mastering all levels. Most players 
  eventually reach a level where they spend so much time in the frustration zone that 
  they give up on the game. There is much debate about whether that is a bad thing 
  (many players are frustrated) or a good thing (since only skilled, persistent players 
  can reach the end, the accomplishment is special). 
  
  121
   This will probably feel much more interesting to a player. It is a repeating cycle 
  of increasing challenge, followed by a reward, often of more power, which gives 
  an easier period of less challenge. Soon enough, the challenge ramps up again. For 
  example, a videogame might feature a gun that lets me destroy enemies if I shoot 
  them three times. As I proceed through the game, the enemies grow more numer-
  ous, increasing the challenge. If I rise to the challenge, though, and defeat enough 
  enemies, I might be rewarded with a gun that lets me destroy the enemies with only 
  two shots. Suddenly the game is easier, which is very rewarding. This easy period 
  Skills
  0 (Low)
  (High) �
  Flow
  channel
  �
  (High)
  (Low)
  0
  Challenges
  Boredom
  Anxiety
  F I G U R E
  9.6
  Skills
  0 (Low)
  (High) �
  Flow
  channel
  �
  (High)
  (Low)
  0
  Challenges
  Boredom
  Anxiety
  F I G U R E
  9.7
  FOCUS
   Many designers are quick to point out that while staying in the flow channel is 
  important, some ways of moving up the channel are better than others. Moving 
  straight up the channel, like this …  
   …is definitely better than the game ending in anxiety or boredom. But consider 
  the play experience that follows a track more like this: 
  
  CHAPTER NINE • THE EXPERIENCE IS IN THE PLAYER’S MIND
  122
  doesn’t last though, because soon new enemies that take three and even four shots 
  to destroy, even with my new gun, will start to appear, taking the challenge to new 
  heights. 
   This cycle of  “tense and release, tense and release ” comes up again and again 
  in design. It seems to be inherent to human enjoyment. Too much tension, and we 
  wear out. Too much relaxation, and we grow bored. When we fluctuate between 
  the two, we enjoy both excitement and relaxation, and this oscillation also provides 
  both the pleasure of variety, and the pleasure of anticipation. 
   You can see how useful the idea of flow and the flow channel can be for discuss-
  ing and analyzing a gameplay experience — so useful that it is Lens #18.
   Lens #18: The Lens of Flow 
   To use this lens, consider what is holding your player’s focus. 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  Does my game have clear goals? If not, how can I fix that? 
   ●  Are the goals of the player the same goals I intended? 
   ●  Are there parts of the game that distract players to the point they forget 
  their goal? If so, can these distractions be reduced, or tied into the game 
  goals? 
   ●  Does my game provide a steady stream of not-too-easy, not-too-hard chal-
  lenges, taking into account the fact that the player’s skills may be gradually 
  improving? 
   ●  Are the player’s skills improving at the rate I had hoped? If not, how can I 
  change that?  
   Flow is a very hard thing to test for. You won’t see it in ten minutes of gameplay. 
  You must observe players for longer periods. Even trickier, a game that keeps some-
  one in flow the first few times they play it may later become boring or frustrating. 
   When observing a player, flow can be easy to miss — you must learn to recog-
  nize it. It is not always accompanied by external expressions of emotion — it often 
  involves quiet withdrawal. Players in flow playing solo games will often be quiet, 
  possibly muttering to themselves. They are so focused that they are sometimes slow 
  to respond or irritated if you ask them questions. Players in flow during multiplayer 
  games will sometimes communicate with one another enthusiastically, constantly 
  focused on the game. Once you notice a player going into flow during your game, 
  you need to watch them closely — they won’t stay there forever. You must watch 
  for that crucial moment — the event that moves them out of the flow channel, so 
  
  123
  you can figure how to make sure that event doesn’t happen in your next prototype 
  of the game. 
   One final note: don’t forget to turn the Lens of Flow on yourself! You will surely 
  find that times of flow are when you get the most done as a designer — make sure 
  to organize your design time so you can get to that special state of mind as fre-
  quently as possible. 
   Empathy 
   As human beings, we have an amazing ability to project ourselves into the place of 
  others. When we do this, we think the other person’s thoughts and feel their feel-
  ings, to the best of our ability. It is one of the hallmarks of our ability to understand 
  one another that we can do this, and it is an integral part of gameplay. 
   There is an interesting theater exercise where a group of actors is divided into 
  two groups. In the first group, each actor chooses an emotion (happiness, sadness, 
  anger, etc.), and then they all mill about the stage, each trying to project their cho-
  sen emotion through attitude, walk, and facial expression. The second group does 
  not choose an emotion. They just walk about at random among the first group, 
  trying to establish eye contact with others. The first time they try this, the actors 
  in the second group discover themselves doing something shocking — whenever 
  they make eye contact with someone projecting an emotion, they take on the emo-
  tion themselves, and make the corresponding facial expression, without consciously 
  willing to do so. 
   This is how strong our power of empathy can be. Without even trying, we 
  become other people. When we see someone who is happy, we can feel their 
  joy as if it is our own. When we see someone who is sad, we can feel their pain. 
  Entertainers use our power of empathy to make us feel we are part of the story-
  world they are creating. Amazingly, our empathy can be cast from one person to 
  another in the blink of an eye. We can even empathize with animals. 
   Have you noticed that dogs have much richer facial expression than other ani-
  mals? They express emotion with their eyes and eyebrows much like we do (Figure 
  9.8). Wolves (dog ancestors) don’t have nearly the range of facial expression of 
  domesticated dogs. Dogs appear to have evolved this ability as a survival skill. Dogs 
  that could make the right faces could capture our empathy, and we, suddenly feel-
  ing their feelings, became more likely to take care of them. 
   Of course, the brain does all this using mental models — in truth, we are empa-
  thizing not with real people or animals, but with our mental models of them — 
  which means we are easily tricked. We can feel emotion when there is none. 
  A photo, a drawing, or a videogame character can just as easily capture our 
  empathy. Cinematographers understand this, and they fling our empathy all over the 
  place, from one character to another, thus manipulating our feelings and  emotions. 
  Next time you watch television, pay attention, moment to moment, about where 
  your empathy is going, and why it is going there. 
  EMPATHY
  
  CHAPTER NINE • THE EXPERIENCE IS IN THE PLAYER’S MIND
  124
   As game designers, we will make use of empathy in the same ways that nov-
  elists, graphic artists, and filmmakers do, but we also have our own set of new 
  empathic interactions. Games are about problem solving, and empathic projec-
  tion is a useful method of problem solving. If I can imagine myself in the place 
  of another, I can make better decisions about what that person can do to solve a 
  particular problem. Also, in games, you don’t just project your feelings into a char-
  acter, you project your entire decision-making capacity into that character, and can 
  become them in a way that isn’t possible in non-interactive media. We will discuss 
  the implications of this in detail in Chapter 18. 
   Imagination 
   Imagination puts the player into the game by putting the game into the player 
  (Figure 9.9). 
   You might think, when I talk about the power of the player’s imagination, that I 
  might mean their creative imagination, and the power to make up dreamlike fantasy 
  worlds — but I am talking about something much more mundane. The imagination 
  I’m talking about is the miraculous power that everyone takes for granted — the 
  everyday imagination that every person uses for communication and problem solv-
  ing. For example, if I tell you a short story:  “The mailman stole my car yesterday, ” I 
  have actually told you very little, but already you have a picture of what happened. 
  F I G U R E
  9.8
  
  125
  Weirdly, your picture is full of details that I didn’t include in my story. Take a look 
  at the mental image that formed, and answer these questions: 
   ●  What did the mailman look like? 
   ●  What kind of neighborhood was my car in when he stole it? 
   ●  What color was the car? 
   ●  What time of day did he steal it? 
   ●  How did he steal it? 
   ●  Why did he steal it?  
   Now, I didn’t tell you any of those things, but your amazing imagination just 
  made up a bunch of these details so that you could more easily think about what I 
  was telling you. Now, if I suddenly give you more information, like,  “It wasn’t a real 
  car, but an expensive model toy car, ” you quickly reformulate your imaginary image 
  to fit what you have heard, and your answers to the above questions might change 
  correspondingly. This ability to automatically fill in gaps is very relevant for game 
  design, for it means that our games don’t need to give every detail, and players 
  will be able to fill in the rest. The art comes in knowing what you should show the 
  player, and what you should leave to their imagination. 
   This power, when you think about it, is quite incredible. The fact that our brains 
  only deal in simplified models of reality means that we can manipulate these 
  models effortlessly, sometimes into situations that wouldn’t be possible in reality. I 
  can see an armchair and imagine what it would look like if it were a different color, 
  a different size, if it was made of oatmeal, or if it was walking around. We do a lot 
  of problem solving this way. If I ask you to find a way to change a light bulb with-
  out a stepladder, you immediately start imagining possible solutions. 
  F I G U R E
  9.9
  IMAGINATION
  
  CHAPTER NINE • THE EXPERIENCE IS IN THE PLAYER’S MIND
  126
   Imagination has two crucial functions: the first is communication (often for 
  storytelling), and the second is problem solving. Since games prominently feature 
  both of these, game designers must understand how to engage the player’s imagi-
  nation as a storytelling partner, as well as having a sense of the problems it will 
  and will not be able to solve. 
   Motivation 
   We have now examined four of the key mental abilities that make gameplaying pos-
  sible: modeling, focus, empathy, and imagination. Let’s now consider why the brain 
  is motivated to use any of these at all. 
   In 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote a paper titled  “A Theory of 
  Human Motivation, ” which proposed a hierarchy of human needs. This is often 
  presented as a pyramid: 
  Self-
  Actualization
  Pursue Inner Talent
  Creativity · Fullfilment
  Belonging-Love
  Self-Esteem
  Achievement · Mastery
  Recognition · Respect
  Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
  Safety
  Security · Stability · Freedom from Fear
  Friends · Family · Spouse · Lover
  Physiological
  Food · Water · Shelter · Warmth
  F I G U R E
  9.10
   The idea here is that people are not motivated to pursue the higher level needs 
  on this list until the lower needs are satisfied. For example, if someone is starving 
  to death, this is a priority over a feeling of safety. If someone doesn’t feel safe, they 
  aren’t going to seriously pursue human relationships. If someone doesn’t feel love 
  and social belonging, they aren’t going to pursue things that will boost their self-
  esteem. And if they don’t have good self-esteem, they will not be able to pursue 
  their talents (remember the major gift?) to do what they were  “born to do. ”
   If you think hard, you can come up with some possible exceptions to this model, 
  but overall, it works well enough to be a very useful tool for discussing player’s 
  
  127
  motivations in games. It is interesting to think about different game activities, and 
  where they fall on this hierarchy. Many game activities are about achievement and 
  mastery, which places them at level four, self-esteem. But some are lower. Looking 
  at the hierarchy, the reasons for the appeal and staying power of multiplayer games 
  suddenly becomes clear — they fulfill more basic needs than single player gameplay, 
  so it shouldn’t be surprising that many players will feel more motivated to do them. 
   Can you think of gameplay activities that go even farther down on the hierarchy, 
  to the second or first levels? How about activities on the fifth level? 
   Any game that connects you with other people, lets you feel a sense of accom-
  plishment, and lets you build and create things that let you express yourself fulfills 
  needs on the third, fourth, and fifth levels. Viewed from this perspective, the popu-
  larity and staying power of games with both online communities and content crea-
  tion tools makes a lot of sense. It is also interesting to consider how the different 
  levels can feed into one another. 
   This needs-based perspective on game design is Lens #19.
   Judgment 
   The fourth level of Maslow’s hierarchy, self-esteem, is the one most intimately con-
  nected to games. But why? One deep need common to everyone is the need to be 
  JUDGMENT
   Lens #19: The Lens of Needs  
   To use this lens, stop thinking about your game, and start thinking about what 
  basic human needs it fulfills. 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  On which levels of Maslow’s hierarchy is my game operating? 
   ●  How can I make my game fulfill more basic needs than it already is? 
   ●  On the levels my game is currently operating, how can it fulfill those needs 
  even better?  
   It sounds strange to talk about a game fulfilling basic human needs, but every-
  thing that people do is an attempt to fulfill these needs in some way. And keep 
  in mind, some games fulfill needs better than others — your game can’t just 
  promise the need, it must deliver fulfillment of the need. If a player imagines 
  that playing your game is going to make them feel better about themselves, or 
  get to know their friends better, and your game doesn’t deliver on these needs, 
  your player will move on to a game that does.  
  
  CHAPTER NINE • THE EXPERIENCE IS IN THE PLAYER’S MIND
  128
   Lens #20: The Lens of Judgment 
   To decide if your game is a good judge of the players, ask yourself these 
  questions: 
   ●  What does your game judge about the players? 
   ●  How does it communicate this judgment? 
   ●  Do players feel the judgment is fair? 
   ●  Do they care about the judgment? 
   ●  Does the judgment make them want to improve?  
   The human mind is truly the most fascinating, amazing, complex thing that we 
  know. We may never unravel all of its mysteries. The more we know about it, the 
  better a chance we’ll have of creating a great experience in it, for it is the site where 
  all our game experiences take place. And never forget! You are equipped with one 
  yourself. You can use your own powers of modeling, focus, empathy, and imagina-
  tion to get to know how these powers are being used in the mind of your player. In 
  this way, self-listening can be the key to listening to your audience.  
  judged. This might sound wrong — don’t people hate being judged? They don’t — 
  they only hate being judged unfairly. We have a deep inner need to know how we 
  stack up. And when we aren’t happy with how we are judged, we work hard until 
  we are judged favorably. The fact that games are excellent systems for objective 
  judgment is one of their most appealing qualities.
  
  CHAPTER
  129
   Some Elements are 
  Game Mechanics 
  129
  TEN
  F I G U R E
  10.1
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  130
   We have talked a lot about designers, players, and the experience of game playing. 
  It is time to talk nuts and bolts about what games are really made of. Game design-
  ers must learn to use their X-ray vision to be able to see past the skin of a game and 
  quickly discern the skeleton, which is defined by the game mechanics. 
   But what are these mysterious mechanics? 
   Game mechanics are the core of what a game truly is. They are the interactions 
  and relationships that remain when all of the aesthetics, technology, and story are 
  stripped away. 
   As with many things in game design, we do not have a universally agreed upon 
  taxonomy of game mechanics. One reason for this is that the mechanics of game-
  play, even for simple games, tend to be quite complex, and very difficult to dis-
  entangle. Attempts at simplifying these complex mechanics to the point of perfect 
  mathematical understanding result in systems of description that are obviously 
  incomplete. Economic  “game theory, ” is an example of this. You would think with 
  a name like  “game theory, ” it would be of great use to game designers, but in truth, 
  it can only handle such simple systems that it is seldom useful for designing real 
  games. 
   But there is another reason that taxonomies of game mechanics are incomplete. 
  On one level, game mechanics are very objective, clearly stated sets of rules. On 
  another level, though, they involve something more mysterious. Earlier, we dis-
  cussed how the mind breaks down all games into mental models that it can easily 
  manipulate. Part of game mechanics necessarily involves describing the structure of 
  these mental models. Since these exist largely in the darkness of the subconscious 
  mind, it is hard for us come up with a well-defined analytical taxonomy of how 
  they work. 
   But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Some authors have approached this 
  problem from a very academic perspective, more concerned with an analysis that is 
  philosophically watertight than with one that might be useful to designers. We can’t 
  afford this kind of pedantry. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is a fine thing, 
  but our interest is in knowledge for the sake of great games, even if it means a tax-
  onomy that has some gray areas. With that said, I present the taxonomy that I use 
  to classify game mechanics. These mechanics fall largely into six main categories, 
  and each one can provide useful insights on your game design. 
    Mechanic 1: Space 
   Every game takes place in some kind of  space. This space is the “magic circle ” of 
  gameplay. It defines the various places that can exist in a game, and how those 
  places are related to one another. As a game mechanic, space is a mathematical 
  construct. We need to strip away all visuals, all aesthetics, and simply look at the 
  abstract construction of a game’s space. 
  
  131
   There are no hard and fast rules for describing these abstract, stripped-down 
  game spaces. Generally, though, game spaces: 
   1.   Are either discrete or continuous 
   2.   Have some number of dimensions 
   3.   Have bounded areas which may or may not be connected  
   The game of tic-tac-toe, for example, features a board that is discrete, and two-
  dimensional. What do we mean by  “ discrete ” ? Well, even though we commonly 
  draw a tic-tac-toe board like this: 
   
   It is not really a continuous space, because we only care about boundaries, not the 
  space within each cell. Whether you put your X …  
  F I G U R E
  10.3
  MECHANIC 1: SPACE
  F I G U R E
  10.4
  F I G U R E
  10.5
  F I G U R E
  10.2
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  132
   It doesn’t really matter — all those are equivalent in terms of the game. But if 
  you put your X here: 
   That is another matter entirely. So, even though the players can make their 
  marks in an infinite number of places in a continuous two-dimensional space, there 
  are really only nine discrete places that have any actual meaning in the game. In a 
  sense, we really have nine zero-dimensional cells, connected to each other in a two-
  dimensional grid, like this: 
   Each circle represents a zero-dimensional place, and each line shows which places 
  are connected to each other. In tic-tac-toe, there is no movement from place to 
  place, but adjacency is very important. Without adjacency, it would just be nine dis-
  connected points. With the adjacency, it becomes a discrete two-dimensional space, 
  with clear boundaries — the space is three cells wide and three cells high. The 
  space for a chessboard is similar, except that it is an 8   � 8 space. 
   A game with fancy aesthetics can fool you into thinking that its functional space 
  is more complex than it really is. Consider a Monopoly board. 
   At first glance, you might say it is a discrete two-dimensional space, like a chess-
  board, with most of the middle cells missing. But it can be more simply represented 
  as one-dimensional space — a single line of forty discrete points, which connects 
  to itself in a loop. Sure, on the game board, the corner spaces look special because 
  they are bigger, but functionally that doesn’t matter, since each game square is a 
  zero-dimensional space. Multiple game pieces can be in a single game square, but 
  their relative positions within that square are meaningless. 
  F I G U R E
  10.6
  F I G U R E
  10.7
  
  133
   But not all game spaces are discrete. A pool table is an example of a continuous 
  two-dimensional space. It has a fixed length and width, and the balls can freely 
  move about on the table, ricocheting off of the walls, or falling into the holes, which 
  are in fixed positions. Everyone would agree that the space is continuous, but is it 
  two-dimensional? Since clever players can sometimes cause the balls to leave the 
  table and hop over each other, you could certainly argue that this is really a three-
  dimensional game space, and for some purposes, it is useful to think of it that way. 
  There are no hard and fast rules for these abstract functional spaces. When design-
  ing a new game, there are times it will be useful for you to think of your space 
  as two-dimensional, and times when thinking of it as three-dimensional is more 
  useful. The same goes for continuous vs. discrete. The purpose of stripping down a 
  game into a functional space is so that you can more easily think about it, without 
  the distractions of aesthetics or the real world. If you are thinking about modifying 
  the game of soccer to a playingfield with new boundaries, you will probably think 
  about it in terms of a two-dimensional continuous space.  
  MECHANIC 1: SPACE
  Old
  New!
  F I G U R E
  10.8
   But if you are thinking about modifying the height of the goal, or changing the 
  rules about how high the players can kick the ball, or adding hills and valleys to the 
  field, it is useful to think of it as a continuous three-dimensional space instead.  
  F I G U R E
  10.9
   There might even be times you think about a soccer field as a discrete space — 
  breaking it up into, say, nine major areas of play, with two extra areas on the left 
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  134
  and right representing the goals. This mode of thinking might prove useful if you 
  are analyzing the different kinds of play that take place in different parts of the field, 
  for example. The important thing is that you come up with abstract models of your 
  game space that help you better understand the interrelationships of your game. 
   Nested Spaces 
   Many game spaces are more complex than the examples we have looked at here. 
  Often they feature  “spaces within spaces. ” Computer-based fantasy role-playing 
  games are a good example of this. Most of them feature an  “outdoor space ” that is 
  continuous and two-dimensional. A player traveling this space sometimes encoun-
  ters little icons representing towns, or caves, or castles. Players can enter these as 
  completely separate spaces, not really connected in any way to the  “outdoor space ”
  but through the gateway icon. This is not geographically realistic, of course — but it 
  matches our mental models of how we think about spaces — when we are indoors 
  we think about the space inside the building we are in, with little thought to how 
  it exactly relates to the space outside. For this reason, these  “spaces within spaces ”
  are often a great way to create a simple representation of a complex world. 
   Zero Dimensions 
   Does every game take place in a space? Consider a game like  “Twenty Questions, ”
  where one player thinks of an object, and the other player asks  “yes or no ” ques-
  tions trying to guess what it is. There is no game board and nothing moves — the 
  game is just two people talking. You might argue that this game has no space. On 
  the other hand, you might find it useful to think of the game happening in a space 
  that looks like Figure 10.11. 
   The mind of the answerer contains the secret object. The mind of the questioner 
  is where all the weighing of the previous answers is going on, and the conversation 
  space between them is how they exchange information. Every game has some kind 
  F I G U R E
  10.10
  
  135
  of information or “ state ”  (as we’ll see later in Mechanic 2), and this has to exist 
  somewhere. So, even if a game takes place in a single point of zero dimensions, it 
  can be useful to think of it as a space. You may find that figuring out an abstract 
  model for a game whose space seems to be trivial may lead you to insights about it 
  that surprise you. 
   Being able to think about the space of your game in functional abstract terms is 
  an essential perspective for a designer, and it is Lens #21.  
   Lens #21: The Lens of Functional Space 
   To use this lens, think about the space in which your game really takes place 
  when all surface elements are stripped away. 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  Is the space of this game discrete or continuous? 
   ●  How many dimensions does it have? 
   ●  What are the boundaries of the space? 
   ●  Are there sub-spaces? How are they connected? 
   ●  Is there more than one useful way to abstractly model the space of this 
  game?  
  MECHANIC 1: SPACE
   When thinking about game spaces, it is easy to be swayed by aesthetics. There are 
  many ways to represent your game space, and they are all good, as long as they work 
  for you. When you can think of your space in these pure abstract terms, it helps you 
  let go of assumptions about the real world, and it lets you focus on the kinds of 
  gameplay interactions you would like to see. Of course, once you have manipulated 
  the abstract space so that you are happy with its layout, you will want to apply aes-
  thetics to it. The Lens of Functional Space works quite well with Lens #8: The Lens 
  of Holographic Design. If you can simultaneously see your abstract functional space 
  and the aesthetic space the player will experience, as well as how they interrelate, 
  you can make confident decisions about the shape of your game’s world.  
  Mind of the
  answerer
  Mind of the
  questioner
  Conversation
  space
  F I G U R E
  10.11
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  136
   Mechanic 2: Objects, Attributes, and States 
   A space without anything in it is, well, just a space. Your game space will surely 
  have  objects in it. Characters, props, tokens, scoreboards, anything that can be seen 
  or manipulated in your game falls into this category. Objects are the  “nouns” of 
  game mechanics. Technically, there are times you might consider the space itself an 
  object, but usually the space of your game is different enough from other objects 
  that it stands apart. Objects generally have one or more  attributes, one of which is 
  often the current position in the game space. 
   Attributes are categories of information about an object. For example, in a rac-
  ing game, a car might have maximum speed and current speed as attributes. Each 
  attribute has a current  state. The state of the “maximum speed ” attribute might be 
  150 mph, while the state of the  “current speed ” attribute might be 75 mph if that 
  is how fast the car is going. Maximum speed is not a state that will change much, 
  unless perhaps you upgrade the engine in your car. Current speed, on the other 
  hand, changes constantly as you play. 
   If objects are the nouns of game mechanics, attributes and their states are the 
  adjectives. 
   Attributes can be static (such as the color of a checker), never changing through-
  out the game, or dynamic (the checker has a  “movement mode ” attribute with three 
  possible states: “normal,” “king,” and “captured ”). Primarily, we are interested in 
  dynamic attributes. 
   Two more examples: 
   1. In chess, the king has a  “movement mode ” attribute with three important states 
  (“free to move, ” “in check, ” and “checkmated.”)
   2. In Monopoly, each property on the board can be considered an object with a 
  dynamic “number of houses ” attribute with six states (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, hotel), and a 
  “mortgaged” attribute with two states (yes, no).  
   Is it important to communicate every state change to the player? Not necessarily. 
  Some state changes are better hidden. But for others, it is crucial to be sure they are 
  communicated to the player. A good rule of thumb is that if two objects behave the 
  same way, they should look the same. If they behave differently, they should look 
  different. 
   Videogame objects, especially ones that simulate intelligent characters, have so 
  many attributes and states that it is easy for a designer to get confused. It is often 
  useful to construct a state diagram for each attribute to make sure you understand 
  which states are connected to which, and what triggers state changes. In terms of 
  game programming, implementing the state of an attribute as a  “state machine ” can 
  be a very useful way to keep all this complexity tidy and easy to debug. Figure 10.12 
  is a sample state diagram for the  “movement ” attribute of the ghosts in Pac Man. 
  
  137
   The circle that reads  “In Cage ” is the initial state for the ghosts (double circle is 
  often used to indicate the start state). Each of the arrows indicates a possible state 
  transition, with an event that triggers that transition. Diagrams like this are very 
  useful when trying to design complex behaviors in a game. They force you to really 
  think through everything that can happen to an object, and what makes it happen. 
  By implementing these state transitions in computer code, you automatically forbid 
  illegal transitions (such as  “In Cage ” → “ Blue ” ), which helps cut down on puz-
  zling bugs. These diagrams can get quite complicated and are sometimes nested. 
  For example, it is quite likely that the real Pac-Man algorithm actually has several 
  sub-states in “Chasing Pac Man, ” such as “Scanning for Pac Man, ” “On Pac Man’s 
  Tail, ”  “ Moving through a Tunnel, ”  etc. 
   Deciding which objects have what attributes and what states is up to you. 
  There are often multiple ways to represent the same thing. In a game of poker, for 
  example, you could define a player’s hand as an area of the gamespace that has five 
  card objects in it, or you could decide you don’t want to think of cards as objects, 
  and just call the player’s hand an object that has five different card attributes. As 
  with everything in game design, the  “ right ”  way to think about something is which-
  ever way is most useful at the moment. 
   Secrets 
   A very important decision about game attributes and their states is who is aware 
  of which ones. In many board games, all information is public; that is, everyone 
  knows it. In a game of chess, both players can see every piece on the board, and 
  every piece that has been captured — there are no secrets, except what the other 
  In Cage
  Chasing
  Pac-Man
  Blue:
  Fleeing
  Pac-Man
  Eyes:
  Rolling to
  cage
  Time to
  leave cage
  Pac-Man eats
  power pellet 
  Power pellet
  timer almost up 
  Flashing:
  Fleeing
  Pac-Man
  Eaten by
  Pac-Man
  Eaten by
  Pac-Man
  Eyes arrived
  at cage
  Power pellet
  timer up 
  F I G U R E
  10.12
  MECHANIC 2: OBJECTS, ATTRIBUTES, AND STATES
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  138
  player is thinking. In card games, hidden or private state is a big part of the game. 
  You know what cards you hold, but which ones your opponents hold is a mys-
  tery for you to puzzle out. The game of poker, for example, is largely about trying 
  to guess what cards your opponents have while attempting to conceal information 
  about what cards you might have. Games become dramatically different when you 
  change what information is public or private. In standard  “draw poker, ” all states 
  are private — players can only guess your hand based on how much you bet. In 
  “stud poker, ” some of your cards are private and some are public. This gives oppo-
  nents much more information about each other’s situations, and the game feels very 
  different. Board games such as Battleship and Stratego are all about guessing the 
  states of your opponent’s private attributes. 
   In videogames, we face something new: a state that only the game itself knows 
  about. This raises a question about whether virtual opponents, from a game mechan-
  ics standpoint, should be thought of as players, or just part of the game. This is well 
  illustrated by a story: In 1980, my grandfather bought an Intellivision game console, 
  which came with a “Las Vegas Poker and Blackjack ” game cartridge. He had great 
  fun with it, but my grandmother refused to play.  “It cheats, ” she insisted. I told her 
  that was silly — it was just a computer — how could it cheat? She explained her 
  reasoning:  “It knows what all my cards are, and all the cards in the deck! How can 
  it not cheat? ” And I had to admit that my explanation that the computer  “doesn’t 
  look at those ” when it is making decisions about playing the game sounded kind of 
  weak. But it brings out the point that there were really three entities in that game 
  who knew the states of different attributes: my grandfather, who was aware of the 
  state of his hand; the virtual opponent algorithm, that was  “aware ” of the state of its 
  hand; and lastly, the main algorithm for the game, which was aware of both players ’
  hands, every card in the deck, and everything else about the game. 
   So, it seems that from a public/private attribute point of view, it makes sense to 
  consider virtual opponents as individual entities on par with players. The game itself, 
  though, is yet another entity, with a special status, since it isn’t really playing the 
  game, although it may be making decisions that enable the game to happen. Celia 
  Pearce points out another kind of information, which is private from all of the enti-
  ties we have mentioned so far: randomly generated information, such as a die roll. 
  Depending on your views about predestination, you might argue that this information 
  doesn’t even exist until it is generated and revealed, so that referring to it as private 
  is a little silly. But it does fit well into a Venn diagram I call the  “hierarchy of 
  knowers, ” which helps to visualize the relationship between the public and private 
  states: 
   Each circle in Figure 10.13 represents a  “knower. ” The “knowers ” are God, the 
  Game, and Players 1, 2, and 3. Each point represents some information in the game — 
  the state of an attribute. 
   ●  A is information that is completely public, such as the position playing piece on 
  a game board, or a face-up card. All the players are aware of it. 
  
  139
  God
  The
  game
  A•
  Player 2
  Player 3
  Player 1
  B•
  C•
  D•
  E•
  F I G U R E
  10.13
   ●  B is the state that is shared between players 2 and 3, but kept secret from player 1. 
  Perhaps 2 and 3 each had the opportunity to look at a face-down card, but player 
  1 didn’t. Or maybe players 2 and 3 are virtual opponents of player 1, and their 
  algorithm has them sharing information so they can team up against player 1. 
   ●  C is information private to a single player, in this case, player 2. It could be cards 
  he was dealt, for example. 
   ●  D is information that the game knows about, but not the players themselves. 
  There are some mechanical board games where this kind of state exists in the 
  physical structure of the board game, but is unknown to the players.  Stay Alive 
  was a classic example, with plastic sliders that when moved, revealed holes in 
  the board.  Touché is another interesting example, where magnets of unknown 
  polarity are placed under each square of the board. The states are  “ known ”
  by the game, but not by the players. Another example is tabletop role-playing 
  games, which feature a  “dungeon master, ” or “game master, ” who is not one of 
  the players, and who privately knows a great deal of the game state, since he is 
  the operational mechanism of the game, so to speak. Most computer games have 
  a great deal of internal state that is not known to the players. 
   ●  E is randomly generated information, known only by the Fates, God, etc.  
   Games that force the players to be aware of too many states (too many game 
  pieces, too many statistics about each character) to play can confuse and over-
  whelm. In Chapter 11 we’ll discuss techniques for optimizing the amount of state 
  the players have to deal with. 
   Thinking of your game strictly as a set of objects and attributes with changing 
  states can give a very useful perspective, and it serves as Lens #22.  
  MECHANIC 2: OBJECTS, ATTRIBUTES, AND STATES
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  140
      Lens #22: The Lens of Dynamic State 
   To use this lens, think about what information changes during your game, and 
  who is aware of it. Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What are the objects in my game? 
   ●  What are the attributes of the objects? 
   ●  What are the possible states for each attribute? What triggers the state 
  changes for each attribute? 
   ●  What state is known by the game only? 
   ●  What state is known by all players? 
   ●  What state is known by some, or only one player? 
   ●  Would changing who knows what state improve my game in some way?  
   Game playing is decision making. Decisions are made based on information. 
  Deciding the different attributes, their states, and who knows about them is 
  core to the mechanics of your game. Small changes to who knows what infor-
  mation can radically change a game, sometimes for the better, sometimes for 
  the worse. Who knows about what attributes can even change over the course 
  of a game — a great way to create drama in your game is to make an impor-
  tant piece of private information suddenly become public.  
   Mechanic 3: Actions 
   The next important game mechanic is the  action. Actions are the  “verbs ” of game 
  mechanics. There are two perspectives on actions, or put another way, two ways to 
  answer the question  “What can the players do? ”
   The first kind of actions are the  operative actions. These are simply the base 
  actions a player can take. For example, in checkers a player can perform only three 
  basic operations: 
   1.  Move a checker forward 
   2.   Jump an opponent’s checker 
   3.   Move a checker backwards (kings only)  
   The second kind of actions are  resultant actions. These are actions that are 
  only meaningful in the larger picture of the game — they have to do with how the 
  player is using operational actions to achieve a goal. The list of resultant actions is 
  
  141
  generally longer than the list of operational actions. Consider the possible resultant 
  actions in checkers: 
   ●  Protect a checker from being captured by moving another checker behind it 
   ●  Force an opponent into making an unwanted jump 
   ●  Sacrifice a checker to trick his opponent 
   ●  Build a  “ bridge ” to protect his back row 
   ●  Move a checker into the  “ king row ” to make it a king 
   ●  … and many others  
   The resultant actions often involve subtle interactions within the game, and are 
  often very strategic moves. These actions are mostly not part of the rules, per se, 
  but rather actions and strategies that emerge naturally as the game is played. Most 
  game designers agree that interesting emergent actions are the hallmark of a good 
  game. Consequently, the ratio of meaningful resultant actions to operation-oriented 
  actions is a good measure of how much emergent behavior your game features. It is 
  an elegant game indeed that allows a player a small number of operation-oriented 
  actions, but a large number of effect-oriented actions. It should be noted that this is 
  a somewhat subjective measure, since the number of  “ meaningful ”  resultant actions 
  is a matter of opinion. 
   Trying to create  “emergent gameplay, ” that is, interesting resultant actions, has 
  been likened to tending a garden, since what emerges has a life of its own, but at 
  the same time, it is fragile and easily destroyed. When you notice some interest-
  ing effect-oriented actions showing up in your game, you must be able to recognize 
  them, and then do what you can to nurture them and give them a chance to flourish. 
  But what makes these things spring up in the first place? It is not just luck — there 
  are things you can do to increase the chances of interesting effect-oriented actions 
  appearing. Here are five tips for preparing the soil of your game and planting seeds 
  of emergence. 
   1.   Add more verbs. That is, add more operative actions. The resultant actions 
  appear when operative actions interact with each other, with objects, and with 
  the game space. When you add more operational actions, there are more oppor-
  tunities for interaction, and thus emergence. A game where you can run, jump, 
  shoot, buy, sell, drive, and build is going to have a lot more potential for emer-
  gence than a game where you can just run and jump. Be careful, though — 
  adding too many operative actions, especially ones that don’t interact with each 
  other well, can lead to a game that is bloated, confusing, and inelegant. Keep in 
  mind that the ratio of resultant actions to operative actions is more important 
  than the sheer number of operative actions. It is usually better to add one good 
  operative action than a slew of mediocre ones. 
  MECHANIC 3: ACTIONS
  
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   2.   Verbs that can act on many objects. This is possibly the single most power-
  ful thing you can do to make an elegant, interesting game. If you give a player 
  a gun that can only shoot bad guys, you have a very simple game. But if that 
  same gun can also be used to shoot a lock off a door, break a window, hunt 
  for food, pop a car tire, or write messages on the wall, you now start to enter 
  a world of many possibilities. You still only have one operative action:  “shoot,”
  but by increasing the number of things you can usefully shoot at, the number of 
  meaningful effect-oriented actions increases as well. 
   3.   Goals that can be achieved more than one way. It’s great to let players do all 
  kinds of different things in your game, giving them lots of verbs, and verbs with 
  lots of objects. But if the goals can only be achieved one way, players have no 
  reason to look for unusual interactions and interesting strategies. To follow up 
  with the “shoot” example, if you let players shoot all kinds of things, but the 
  goal of your game is just  “shoot the boss monster, ” the players will only do that. 
  On the other hand, if you can shoot the monster, or shoot out a support chain so 
  a chandelier could crash down on him, or maybe even not shoot him at all, but 
  stop him through some non-violent means, you will have rich, dynamic game-
  play, where lots of things are possible. The challenge with this approach is that 
  the game becomes hard to balance, for if one of the options is always signifi-
  cantly easier than the others (a dominant strategy), players will always pursue 
  that option. We will discuss that further in Chapter 11. 
   4.  Many subjects. If checkers involved just one red checker and one black one, 
  but had the same rules, the game would not be interesting at all. It is because 
  the players have many different pieces they can move, pieces which can interact 
  with one another, coordinating and sacrificing, that the game becomes interest-
  ing. This method obviously doesn’t work for all games, but it can work in some 
  surprising places. The number of resultant actions seems to have roughly a mag-
  nitude of subjects times verbs times objects, so adding more subjects is very 
  likely to increase the number of resultant actions. 
   5.   Side effects that change constraints. If, every time you take an action, it 
  has side effects that change the constraints on you or your opponent, very 
  interesting gameplay is likely to result. Let us again look to checkers. Every 
  time you move a piece, you not only change the squares that you threaten with 
  capture, but you simultaneously change which squares your opponent (and 
  you) can move into. In a sense, every move changes the very nature of the 
  game space, whether or not you intended it to. Think how different checkers 
  would be if multiple pieces could peacefully cohabitate on a single square. 
  By forcing multiple aspects of the game to change with every operational action, 
  you are very likely to cause interesting resultant actions to suddenly appear.  
  
  143
   Lens #23: The Lens of Emergence 
   To make sure your game has interesting qualities of emergence, ask yourself 
  these questions: 
   ●  How many verbs do my players have? 
   ●  How many objects can each verb act on? 
   ●  How many ways can players achieve their goals? 
   ●  How many subjects do the players control? 
   ●  How do side effects change constraints?  
   When comparing games with books and films, one of the most striking differ-
  ences is the number of verbs. Games usually limit players to a very narrow range 
  of potential actions, while in stories the number of possible actions that characters 
  can engage in seems nearly limitless. This is a natural side effect of the fact that in 
  games, the actions and all their effects must be simulated on the fly, while in stories 
  it is all worked out ahead of time. In Chapter 16 we will discuss how this  “action 
  gap ”  can be bridged in the mind of the player, so that you can give the feeling of 
  limitless possibilities while keeping the number of operational actions at a manage-
  able limit. 
   The reason so many games seem similar to one another is because they use the 
  same set of actions. Look at the games that are considered  “ derivative, ” and you 
  will see that they have the same set of actions as older games. Look at games that 
  people call “ innovative, ” and you will find that they give the players new kinds of 
  actions, either operational or resultant. When  Donkey Kong first appeared, it seemed 
  very different because it was about running and jumping, which was new at the 
  time.  Harvest Moon was a game about farming.  Katamari Damacy was about roll-
  ing a sticky ball. The actions a player can take are so crucial to defining a game’s 
  mechanics that changing a single action can give you a completely different game. 
   Some designers dream of games where any verb the player can think of is a pos-
  sible action, and this is a beautiful dream. Some massively multiplayer games are 
  starting to move in that direction, offering a wide range of verbs for combat, craft-
  ing, and social interaction. In a way, this is a return to the past — in the 1970s and 
  1980s, text adventures were very popular typically featuring dozens or hundreds of 
  possible verbs. Only with the rise of more visual games did the number of verbs 
  suddenly decrease, because it was not feasible to support all those actions in a 
  visual-based game. The demise (or hibernation?) of the text adventure genre is 
  usually attributed to the public’s hunger for fancy visuals — but perhaps, from an 
  action perspective, there is another explanation. Modern 3D videogames give you a 
  very limited range of operational actions. The player generally knows every action 
  MECHANIC 3: ACTIONS
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  144
  they can possibly attempt. In text adventures, the complete set of operational actions 
  was unclear, and discovering them was part of the game. Very often, the solution to 
  a tricky puzzle was thinking to type an unusual verb, like  “spin the fish ” or “tickle 
  the monkey. ” While this was all very creative, it was also often frustrating — for 
  every one of the hundreds of verbs a game supported, there were thousands it did 
  not. As a result, players did not really have the  “complete freedom ” that text adven-
  ture interfaces pretended to give them. It is possible that this frustration, more than 
  anything else, caused text adventures to fall from favor. 
   Your choice of actions significantly defines your game structure, so let’s make 
  that Lens #24.  
   Lens #24: The Lens of Action 
   To use this lens, think about what your players can do and what they can’t, 
  and why. 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What are the operational actions in my game? 
   ●  What are the resultant actions? 
   ●  What resultant actions would I like to see? How can I change my game in 
  order to make those possible? 
   ●  Am I happy with the ratio of resultant to operational actions? 
   ●  What actions do players wish they could do in my game that they cannot? 
  Can I somehow enable these, either as operational or resultant actions?  
   A game without actions is like a sentence without verbs — nothing happens. 
  Deciding the actions in your game will be the most fundamental decision you 
  can make as a game designer. Tiny changes to these actions will have tre-
  mendous ripple effects with the possibility of either creating marvelous emer-
  gent gameplay or making a game that is predictable and tedious. Choose your 
  actions carefully, and learn to listen to your game and your players to learn 
  what is made possible by your choices.  
    Mechanic 4: Rules 
   The rules are really the most fundamental mechanic. They define the space, the 
  objects, the actions, the consequences of the actions, the constraints on the actions, 
  and the goals. In other words, they make possible all the mechanics we have seen 
  so far and add the crucial thing that makes a game a game — goals. 
  
  145
   Parlett’s Rule Analysis 
   David Parlett, game historian, did a very good job of analyzing the different kinds of 
  rules that are involved with gameplay, as shown in this diagram.  
  Foundational
  rules
  Implicit theoretical
  basis of game
  Operational
  rules
  Average of rules in
  minds of all players
  Explicit formulation
  Written rules
  Official rules
  Behavioural
  rules
  Implicit rules of
  behaviour
  Laws
  Explicit behavioural
  rules: proprieties,
  sanctions, corrections
  Authorisation
  Advisory rules
  “Rules” of strategy
  and tactics
  Play
  Application of rules
  to equipment
  Feedback
  Equipment
  “Hardware” (physical
  embodiment of game)
  F I G U R E
  10.14
  MECHANIC 4: RULES
   This shows the relationships between all the kinds of rules we are likely to encoun-
  ter, so let’s consider each. 
   1.   Operational Rules: These are the easiest to understand. These are basically, 
  “What the players do to play the game. ” When players understand the opera-
  tional rules, they can play a game. 
   2.   Foundational Rules: The foundational rules are the underlying formal structure 
  of the game. The operational rules might say  “The player should roll a six-sided 
  die, and collect that many power chips. ” The foundational rules would be more 
  abstract:  “The player’s power value is increased by a random number from 1 to 6. ” 
  Foundational rules are a mathematical representation of game state and how and 
  when it changes. Boards, dice, chips, health meters, etc., are all just operational 
  ways of keeping track of the foundational game state. As Parlett’s diagram shows, 
  foundational rules inform operational rules. There is not yet any standard notation 
  for representing these rules, and there is some question about whether a complete 
  notation is even possible. In real life, game designers learn to see the foundational 
  rules on an as-needed basis, but seldom do they have any need to formally docu-
  ment the entire set of foundational rules in a completely abstract way. 
   3.   Behavioral Rules: These are rules that are implicit to gameplay, which most 
  people naturally understand as part of  “good sportsmanship. ” For example, 
  
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  during a game of chess, one should not tickle the other player while they are 
  trying to think, or take five hours to make a move. These are seldom stated 
  explicitly — mostly, everyone knows them. The fact that they exist underlines 
  the point that a game is a kind of social contract between players. These, too, 
  inform the operational rules. Steven Sniderman has written an excellent essay 
  about behavioral rules called  “Unwritten Rules. ” 
   4.   Written Rules: These are the  “rules that come with the game, ” the document 
  that players have to read to gain an understanding of the operational rules. Of 
  course, in reality, only a small number of people read this document — most 
  people learn a game by having someone else explain how to play. Why? It is 
  very hard to encode the non-linear intricacies of how to play a game into a docu-
  ment, and similarly hard to decode such a document. Modern videogames have 
  gradually been doing away with written rules in favor of having the game itself 
  teach players how to play through interactive tutorials. This hands-on approach 
  is far more effective, though it can be challenging and time-consuming to design 
  and implement as it involves many iterations that cannot be completed until the 
  game is in its final state. Every game designer must have a ready answer to the 
  question: “How will players learn to play my game? ” Because if someone can’t 
  figure out your game, they will not play it. 
   5.   Laws: These only form when games are played in serious, competitive settings, 
  where the stakes are high enough that a need is felt to explicitly record the rules 
  of good sportsmanship, or where there is need to clarify or modify the official 
  written rules. These are often called  “tournament rules, ” since during a serious 
  tournament is when there is the most need for this kind of official clarification. 
  Consider these tournament rules for playing  Tekken 5 (a fighting game) at the 
  2005 Penny Arcade Expo : 
   ● 
   Single Elimination 
   ● 
   You may bring your own controller 
   ● 
   Standard VS Mode 
   ● 
   100% Health 
   ● 
   Random stage select 
   ● 
   60 second timer 
   ● 
   Best 3 of 5 rounds 
   ● 
   Best 2 of 3 games 
   ● 
   Mokujin is banned 
   Most of these are just clarifying exactly which game settings will be used in the 
  tournament. “You may bring your own controller ” is a formalized decision about 
  what is “fair play. ” The most interesting rule here is  “Mokujin is banned. ” Mokujin 
  is one of the characters you can choose to play in  Tekken 5. The general feeling 
  
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  among players is that Mokujin’s  “ stun ”  move is so powerful that any player who 
  chooses to play Mokujin is likely to win the game, making a tournament pointless. 
  So this “ law ” is an attempt to improve the game, ensuring the tournament is bal-
  anced, fair, and fun.  
   6.   Official Rules: These are created when a game is played seriously enough that 
  a group of players feels a need to merge the written rules with the laws. Over 
  time, these official rules later become the written rules. In chess, when a player 
  makes a move that puts the opponent’s king in danger of checkmate, that player 
  is obligated to warn the opponent by saying  “check. ” At one time, this was a 
  “ law, ” not a written rule, but now it is part of the  “ official rules. ”  
   7.   Advisory Rules: Often called “rules of strategy, ” these are just tips to help you 
  play better, and not really  “ rules ” at all from a game mechanics standpoint. 
   8.   House Rules: These rules are not explicitly described by Parlett, but he does 
  point out that as players play a game, they may find they want to tune the oper-
  ational rules to make the game more fun. This is the  “ feedback ”  on his diagram, 
  since house rules are usually created by players in response to a deficiency 
  perceived after a few rounds of play.  
   Modes 
   Many games have very different rules during different parts of play. The rules often 
  change completely from mode to mode, almost like completely separate games. One 
  memorable instance was the racing game Pitstop. Most of the time it was a typical rac-
  ing game, but with a twist — if you didn’t pull over to change your tires periodically, 
  they would burst. When you did pull over, the game changed completely — now you 
  were not racing your car, but rather racing to change your tires, with a completely 
  different game interface. When your game changes modes in a dramatic way like 
  this, it is very important that you let your players know which mode you are in. Too 
  many modes and the players can get confused. Very often, there is one main mode, 
  with several sub-modes, which is a good hierarchical way to organize the different 
  modes. Game designer Sid Meier proposes an excellent rule of thumb: players should 
  never spend so much time in a sub-game that they forget what they were doing in the 
  main game. 
   The Enforcer 
   One of the most significant differences between videogames and more traditional 
  games is how the rules are enforced. In traditional games, rules are primarily enforced 
  by the players themselves or by an impartial referee in high stakes games, such as 
  sporting events. With computer games, it becomes possible (and sometimes neces-
  sary) for the computer to enforce the rules. This is more than a convenience — it 
  allows for the creation of games much more complex than was traditionally possible, 
  because now the players don’t have to memorize all the rules about what is and is 
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  not possible — they just try things in the game, and see what works and what doesn’t 
  work — they don’t have to memorize it all, or look it up. In a sense, what used to be 
  a “rule” now becomes a physical constraint of the game world. If a piece isn’t allowed 
  to move a certain way, it simply doesn’t move that way. Many of the game rules are 
  enforced by the design of the space, the objects, and the actions. A game like  Warcraft 
  could conceivably be a board game, but there would be so many rules to remem-
  ber and state to keep track of that it would quickly become a dreary experience. By 
  offloading the dull work of rules enforcement onto the computer, games can reach 
  depths of complexity, subtlety, and richness that are not possible any other way. But 
  proceed with caution — if the rules of your videogame are so complex that a player 
  can’t even form a rough idea of how the game works, they will be overwhelmed and 
  confused. You must make the rules of a complex videogame something that players 
  can discover and understand naturally — not something they have to memorize. 
   The Most Important Rule 
   Games have a lot of rules — how to move and what you can and cannot do — but 
  there is one rule at the foundation of all the others: The Object of the Game. Games 
  are about achieving goals — you must be able to state your game’s goal, and state 
  it clearly. Often, there is not just one goal in a game, but a sequence of them — 
  you will need to state each, and how they relate to one another. A clumsy 
  statement of your game’s goal can be off-putting to players right from the beginning — 
  if they don’t completely understand the purpose of their actions, they cannot pro-
  ceed with any certainty. Newcomers to chess are often stymied when someone awk-
  wardly tries to explain the object of the game:  “Your goal is to put the other king in 
  checkmate… that means you move your pieces so he can’t move without being in 
  check… which, uh, means that one of your pieces could potentially capture him, 
  except that, um, it’s against the rules to capture the king. ” As a boy, I often won-
  dered why a game considered to be so elegant could have such an inelegant goal. 
  I played the game for years before I realized that the goal of chess is actually quite 
  simple: “Capture your opponent’s king. ” All the folderol about check and checkmate 
  is simply there to politely warn your opponent that they are in imminent danger. It 
  is remarkable how more interested a potential chess player becomes when you tell 
  them that simple four-word goal. The same is true for any game you create — the 
  more easily players understand the goal, the more easily they can visualize achiev-
  ing it, and the more likely they are going to want to play your game. 
   Good game goals have three important qualities, they are 
   1.  Concrete. Players understand and can clearly state what they are supposed to 
  achieve. 
   2.   Achievable. Players need to think that they have a chance of achieving the goal. 
  If it seems impossible to them, they will quickly give up. 
  
  149
   3.   Rewarding. A lot goes into making an achieved goal rewarding. If the goal has 
  the right level of challenge, just achieving it at all is a reward in itself. But why 
  not go further? You can make your goal even more rewarding by giving the 
  player something valuable upon reaching the goal — use the Lens of Pleasure 
  to find different ways to reward the player, and really make them proud of their 
  achievement. And while it is important to reward players that achieve a goal, it 
  is equally (or more) important that players appreciate that the goal is rewarding 
  before they have achieved it, so that they are inspired to attempt to achieve it. 
  Don’t overinflate their expectations, though, for if they are disappointed with 
  the reward for achieving a goal, they will not play again!  
   And while it is important that each of the goals in your game have these quali-
  ties, it is also important that you have a good balance of goals in your game, with 
  some short-term, and some much longer term. This balance of goals will make your 
  players feel they know what to do immediately and that ultimately they will achieve 
  something important and magnificent. 
   It is easy to focus so much on the action of a game that you forget about the goals. 
  To help us remember the importance of goals, let’s add this lens to our toolbox.  
  MECHANIC 4: RULES
   Lens #25: The Lens of Goals 
   To ensure the goals of your game are appropriate and well-balanced, ask your-
  self these questions: 
   ●  What is the ultimate goal of my game? 
   ●  Is that goal clear to players? 
   ●  If there is a series of goals, do the players understand that? 
   ●  Are the different goals related to each other in a meaningful way? 
   ●  Are my goals concrete, achievable, and rewarding? 
   ●  Do I have a good balance of short- and long-term goals? 
   ●  Do players have a chance to decide on their own goals?  
   It can be fascinating to pick up the Lens of the Toy, the Lens of Curiosity, and 
  the Lens of Goals at the same time to see how these aspects of your game influence 
  each other. 
   Wrapping Up Rules 
   Rules are the most fundamental of all game mechanics. A game is not just defined 
  by its rules, a game  is its rules. It is important to view your game from a rules per-
  spective, and that is Lens #26.  
  
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  150
   Lens #26: The Lens of Rules 
   To use this lens, look deep into your game, until you can make out its most 
  basic structure. Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What are the foundational rules of my game? How do these differ from the 
  operational rules? 
   ●  Are there  “laws ” or “house rules ” that are forming as the game develops? 
  Should these be incorporated into my game directly? 
   ●  Are there different modes in my game? Do these modes make things sim-
  pler, or more complex? Would the game be better with fewer modes? More 
  modes? 
   ●  Who enforces the rules? 
   ●  Are the rules easy to understand, or is there confusion about them? If there 
  is confusion, should I fix it by changing the rules or by explaining them 
  more clearly?  
   There is a common misconception that designers make games by sitting down 
  and writing a set of rules. This usually isn’t how it happens at all. A game’s 
  rules are arrived at gradually and experimentally. The designer’s mind gener-
  ally works in the domain of  “operational rules, ” occasionally switching to the 
  perspective of  “foundational rules ” when thinking about how to change or 
  improve the game. The  “written rules ” usually come toward the end, once 
  the game is playable. Part of the designer’s job is to make sure there are rules 
  that cover every circumstance. Be sure to take careful notes as you playtest, 
  because it is during these tests that holes in your rules will appear — if you 
  just patch them quickly and don’t make a note, the same hole will just show 
  up again later. A game is its rules — give them the time and consideration that 
  they deserve.  
   Mechanic 5: Skill 
   In virtute sunt multi ascensus. 
  (There are many degrees in excellence.) 
  – Cicero  
   The mechanic of skill shifts the focus away from the game and onto the player. 
  Every game requires players to exercise certain skills. If the player’s skill level is a 
  
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  good match to the game’s difficulty, the player will feel challenged and stay in the 
  flow channel (as discussed in Chapter 8). 
   Most games do not just require one skill from a player — they require a blend of 
  different skills. When you design a game, it is a worthwhile exercise to make a list 
  of the skills that your game requires from the player. Even though there are thou-
  sands of possible skills that can go into a game, skills can generally be divided into 
  three main categories: 
   1.   Physical Skills. These include skills involving strength, dexterity, coordination, 
  and physical endurance. Physical skills are an important part of most sports. 
  Effectively manipulating a game controller is a kind of physical skill, but many 
  videogames (such as Dance Dance Revolution and the Sony Eyetoy) require a 
  broader range of physical skills from players. 
   2.   Mental Skills. These include the skills of memory, observation, and puzzle solv-
  ing. Although some people shy away from games that require too much in the 
  way of mental skills, it is the rare game that doesn’t involve some mental skills, 
  because games are interesting when there are interesting decisions to make, and 
  decision making is a mental skill. 
   3.   Social Skills. These include, among other things, reading an opponent (guessing 
  what he is thinking), fooling an opponent, and coordinating with teammates. 
  Typically we think of social skills in terms of your ability to make friends and 
  influence people, but the range of social and communication skills in games is 
  much wider. Poker is largely a social game, because so much of it rests on con-
  cealing your thoughts and guessing the thoughts of others. Sports are very social, 
  as well, with their focus on teamwork and on  “ psyching out ” your opponents.  
   Real vs. Virtual Skills 
   It is important to draw a distinction here: When we talk about skill as a game 
  mechanic, we are talking about a  real skill the player must have. In videogames, 
  it is common to talk about your character’s skill level. You might hear a player 
  announce “My warrior just gained two points on his sword fighting skill! ” But 
  “sword fighting ” is not a real skill required of the player — the player is really just 
  pushing the right buttons on the control pad at the right time. Sword fighting, in 
  this context, is a  virtual skill — one that the player is pretending to have. The inter-
  esting thing about virtual skills is that they can improve even though the player’s 
  actual skill does not. The player might be just as sloppy at mashing the controller 
  buttons as he ever was, but by mashing them enough times, he might be rewarded 
  with a higher level of virtual skill, which allows his character to become a faster, 
  more powerful swordfighter. Virtual skills are a great way to give a player a feeling 
  of power. Taken too far, it can feel hollow — some critics of massively multiplayer 
  MECHANIC 5: SKILL
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
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  games complain that there is too much emphasis on virtual skills, and not enough 
  on real skills. Often, the key to a fun game is finding the right mix of real and vir-
  tual skills. Many novice designers confuse the two — it is important that you draw 
  a clear distinction between them in your mind. 
   Enumerating Skills 
   Making a list of all the skills required in your game can be a very useful exercise. You 
  might make a general list:  “my game requires memory, problem solving, and pattern 
  matching skills. ” Or you might make it very specific:  “my game requires players to 
  quickly identify and mentally rotate specific two-dimensional shapes in their heads, 
  while solving a grid-based packing problem. ” Listing skills can be very tricky — 
  one interesting example comes from the game  RC Pro Am, a racing game for the 
  NES. In it, players steer the car with the joypad (left thumb), accelerate with the A 
  button (right thumb), and fire weapons at opponents with the B button (also right 
  thumb). To master this game, two surprising skills were required — the first was 
  problem solving. Generally on NES games, you only push one button at a time — 
  you take your thumb off of the A button when you want to push the B button. But 
  in RC Pro Am, this is disastrous — it means that if you want to fire a rocket (the B 
  button), you have to release the car’s accelerator (the A button), and your opponent 
  quickly speeds away! How to solve this problem? Some players try using a thumb 
  for one button and finger for the other, but this is awkward, and makes the game 
  too hard to play. The best solution seems to involve a new grip on the controller: 
  you hold your thumb sideways on the A button, so that when you want to occasion-
  ally push the B button, you can roll it down onto the B button smoothly, without 
  releasing the accelerator. Once the player has solved this problem, they then need to 
  practice this very specific physical skill. And of course, there are many other skills 
  involved in the game — managing resources (missiles and mines, so you don’t run 
  out), memorizing race courses, reacting to sharp turns and unexpected road haz-
  ards, and many more. The point is that even a game that seems somewhat simple 
  might require many different skills from a player. As a designer, you need to know 
  what these are. 
   It is easy to fool yourself into thinking your game is about one skill, when other 
  skills are actually more important. Many action-based videogames seem, on the sur-
  face, to be mainly about quickly reacting to opponents, when in truth there is a lot 
  of puzzle solving required to figure out the right way to react to them, and a lot of 
  memorization required to avoid being surprised next time you play a given level. 
  Designers are often disappointed to realize that a game they thought was about 
  quick decisions and thinking on your feet is really about memorizing which ene-
  mies pop out at what time — a very different experience for the player. The skills 
  that a player exercises go a long way toward determining the nature of that player’s 
  experience, so you must know what these are. Viewing your game from this per-
  spective is Lens #27.  
  
  153
   Lens #27: The Lens of Skill 
   To use this lens, stop looking at your game, and start looking at the skills you 
  are asking of your players. 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What skills does my game require from the player? 
   ●  Are there categories of skill that this game is missing? 
   ●  Which skills are dominant? 
   ●  Are these skills creating the experience I want? 
   ●  Are some players much better at these skills than others? Does this make 
  the game feel unfair? 
   ●  Can players improve their skills with practice? 
   ●  Does this game demand the right level of skill?  
   Exercising skills can be a joyful thing — it is one of the reasons that people 
  love games. Of course, it is only joyful if the skills are interesting and reward-
  ing, and if the challenge level strikes that ideal balance between  “too easy ”  
  and “too hard. ” Even dull skills (such as pushing buttons) can be made more 
  interesting by dressing them up as virtual skills and providing the right level of 
  challenge. Use this lens as a window into the experience the player is having. 
  Because skills do so much to define experience, the Lens of Skill works quite 
  well in conjunction with Lens #1: The Lens of Essential Experience.  
  MECHANIC 6: CHANCE
   Mechanic 6: Chance 
   Our sixth and final game mechanic is chance. We deal with it last because it con-
  cerns interactions between all of the other five mechanics: space, objects, actions, 
  rules, and skills. 
   Chance is an essential part of a fun game because chance means uncertainty, 
  and uncertainty means surprises. And as we have discussed earlier, surprises are an 
  important source of human pleasure, and the secret ingredient of fun. 
   We must now proceed with caution. You can never take chance for granted, for 
  it is very tricky — the math can be difficult, and our intuitions about it are often 
  wrong. But a good game designer must become the master of chance and probabil-
  ity, sculpting it to his will, to create an experience that is always full of challeng-
  ing decisions and interesting surprises. The challenges of understanding chance are 
  well-illustrated by a story about the invention of the mathematics of probability — 
  invented, not surprisingly, for the expressed purpose of game design. 
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  154
   The Invention of Probability 
   Il est tres bon ésprit, mais quel dommage, il n’est pas geometre. 
  (He’s a nice guy, but unfortunately, no mathematician.)
  – Pascal to Fermat regarding the Chevalier de Méré  
   It was the year 1654, and French nobleman Antoine Gombauld, the Chevalier de 
  Méré (pronounced  “Shevulyay duh Mayray ”), had a problem. He was an avid gam-
  bler and had been playing a game where he would bet that if he rolled a single die 
  four times, at least one time it would come up as a six. He had made some good 
  money from this game, but his friends got tired of losing, and refused to play it 
  with him any further. Trying to find a new way to fleece his friends, he invented a 
  new game that he believed had the same odds as the last one. In his new game, he 
  would bet that if he rolled a pair of dice twenty-four times, a twelve would come 
  up at least once. His friends were wary at first, but soon grew to like his new game, 
  because the Chevalier started losing money fast! He was confused, because by his 
  math, both games had the same odds. The Chevalier’s reasoning was as follows:
   First Game: In four rolls of a single die, the Chevalier wins if at least one six 
  comes up.  
   The Chevalier reasoned that the chance of a single die coming up 6 was 1/6, and 
  therefore rolling a die four times should mean the chance of winning was 
  4
  1 6
  4 6
  66
  �
  �
  �
  (
  )
  %, which explained why he tended to win
  /
  /
    
   Second Game: In twenty-four rolls of a pair of dice, the Chevalier wins if at 
  least one 12 comes up.  
   The Chevalier determined that the chance of getting a 12 (double sixes) on a pair 
  of dice was 1/36. He reasoned, then, that rolling the dice 24 times meant the odds 
  should be 
  24
  1 36
  24 36
  2 3
  66
  �
  �
  �
  �
  (
  )
  %. The same odds as the last game!
  /
  /
  /
   
   
   Confused and losing money, he wrote a letter to mathematician Blaise Pascal, ask-
  ing for advice. Pascal found the problem intriguing — there was no established 
  mathematics to answer these questions. Pascal then wrote to his father’s friend, 
  Pierre de Fermat, for help. Pascal and Fermat began a lengthy correspondence about 
  this and similar problems, and in discovering methods of solving them, established 
  probability theory as a new branch of mathematics. 
   What are the real odds of the Chevalier’s games? To understand that, we have to 
  get into some math — don’t fret, it’s easy math that anyone can do. Fully covering 
  the mathematics of probability is not necessary for game design (and beyond the 
  scope of this book), but knowing some of the basics can be quite handy. If you are 
  
  155
  a math genius, you can skip this section, or at least read it smugly. For the rest of 
  us, I present: 
   Ten Rules of Probability Every Game Designer Should Know 
   Rule #1: Fractions are Decimals are Percents 
   If you are one of those people who has always had a hard time with fractions and 
  percents, it’s time to face up and deal with them, because they are the language 
  of probability. Don’t stress — you can always use a calculator — no one is look-
  ing. The thing you have to come to grips with is that fractions, decimals, and per-
  cents are all the same thing, and can be used interchangeably. In other words, 
  ½  � 0.5   � 50%. Those aren’t three different numbers; they are just three ways of 
  writing exactly the same number. 
   Converting from fractions to decimals is easy. Need to know the decimal equiva-
  lent of 33/50? Just type 33   ÷ 50 into your calculator, and you’ll get 0.66. What about 
  percents? They’re easy too. If you look up the word  “ percent ”  in the dictionary, you’ll 
  see that it really means  “per 100. ” So, 66% really means 66 per 100, or 66/100, or 
  0.66. If you look at the Chevalier’s math above, you’ll see why we need to convert 
  back and forth so often — as humans, we like to talk in percents, but we also like to 
  talk about “one chance in six ” — so we need a way to convert between these forms. 
  If you are the kind of person who suffers from math anxiety, just relax, and practice 
  a few of these on the calculator — you’ll have the hang of it in no time. 
   Rule #2: Zero to One — and That’s It! 
   This one’s easy. Probabilities can only range from 0 to 100%, that is, from 0 to 1 
  (see Rule #1), no less, and no more. While you can say there is a 10% chance of 
  something happening, there is no such thing as a �10% chance, and certainly no 
  such thing as a 110% chance. A 0% chance of something happening means it won’t 
  happen, and a 100% chance means it definitely will. This all might sound obvious, 
  but it points out a major problem with the Chevalier’s math. Consider his first game 
  with the four dice. He believed that with four dice, he had a 4   � (1/6), or 4/6, or 
  0.66 or 66% chance of having a six come up. But what if he had seven dice? Then 
  he would have had 7   � (1/6) or 7/6 or 1.17 or 117% chance of winning! And that 
  is certainly wrong — if you roll a die seven times, it might be likely that a six will 
  come up one of those times, but it is not guaranteed (in fact, it is about a 72% 
  chance). Anytime you calculate a probability that comes up greater than 100% (or 
  less than 0%) you know for certain that you’ve done something wrong. 
   Rule #3:  “ Looked For ” Divided By  “ Possible Outcomes ” 
  Equals Probability 
   The first two rules lay some basic groundwork, but now we are going to talk about 
  what probability really is — and it is quite simple. You just take the number of 
  MECHANIC 6: CHANCE
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  156
  times your  “looked for ” outcome can come up, and divide by the number of possi-
  ble outcomes (assuming your outcomes are equally likely), and you’ve got it. What 
  is the chance of a six coming up when you roll a die? Well, there are six possible 
  outcomes, and only one of them is the one we are looking for, so the chance of a six 
  coming up is 1   ÷ 6, or 1/6, or about 17%. What is the chance of an even number 
  coming up when you roll a die? There are 3 even numbers, so the answer is 3/6, 
  or 50%. What is the chance of drawing a face card from a deck of cards? There are 
  twelve face cards in a deck, and fifty-two cards total, so your chances of getting a 
  face card are 12/52, or about 23%. If you understand this, you’ve got the funda-
  mental idea of probability. 
   Rule #4: Enumerate! 
   If Rule #3 is as simple as it sounds (and it is), you might wonder why probability 
  is so tricky. The reason is that the two numbers we need (the number of  “looked 
  for” outcomes, and the number of possible outcomes) are not always so obvious. 
  For example, if I asked you what the odds of flipping a coin three times and getting 
  “heads” at least twice, what is the number of  “looked for ” outcomes? I’d be sur-
  prised if you could answer that without writing anything down. An easy way to find 
  out the answer is to enumerate all the possible outcomes: 
   1.  HHH 
   2.   HHT 
   3.  HTH 
   4.   HTT 
   5.  THH 
   6.   THT 
   7.   TTH 
   8.  TTT  
   There are exactly eight possible outcomes. Which ones have heads at least twice? 
  #1, #2, #3, and #5. That’s 4 outcomes out of 8 possibilities, so the answer is 4/8, or 
  a 50% chance. Now, why didn’t the Chevalier do this with his games? With his first 
  game, there were four die rolls, which means 6   � 6 � 6  � 6, or 1296 possibilities. 
  It would have been dull work, but he could have enumerated all the possibilities 
  in an hour or so (the list would have looked like: 1111, 1112, 1113, 1114, 1115, 1116, 
  1121, 1122, 1123, etc.), and then counted up the number of combinations that had a 
  six in them (671), and divided that by 1296 for his answer. Enumeration will let you 
  solve almost any probability problem, if you have the time. Consider the Chevalier’s 
  second game, though: 24 rolls of 2 dice! There are 36 possible outcomes for 2 dice, 
  and so enumerating all 24 rolls would have meant writing down 36 24 (a number 37 
  
  157
  digits long) combinations. Even if he could somehow write down one combination 
  a second, it would have taken longer than the age of the universe to list them all. 
  Enumeration is handy, but when it takes too long, you need to take shortcuts —
  and that’s what the other rules are for. 
   Rule #5: In Certain Cases, OR Means Add 
   Very often, we want to determine the chances of  “this OR that ” happening, such as, 
  what are the chances of drawing a face card OR an ace from a deck of cards? When 
  the two things we are talking about are mutually exclusive; that is, when it is impos-
  sible for both of them to happen simultaneously, you can add their individual prob-
  abilities to get an overall probability. For example, the chances of drawing a face card 
  are 12/52, and the chances of drawing an ace are 4/52. Since these are mutually 
  exclusive events (it is impossible for them both to happen at once), we can add them 
  up: 12/52   � 4/52   � 16/52, or about a 31% chance. 
   But what if we asked a different question: What are the chances of drawing 
  an ace from a deck of cards or a diamond? If we add these probabilities, we get 
  4/52   � 13/52 (13 diamonds in a deck)   � 17/52. But, if we enumerate, we see this 
  is wrong — the right answer is 16/52. Why? Because the two cases are not mutu-
  ally exclusive — I could draw the ace of diamonds! Since this case is not mutually 
  exclusive,  “ or ” does not mean add. 
   Let’s look at the Chevalier’s first game. He seems to be trying to use this rule for 
  his die rolls — adding up four probabilities: 1/6   � 1/6   � 1/6   � 1/6. But he gets 
  the wrong answer, because the four events are not mutually exclusive. The addition 
  rule is handy, but you must be certain the events you are adding up are mutually 
  exclusive from one another. 
   Rule #6: In Certain Cases, AND Means Multiply 
   This rule is almost the opposite of the previous one! If we want to find the probabil-
  ity of two things happening simultaneously, we can multiply their probabilities to 
  get the answer — but ONLY if the two events are NOT mutually exclusive! Consider 
  two die rolls. If we want to find the probability of rolling a six on both rolls, we can 
  multiply together the probabilities of the two events: The chance of getting a six on 
  one die roll is 1/6, and also 1/6 for a second die roll. So the chance of getting two 
  sixes is 1/6   � 1/6   � 1/36. You could also have determined that by enumeration, of 
  course, but this is a much speedier way to do it. 
   In Rule #5, we asked for the probability of drawing an ace OR a diamond from 
  a deck of cards — the rule failed, because the two events were not mutually exclu-
  sive. So what if we asked about the probability of drawing an ace AND a diamond? 
  In other words, what is the probability of drawing the ace of diamonds? It should 
  be fairly intuitive that the answer is 1/52, but we can check that with Rule #6, since 
  we know the two events are not mutually exclusive. The chance of getting an ace is 
  MECHANIC 6: CHANCE
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  158
  4/52, and the chance of a diamond is 13/52. Multiplying them: 4/52   � 13/52   � 52/
  2704   � 1/52. So, the rule works, and matches our intuition. 
   Do we have enough rules yet to solve the Chevalier’s problems? Let’s consider 
  his first game:
   First Game: In four rolls of a single die, the Chevalier wins if at least one six 
  comes up.  
   We’ve already established that we could enumerate this, and get the answer 
  671/1296, but that would take an hour. Is there a quicker way, using the rules we 
  have? 
   (I’ll warn you now — this gets a little hairy. If you don’t really care that much, save 
  yourself the headache, and just skip to Rule #7. If you do care, then press on — you 
  will find it worth the effort.) 
   If the question was about the chances of rolling a die four times and getting 
  four sixes, that would be an AND question for four events that are not mutually 
  exclusive, and we could just use Rule #6: 1/6   � 1/6   � 1/6   � 1/6   � 1/1296. But 
  that isn’t what is asked. This is an OR question for four events that are not mutu-
  ally exclusive (it is possible for the Chevalier to get multiple sixes on the four rolls). 
  So what can we do? Well, one way is to break it down into events that are mutually 
  exclusive, and then add them up. Another way to phrase this game is: 
   What are the chances of rolling four dice, and getting either: 
   a.  Four sixes, OR 
   b.   Three sixes and one non-six, OR 
   c.  Two sixes and two non-sixes, OR 
   d.   One six and three non-sixes  
   That might sound a little complicated, but it is four different mutually exclu-
  sive events, and if we can figure the probability of each, we can just add them up 
  and get our answer. We’ve already figured out the probability of (a), using Rule 
  #6: 1/1296. So, how about (b)? Really, (b) is four different mutually exclusive 
  possibilities: 
   1.  6, 6, 6, non-six 
   2.  6, 6, non-six, 6 
   3.   6, non-six, 6, 6, 
   4.  Non-six, 6, 6, 6  
   The probability of rolling a six is 1/6, the probability of rolling a non-six is 5/6. 
  So, the probability of each of those is 1/6   � 1/6   � 1/6   � 5/6   � 5/1296. Now, if we 
  add up all four, that comes to 20/1296. So, the probability of (b) is 20/1296. 
  
  159
   How about (c)? This one is the same as the last, but there are more combina-
  tions. It is tricky to figure out how many ways there are for exactly two sixes and 
  two non-sixes to come up, but there are six ways: 
   1.   6, 6, non-six, non-six 
   2.   6, non-six, 6, non-six 
   3.   6, non-six, non-six, 6 
   4.   non-six, 6, 6, non-six 
   5.   non-six, 6, non-six, 6 
   6.   non-six, non-six, 6, 6  
   And the probability of each of these is 1/6   � 1/6   � 5/6   � 5/6   � 25/1296. Adding 
  up all six of them comes to 150/1296. 
   This leaves only (d), which is the inverse of (a): 
   a.   Non-six, non-six, non-six, 6 
   b.   Non-six, non-six, 6, non-six 
   c.  Non-six, 6, non-six, non-six 
   d.   6, non-six, non-six, non-six  
   The probability of each is 5/6   � 5/6   � 5/6   � 1/6   � 125/1296. Adding up all four 
  gives 500/1296. 
   So, we have now calculated the probability of the four mutually exclusive events: 
    a.   Four sixes — (1/1296) 
   b.  Three sixes and one non-six — (20/1296) 
   c.  Two sixes and two non-sixes — (150/1296) 
   d.   One six and three non-sixes — (500/1296)  
   Adding up those four probabilities (as Rule #5 allows), gives us a total of 671/1296, 
  or about 51.77%. So, we can see that this was a good game for the Chevalier — by 
  winning more than 50% of the time, he eventually was likely to make a profit, but 
  the game was close enough to even that his friends believed they had a chance —
  at least for a while. It certainly is a very different result than the 66% chance of 
  winning the Chevalier believed he had! 
   This is the same answer we could have gotten from enumeration, but much 
  faster. Really, though, we did a kind of enumeration — it is just that the rules of 
  addition and multiplication let us count everything up much faster. Could we do the 
  same thing to get the answer to the Chevalier’s second game? We could, but with 
  24 rolls of two dice, it would probably take an hour or more! This is faster than 
  MECHANIC 6: CHANCE
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  160
  enumeration, but we can do even better by being tricky — that’s where Rule #7 
  comes in. 
   Rule #7: One Minus  “ Does ”  �  “ Doesn’t ” 
   This is a more intuitive rule. If the chance of something happening is 10%, the 
  chance of it not happening is 90%. Why is this useful? Because often it is quite hard 
  to figure out the chance of something happening, but easy to figure out the chance 
  of it NOT happening. 
   Consider the Chevalier’s second game. To figure out the chance of double-sixes 
  coming up at least once on twenty-four die rolls would be nightmarish to figure 
  out, because you have so many different possible events to add together (1 double-
  sixes, 23 non-double-sixes; 2 double-sixes, 22 non-double-sixes; etc.). On the other 
  hand, what if we ask a different question: What are the chances of rolling two dice 
  twenty-four times, and NOT getting double sixes? That is now an AND question, for 
  events that are not mutually exclusive, so we can use Rule #6 to get the answer! But 
  first we’ll use Rule #7 twice — watch. 
   The chance of double sixes coming up on a single roll of the dice is 1/36. So, by 
  Rule #7, the chance of not getting double sixes is 1 — 1/36, or 35/36. 
   So, using Rule #6 (multiplication), the chances of not getting double sixes 24 times 
  in a row is 35/36   � 35/36 twenty-four times, or as we say, (35/36) 24. You would not 
  want to do this calculation by hand, but using a calculator, you find the answer is 
  around 0.5086, or 50.86%. But that is the chance of the Chevalier losing. To find the 
  chance of the Chevalier winning, we apply Rule #7 again: 1 — 0.5086   � 0.4914, or 
  about 49.14%. Now it is clear why he lost this game! His chances of winning were 
  close enough to even that it was hard for him to tell if this was a winning or losing 
  game, but after playing many times, he was very likely to lose. 
   Even though all probability problems can be solved through enumeration, Rule 
  #7 can be a really handy shortcut. In fact, we could have used the same rule to 
  solve the Chevalier’s first game! 
   Rule #8: The Sum of Multiple Linear Random Selections is 
  NOT a Linear Random Selection! 
   Don’t panic. This one sounds hard, but it is really easy. A  “linear random selec-
  tion” is simply a random event where all the outcomes have an equal chance of 
  happening. A die roll is a great example of a linear random selection. If you add up 
  multiple die rolls, though, the possible outcomes do NOT have an equal chance of 
  happening. If you roll two dice, for example, your chance of getting a seven is very 
  good, while your chance of getting a twelve is small. Enumerating all the possibili-
  ties shows you why  :
  
  161
  1
  2
  3
  4
  5 5
   6 6
  1
   2 
   3 
   4 
   5 
   6 
   7 
  2
   3 
   4 
   5 
   6 
   7 
   8 
  3
   4 
   5 
   6 
   7 
   8 
   9 
  4
   5 
   6 
   7 
   8 
   9 
   10 
  5
   6 
   7 
   8 
   9 
   10 
   11 
  6
   7 
   8 
   9 
   10 
   11 
   12 
   Look at how many sevens there are, and only one little twelve! We can show this in 
  a graph, called a probability distribution curve, to visually see the chances of each 
  total coming up:  
  MECHANIC 6: CHANCE
   Rule #7 might seem like a very obvious rule, but I frequently find novice game 
  designers make the mistake of adding together two randomly selected numbers 
  without realizing its effect. Sometimes, it is exactly the effect you want — in the 
  game Dungeons and Dragons, players generate (virtual) skill attributes with values 
  ranging from 3 to 18 by rolling three six-sided dice. As a result, you see a lot of 
  attribute values around 10 or 11, but very few at 3 or 18, and this is exactly what 
  the designers wanted. How would the game be different if players simply rolled a 
  single twenty-sided die to get their attributes? 
   Game designers who want to use mechanic of chance as a tool in their games 
  must know what kind of probability distribution curve they want, and know how to 
  get it. With practice, probability distribution curves will be a very valuable tool in 
  your toolbox. 
  F I G U R E
  10.15
  0%
  2%
  4%
  6%
  8%
  10%
  12%
  14%
  16%
  18%
  2
  3
  4
  5
  6
  7
  8
  9
  10
  11
  12
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  162
   Rule #9: Roll the Dice 
   All the probability we’ve been talking about so far is  theoretical probability, that is, 
  mathematically, what  ought to happen. There is also  practical probability, which 
  is a measure of what  has happened. For example, the theoretical probability of get-
  ting a 6 when I roll a die is a perfect 1/6, or about 16.67%. I could find the practical 
  probability by rolling a six-sided die 100 times and recording how many times I get a 
  six. I might record 20 sixes out of 100. In that case, my practical probability is 20%, 
  which is not too far from the theoretical probability. Of course, the more trials I do, 
  the closer I would expect the practical probability to get to the theoretical probabil-
  ity. This is sometimes known as the  “Monte Carlo ” method, after the famous casino. 
   The great thing about the Monte Carlo method of determining probability is that 
  it doesn’t involve any complex math — you just repeat the test over and over again, 
  and record how it comes out. It can sometimes give more useful results than theo-
  retical probability too, because it is a measure of the real thing. If there is some 
  factor that your mathematics didn’t capture (perhaps your die is slightly weighted 
  toward sixes, for example), or if the math is just so complicated that you can’t come 
  up with a theoretical representation of your case, the Monte Carlo method can be 
  just the thing. The Chevalier could easily have found good answers to his ques-
  tions by just rolling the dice again and again, counting up wins, and dividing by the 
  number of trials. 
   And here in the computer age, if you know how to do a little bit of programming 
  (or know someone who can — see Rule #10), you can easily simulate millions of 
  trials in just a few minutes. It isn’t too hard to program simulations of games and 
  get some very useful probability answers. For example, in Monopoly, which squares 
  are landed on most frequently? It would be nearly impossible to figure this out 
  theoretically — but a simple Monte Carlo simulation allows you to answer the ques-
  tion quickly by using a computer to roll the dice and move the pieces around the 
  board a few million times. 
   Rule #10: Geeks Love Showing Off (Gombauld’s Law) 
   This is the most important of all the probability rules. If you forget all the oth-
  ers, but remember this one, you’ll get by just fine. There are many more difficult 
  aspects of probability that we won’t get into here — when you run into them, the 
  easiest thing to do is to find someone who considers themselves a  “math whiz. ”
  Generally, these people are thrilled to have someone actually needing their exper-
  tise, and they will bend over backwards to help you. I have used Rule #10 to solve 
  hard game design probability questions again and again. If there aren’t any experts 
  around you, post your question on a forum or mailing list. If you really want a fast 
  response, preface it with  “This problem is probably too difficult for anyone to solve, 
  but I thought I would ask anyway, ” for there are many math experts who love the 
  ego boost of solving a problem that others think is impossible. In a sense, your hard 
  problem is a game for them — why not use game design techniques to make it as 
  attractive as possible? 
  
  163
   You might even be doing your geek a favor! I like to call Rule #10  “ Gombauld’s 
  Law, ” in honor of Antoine Gombauld, the Chevalier de Méré, who, through his 
  awareness of this principle, not only solved his gambling problem (his mathemati-
  cal one, anyway), but inadvertently initiated all of probability theory. 
   You might be afraid of exercising Rule #10, because you are afraid of asking stu-
  pid questions. If you feel that way don’t forget that Pascal and Fermat owed the 
  Chevalier a great debt — without his stupid questions, they never would have made 
  some of their greatest discoveries. Your stupid question might lead to a great truth 
  of its own — but you’ll never know unless you ask.  
   Expected Value 
   You will use probability in many ways in your designs, but one of the most use-
  ful will be to calculate expected value. Very often, when you take an action in a 
  game, the action will have a value, either positive or negative. This might be points, 
  tokens, or money gained or lost. The expected value of a transaction in a game is 
  the average of all the possible values that could result. 
   For example, there might be a rule in a board game that when a player lands 
  on a green space, he can roll a six-sided die, and get that many power points. The 
  expected value of this event is the average of all the possible outcomes. To get the 
  average in this case, since all the probabilities are equal, we can add up all the pos-
  sible die rolls: 1   � 2 � 3  � 4 � 5   � 6  � 21, and divide by 6, which gives us 3.5. As 
  a game designer, it is very useful for you to know that each time someone lands on 
  a green space, they will, on average, get 3.5 power points. 
   But not all examples are so simple — some involve negative outcomes, and out-
  comes that aren’t evenly weighted. Consider a game where a player rolls two dice. 
  If they get a seven, or an eleven, they win $5, but if they get anything else, they lose 
  $1. How do we figure out the expected value of this game? 
   The chance of rolling a 7 is 6/36. 
   The chance of rolling an 11 is 2/36. 
   Using Rule #8, the chance of rolling anything else is 1 � 8/36, or 28/36.  
   So, to calculate the expected value, we multiply the probabilities by the values for 
  each, and add them all up, like this:
  Outcome
  Chance  �  Outcome 
   Value 
   7 
   6/36  �  $5 
   $0.83 
   11 
   2/36  �  $5 
   $0.28 
   Everything else 
   28/36  �  �  $1 
  � $0.78 
   Expected value 
   $0.33 
  MECHANIC 6: CHANCE
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  164
   So, we see that this is a good game to play, because in the long run, you will, on 
  average, win thirty-three cents each time you play. But, what if we changed the 
  game, so that only sevens are winning numbers, and elevens make you lose a dol-
  lar, just like all the other numbers? This changes the expected value, like so:  
    Outcome 
  Chance  �  Outcome 
   Value 
   7 
   6/36  �  $5 
   $0.83 
   Everything else 
   30/36  �  �  $1 
   � $0.83 
   Expected value 
   $0.00 
   An expected value of zero means that this game is just as good as flipping a coin 
  in the long run. Wins and losses are completely balanced. What if we change it 
  again, so that this time, only elevens win? 
    Outcome 
  Chance  �  Outcome
   Value 
   11 
   2/36  �  $ 5 
   $ 0.28 
   Everything else 
   34/36  �  �  $ 1 
   � $ 0.94 
   Expected value 
  � $ 0.86 
   Ouch! As you might expect, this is a losing game. You’ll lose, on average, about 
  eighty-six cents each time you play it. Of course, you could make it into a fair game, 
  or even a winning game, by increasing the payoff for getting an eleven. 
   Consider Values Carefully 
   Expected value is an excellent tool for game balancing, which we will discuss more 
  in the next chapter — but if you aren’t careful about what the true value of an out-
  come is, it can be very misleading. 
   Consider these three attacks, that might be part of a fantasy role-playing game:  
   Attack Name 
   Chance of Hitting 
   Damage 
   Wind 
   100% 
   4 
   Fireball 
   80% 
   5 
   Lightning bolt 
   20% 
   40 
   What is the expected value of each of these? Wind is easy — it always does exactly 
  4 damage, so the expected value of that attack is 4. Fireball hits 80% of the time, and 
  
  165
  misses 20% of the time, so it’s expected value is (5   � 0.8)   � (0   � 0.2)   � 4 points, the 
  same as the wind attack. The lightning bolt attack doesn’t hit very often, but when it 
  does, it packs a wallop. Its expected value is (40   � 0.2)   � (0   � 0.8)   � 8 points. 
   Now, based on those values, one might conclude that players would always use 
  the lightning bolt attack, since on average it does double the damage of the other 
  two attacks. And if you are fighting an enemy that has 500 hit points, that might be 
  correct. But what about an enemy with 15 hit points? Most players would not use 
  lightning bolt in that case — they would opt for something weaker, but surer. Why 
  is this? Because even though the lightning bolt can do 40 damage points, only 15 of 
  them are of any use in that situation — the real expected value of the lightning bolt 
  against an enemy with 15 HP is (0.20   � 15)  � (0.8   � 0)   � 3 points, which is lower 
  than both the wind and the fireball attack. 
   You must always take care to measure the real values of actions in your game. If 
  something gives a benefit that a player can’t use, or contains a hidden penalty, you 
  must capture that in your calculations. 
   The Human Element 
   You must also keep in mind that expected value calculations do not perfectly pre-
  dict human behavior. You would expect players to always choose the option with the 
  highest expected value, but that is not always the case. In some cases, this is due to 
  ignorance — because players did not realize the actual expected value. For example, 
  if you didn’t tell players the respective chances of wind, fireball, and lightning bolt, 
  but left it to them to discover them through trial and error, you might find that play-
  ers who tried lightning bolt several times and never got a hit reached the conclusion 
  that “lightning bolt never hits, ” and therefore has an expected value of zero. The esti-
  mates that players make about how often an event happens are often incorrect . You 
  must be aware of the  “perceived probabilities ” that players have arrived at, because 
  it will determine how they play. 
   But sometimes, even with perfect information, players still will not choose an 
  option with the highest expected value. Two psychologists, Kahneman and Tversky, 
  tried an interesting experiment, where they asked a number of subjects which of 
  the two games they would like to play: 
   Game A: 
   66% chance of winning $2400 
   33% chance of winning $2500 
   1% chance of winning $0  
   Game B: 
   100% chance of winning $2400  
  MECHANIC 6: CHANCE
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  166
   These are both pretty great games to play! But is one better than the other? If you 
  do the expected value calculations: 
  Expected Value of Game A: 
  $
  $
  $
  $
  0 66
  2400
  0 33
  2500
  0 01
  0
  2
  .
  .
  .
  �
  �
  �
  �
  �
  �
  409   
  Expected Value of Game B: 
  $
  1 00
  2400
  2400
  .
  �
  �
   
   
   You can see that Game A has a higher expected value. But only 18% of the subjects 
  they surveyed picked A, while 82% preferred playing Game B. 
   Why? The reason is that the expected value calculation does not capture an 
  important human element: regret. People not only seek out options that create the 
  most pleasure, they also avoid the ones that cause the most pain. If you played 
  Game A (and we’re assuming you only get to play it once), and were unlucky 
  enough to get that 1% and $0, it would feel pretty bad. People are often willing to 
  pay a price to eliminate the potential of regret —  “buying peace of mind, ” as the 
  insurance salesmen say. Not only are they willing to pay a price to avoid regret, 
  they are willing to take risks. This is why a gambler who has lost a little money is 
  often willing to take more risks to try to get the money back. Tversky puts it this 
  way:  “When it comes to taking risks for gains, people are conservative. They will 
  make a sure gain over a problem gain. But we are also finding that when people are 
  faced with a choice between a small, certain loss and a large, probable loss, they 
  will gamble. ”
   In some cases, the human mind inflates some risks completely out of proportion. 
  In one study, Tversky asked people to estimate the likelihood of various causes of 
  death, and obtained the following results:
   Cause of Death 
   Estimated Chance 
   Actual Chance 
   Heart disease 
   22% 
   34% 
   Cancer 
   18% 
   23% 
   Other natural causes 
   33% 
   35% 
   Accident 
   32% 
   5% 
   Homicide 
   10% 
   1% 
   Other unnatural causes 
   11% 
   2% 
   What is particularly interesting here is that the subjects making estimates  under-
  estimated the top three categories (natural causes of death), and significantly  over-
  estimated the bottom three (unnatural causes of death). This distortion of reality 
  seems to be a reflection of the fears of the respondents. What bearing does this 
  have on game design? As a designer, you must have not only a grasp of the actual 
  probabilities of events in your game, but also the  perceived probabilities, which may 
  be quite different for a number of reasons. 
  
  167
   You will need to consider both actual and perceived probabilities when calculating 
  expected values, which provide such useful information that they make Lens #28.  
   Lens #28: The Lens of Expected Value 
   To use this lens, think about the chance of different events occurring in your 
  game, and what those mean to your player. 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What is the actual chance of a certain event occurring? 
   ●  What is the perceived chance? 
   ●  What value does the outcome of that event have? Can the value be quanti-
  fied? Are there intangible aspects of value that I am not considering? 
   ●  Each action a player can take has a different expected value when I add up 
  all the possible outcomes. Am I happy with these values? Do they give the 
  player interesting choices? Are they too rewarding, or too punishing?  
   Expected value is one of your most valuable tools for analyzing game balance. 
  The challenge of using it is finding a way to numerically represent everything 
  that can happen to a player. Gaining and losing money is easy to represent. 
  But what is the numerical value of  “boots of speed ” that let you run faster, or 
  a “warp gate ” that lets you skip two levels? These are difficult to quantify per-
  fectly — but that doesn’t mean you can’t take a guess. As we’ll see in Chapter 
  11, as you go through multiple iterations of game testing, tweaking parameters 
  and values in your game, you will also be tweaking your own estimations of 
  the values of different outcomes. Quantifying these less tangible elements can 
  be quite enlightening, because it makes you think concretely about what is 
  valuable to the player and why — and this concrete knowledge will put you in 
  control of the balance of your game.  
  MECHANIC 6: CHANCE
   Skill and Chance Get Tangled 
   As tricky as probability and the difference between actual and perceived values 
  might be, the game mechanic of chance has more tricks up its sleeve. As much as 
  we like to think that chance and skill are completely separate mechanics, there are 
  important interactions between them that we cannot ignore. Here are five of the 
  most important skill/chance interactions for a game designer to consider. 
   1.   Estimating chance is a skill. In many games, what separates the skilled players 
  from the unskilled is their ability to predict what is going to happen next, often 
  
  CHAPTER TEN • SOME ELEMENTS ARE GAME MECHANICS
  168
  through calculating probabilities. The game of blackjack, for example, is almost 
  entirely about knowing the odds. Some players even practice  “card counting, ”
  which is the practice of keeping track of what cards have already been played, 
  since each card played changes the odds of what subsequent cards can appear. 
  The perceived probabilities in your game can vary a great deal between players 
  who are skilled estimators and those who are not. 
   2.   Skills have a probability of success. Naively, one might think that completely 
  skill based games, such as chess or baseball, have no aspects of randomness 
  or risk in them. But from a player’s point of view, this simply isn’t true. Every 
  action has some level of risk, and players are constantly making expected value 
  decisions, deciding when to play it safe, and when to take a big risk. These risks 
  can be difficult to quantify (What are the odds that I can successfully steal a 
  base, or that I can trap my opponent’s queen without him noticing?), but they 
  are still risks. When designing a game, you need to make sure they are balanced 
  just as you would balance  “pure chance ” game elements, like drawn cards or 
  die rolls. 
   3.  Estimating an opponent’s skill is a skill. A big part of a player’s ability to 
  determine the chances of success for a particular action rests on their ability to 
  estimate their opponent’s skill. A fascinating part of many games is trying to fool 
  your opponent into thinking your skills are greater than they are, to prevent him 
  from trying anything too bold, and to make him uncertain of himself. Likewise, 
  sometimes the opposite is true — in some games it is a good strategy to make 
  a player think your skills are less than they really are, so that your opponent 
  will not notice your subtle strategies, and will perhaps try actions that would be 
  risky against a skilled player. 
   4.   Predicting pure chance is an imagined skill. Humans look for patterns, con-
  sciously and subconsciously, to help predict what is going to happen next. Our 
  mania for patterns often leads us to look for and find patterns where none exist. 
  Two of the most common false patterns are the  “lucky streak fallacy ” (I’ve had 
  several wins in a row, and therefore another is likely) and its opposite, the  “gam-
  bler’s fallacy ” (I’ve had several losses, so I must be due for a win). It is easy to 
  scoff at these as ignorant, but in the all-important mind of the player, detecting 
  these bogus patterns feels like the exercise of a real skill, and as a designer, you 
  should find ways to use that to your advantage. 
   5.  Controlling pure chance is an imagined skill. Not only do our brains actively 
  seek patterns, but they also actively and desperately seek cause-and-effect rela-
  tionships. With pure chance, there is no way to control the outcome — but that 
  doesn’t stop people from rolling the dice a certain way, carrying lucky charms, 
  or engaging in other superstitious rituals. This feeling that it might be possible to 
  control fate is part of what makes gambling games so exciting. Intellectually, we 
  know it isn’t possible, but when you are up there rolling the dice, saying  “come 
  on, come on …” it certainly feels like it might be possible, especially when you 
  get lucky! If you try playing games of pure chance, but completely disengage 
  
  169
  yourself from the idea that anything you think or do can influence the outcome, 
  much of the fun suddenly drains away. Our natural tendency to try to control 
  fate can make games of chance feel like games of skill.  
   Chance is tricky stuff, because it intertwines hard math, human psychology, and 
  all of the basic game mechanics. But this trickiness is what gives games their richness, 
  complexity, and depth. The last of our six basic game mechanics gives us Lens #29.  
   Lens #29: The Lens of Chance 
   To use this lens focus on the parts of your game that involve randomness and 
  risk, keeping in mind that those two things are not the same. 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What in my game is truly random? What parts just feel random? 
   ●  Does the randomness give the players positive feelings of excitement and 
  challenge, or does it give them negative feelings of hopelessness and lack 
  of control? 
   ●  Would changing my probability distribution curves improve my game? 
   ●  Do players have the opportunity to take interesting risks in the game? 
   ●  What is the relationship between chance and skill in my game? Are there 
  ways I can make random elements feel more like the exercise of a skill? Are 
  there ways I can make exercising skills feel more like risk-taking?  
   Risk and randomness are like spices. A game without any hint of them can be 
  completely bland, but put in too much and they overwhelm everything else. 
  But get them just right, and they bring out the flavor of everything else in your 
  game. Unfortunately, using them in your game is not as simple as sprinkling 
  them on top. You must look into your game to see where elements of risk and 
  randomness naturally arise, and then decide how you can best tame them to 
  do your bidding. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that elements of chance 
  only occur around die rolls or randomly generated numbers. On the contrary, 
  you can find them wherever a player encounters the unknown.  
  MECHANIC 6: CHANCE
   At long last, we have made it through all six of the basic game mechanics. Soon, 
  we will move onto more advanced mechanics that are built from these, such as 
  puzzles and interactive story structures. But first we need to explore methods of 
  bringing these basic elements into balance.  
  
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  CHAPTER
  171
   Game Mechanics 
  Must be in Balance 
  171
  ELEVEN
  F I G U R E
  11.1
  
  CHAPTER ELEVEN • GAME MECHANICS MUST BE IN BALANCE
  172
   A false balance is an abomination to the Lord.
  – Proverbs 11:1 
   Have you ever looked forward to playing a game that you were certain was going 
  to be incredibly fun, only to be terribly disappointed? This game had a story that 
  sounded interesting, the kind of gameplay action that is your favorite, cutting edge 
  technology, and beautiful artwork — but somehow the play was monotonous, con-
  fusing, and frustrating. This is a game that is out of balance. 
   To novice designers, the business of balancing a game seems quite mysterious — 
  but really, balancing a game is nothing more than adjusting the elements of the 
  game until they deliver the experience you want. Balancing a game is far from a 
  science; in fact, despite the simple mathematics that is often involved, it is gener-
  ally considered the most artful part of game design, for it is all about understanding 
  subtle nuances in the relationships between the elements of your game and know-
  ing which ones to alter, how much to alter them, and which ones to leave alone. 
   Part of what makes game balancing so difficult is that no two games are alike, 
  and every game has many different factors that need to be in balance. As a designer, 
  you must discern what elements in your game need to be balanced, and then exper-
  iment with changing them until you have them generating exactly the experience 
  you want your players to have. 
   Think of it like creating a new recipe — it is one thing to determine the ingre-
  dients you need, but another to decide how much of each to use, and how they 
  should be combined. Some of the decisions you make will be based in hard mathe-
  matics (1.5 teaspoons of baking powder leavens 1 cup of flour), but others, like how 
  much sugar to use, are often a matter of personal taste. A skilled chef can make the 
  simplest of recipes a delight to eat for the same reason a skilled game designer can 
  make the simplest of games a delight to play — they both know how to balance the 
  ingredients. 
   Game balancing can come in a variety of forms, because every different game 
  has different things that must be brought into balance. Still, there are some patterns 
  of balance that occur over and over again. Balancing a game is all about examining 
  it carefully, so this chapter will be rich with many lenses. 
     The Twelve Most Common Types of Game Balance 
   Balance Type #1: Fairness 
   Symmetrical Games 
   One quality that players universally seek in games is fairness. Players want to feel 
  that the forces working against them do not have an advantage that will make 
  them impossible to defeat. One of the simplest ways to ensure this is to make your 
  game is symmetrical; that is, to give equal resources and powers to all players. 
  
  173
  Most  traditional board games (such as checkers, chess, and Monopoly) and almost 
  all sports use this method to be sure that no player has an unfair advantage over 
  another. If you want to put players in direct competition with each other, and you 
  expect them to have roughly equal levels of skill, symmetric games are a great 
  choice. They are particularly good systems for determining which player is the best, 
  since all things in the game are equal but for the skill and strategy that the individ-
  ual players bring to the game. In these games, perfect symmetry is not always possi-
  ble as there is often some minor issue, such as  “who goes first? ” or “who starts with 
  the ball? ” that gives one side a small advantage over the other. Generally, random 
  selection, such as a coin toss or die roll, is the solution. Though it gives one player 
  a small advantage, over many games the advantage is distributed evenly. In some 
  cases, the way this asymmetry is remedied is by giving the advantage to the player 
  with the least skill — such as “youngest player goes first. ” This is an elegant way to 
  use the natural imbalance of the game to help balance the skill levels of the players. 
   Asymmetrical Games 
    It is also possible, and often desirable, to give opponents different resources and 
  abilities. If you do, be aware that you have a significant balancing task ahead of 
  you! Here are some of the reasons you might create an asymmetrical game: 
    1.   To simulate a real-world situation. If the point of your game is to simulate the 
  battle between Axis and Allied forces during World War II, a symmetrical game 
  does not make sense, since the real-world conflict was not symmetrical. 
    2.   To give players another way to explore the gamespace. Exploration is one of 
  the great pleasures of gameplay. Players often enjoy exploring the possibilities of 
  playing the same game with different powers and resources. In a fighting game, 
  for example, if two players have ten different fighters to choose from, each with 
  different powers, there are ten times ten different pairings, each which requires 
  different strategies, and effectively you have turned one game into one hundred 
  games. 
    3.   Personalization. Different players bring different skills to a game — if you 
  give the players a choice of powers and resources that best matches their own 
  skills, it makes them feel powerful — they have been able to shape the game to 
  emphasize the thing they are best at. 
    4.   To level the playing field. Sometimes, your opponents have radically differ-
  ent skill levels. This is especially true if you have opponents that are compu-
  ter controlled. Consider the game of  Pac Man. It would be more symmetrical if 
  there were just one ghost chasing  Pac Man, not four. But if that was the case, 
  the player would win easily for a human can easily outwit a computer when 
  it comes to navigating a maze. But to outwit four computer-controlled oppo-
  nents at once brings the game into balance and gives the computer a fair chance 
  of defeating the player. Some games are customizable in this regard — a golf 
  THE TWELVE MOST COMMON TYPES OF GAME BALANCE
  
  CHAPTER ELEVEN • GAME MECHANICS MUST BE IN BALANCE
  174
  handicap, for instance, lets players of different levels compete at the challenge 
  levels they will both enjoy. Whether to introduce this kind of balancing depends 
  on whether your game is meant to be a standard measure of player’s skill, or 
  whether the goal is to provide challenge to all players. 
   5.   To create interesting situations. In the infinite space of all the games that can 
  be created, many more of them are asymmetrical than are symmetrical. Pitting 
  asymmetrical forces against each other can often be interesting and thought pro-
  voking for the players, since it is not always obvious what the right strategies will 
  be to win the game. Players become naturally curious about whether one side 
  or another has an advantage, and they will often spend a great deal of time and 
  thought to try to decide whether the game is truly fair. The game of Bhaga Chall 
  (the official board game of Nepal) is an excellent example of this. In this game, 
  not only do the players have unequal forces, they also have different goals! One 
  player controls five tigers, while the other controls twenty goats. The tiger player 
  wins by eating five goats, and the goat player wins by positioning the goats so 
  that no tiger can move. Though it is generally acknowledged by experienced play-
  ers that the game is balanced, novices to the game spend a great deal of time dis-
  cussing whether one side or the other has particular advantage, and playing the 
  game over and over trying to determine the best strategies and counter strategies.  
   It can be quite difficult to properly adjust the resources and powers in an asym-
  metrical game to make them feel evenly matched. The most common method of 
  doing so is to assign a value to each resource or power and make sure that the sum 
  of the values is equal for both sides. See the following section for an example. 
   Biplane Battle 
   Imagine a game of biplane dogfight combat. Each player gets to choose one of the 
  following planes:
    
   Plane 
   Speed 
   Maneuverability 
   Firepower 
   Piranha 
   Medium 
   Medium 
   Medium 
   Revenger 
   High 
   High 
   Low 
   Sopwith Camel 
   Low 
   Low 
   Medium 
   Are these planes equally balanced? It is hard to say. At first glance, though, we 
  might evaluate all three categories by saying: Low   � 1, Medium  � 2, and High  � 3. 
  This gives us new information:
    
   Plane 
   Speed 
   Maneuverability 
   Firepower 
   Totals 
   Piranha 
   Medium (2) 
   Medium (2) 
   Medium (2) 
   6 
   Revenger 
   High (3) 
   High (3) 
   Low (1) 
   7 
   Sopwith Camel 
   Low (1) 
   Low (1) 
   Medium (2) 
   4 
  
  175
    Looked at from this point of view, the player with the Revenger seems to have 
  an unfair advantage over the others. And that may be the case. But, after playing 
  the game a little, maybe we notice that the Piranha and the Revenger seem evenly 
  matched, but players who fly the Sopwith Camel generally lose. This might lead us 
  to speculate that Firepower is more valuable than the other categories — maybe 
  twice as valuable. In other words, for the Firepower column, Low   � 2, Medium  � 4, 
  and High  � 6. This gives us a new table:
    
   Plane 
   Speed 
   Maneuverability 
   Firepower 
   Totals 
   Piranha 
   Medium (2) 
   Medium (2) 
   Medium (4) 
   8 
   Revenger 
   High (3) 
   High (3) 
   Low (2) 
   8 
   Sopwith Camel 
   Low (1) 
   Low (1) 
   Medium (4) 
   6 
    This gives us totals that match our observation of the game in action. We may 
  now have a model that shows us how to balance the game to make it fair. To test 
  our theory, we might change the Firepower for the Sopwith Camel to be High (6), 
  giving us a new table:
    
   Plane 
   Speed 
   Maneuverability 
   Firepower 
   Totals 
   Piranha 
   Medium (2) 
   Medium (2) 
   Medium (4) 
   8 
   Revenger 
   High (3) 
   High (3) 
   Low (2) 
   8 
   Sopwith Camel 
   Low (1) 
   Low (1) 
   High (6) 
   8 
    It would appear that, if our model is correct, these three planes are equally bal-
  anced. But that’s only a theory. The way we find out is by playtesting the game. If 
  we play and determine that gameplay feels roughly fair no matter which plane you 
  use, then our model is correct. But what if we play and realize that the Sopwith 
  Camel is still losing battles? In that case, we will have to make a new speculation, 
  change our model, rebalance, and try playing again. 
    It is important to note that the act of balancing and developing a model of how 
  to balance go hand in hand. As you balance, you learn more about relationships 
  in the game, and you can make a better mathematical model that represents these 
  relationships. And as you change the model, you learn more about the right way to 
  balance your game. The model informs the balance, and the balancing informs the 
  model. 
    Also note that balancing a game can only really begin once the game is playable. 
  Many a game has suffered in the marketplace because all the time in the schedule 
  got used up just getting the game to work, and not enough time was allotted to 
  balance the game before it needed to go to market. There is an old rule of thumb 
  that it takes six months to balance your game after you have a completely working 
  THE TWELVE MOST COMMON TYPES OF GAME BALANCE
  
  CHAPTER ELEVEN • GAME MECHANICS MUST BE IN BALANCE
  176
  version, but this varies a great deal depending on the type and scope of your game. 
  Certainly, the more new gameplay elements you have, the longer it will take you to 
  balance it properly.  
   Rock, Paper, Scissors 
   One simple way to balance elements for fairness is to make sure that whenever 
  something in your game has an advantage over something else, yet another thing 
  has an advantage over that! The iconic example of this is the game of Rock, Paper, 
  Scissors where: 
   ●  Rock breaks scissors 
   ●  Scissors cut paper 
   ●  Paper covers rock  
   None of the elements can be supreme, because there is always another that can 
  defeat it. It is a simple way to ensure that every game element has both strengths 
  and weaknesses. Fighting games particularly like to use this technique to help 
  ensure none of the warriors a player might choose are undefeatable. 
   Balancing your game to make it feel fair is one of the most fundamental types of 
  game balancing. You will surely want to use the Lens of Fairness on any game you 
  create.
   Lens #30: The Lens of Fairness 
   To use the Lens of Fairness, think carefully about the game from each player’s 
  point of view. Taking into account each player’s skill level, find a way to give 
  each player a chance of winning that each will consider to be fair. 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  Should my game be symmetrical? Why? 
   ●  Should my game be asymmetrical? Why? 
   ●  Which is more important: that my game is a reliable measure of who has 
  the most skill, or that it provide an interesting challenge to all players? 
   ●  If I want players of different skill levels to play together, what means will I 
  use to make the game interesting and challenging for everyone?  
   Fairness can be a slippery subject. There are some cases where one side has an 
  advantage over the other, and the game still seems fair. Sometimes this is so 
  that players of unequal skill can play together, but there can be other reasons. 
  
  177
    Balance Type #2: Challenge vs. Success 
    Let us revisit this diagram from Chapter 9. 
  In the game Alien vs. Predator, for example, it is generally recognized that 
  in multiplayer mode, Predators have a significant advantage over the Aliens. 
  Players do not consider it to be unfair, however, because it is in keeping with 
  the Alien vs. Predator story world, and they accept that if they play as an Alien, 
  they will be at a disadvantage and will need to compensate for that with extra 
  skill. It is a badge of pride among players to be able to win the game when 
  playing as an Alien.  
  THE TWELVE MOST COMMON TYPES OF GAME BALANCE
  Skills
  0 (Low)
  (High) �
  Flow
  channel
  �
  (High)
  (Low)
  0
  Challenges
  Boredom
  Anxiety
  F I G U R E
  11.2
    We know that keeping the player in the flow channel is desirable. If play is too 
  challenging, the player becomes frustrated. But if the player succeeds too easily, 
  they can become bored. Keeping the player on the middle path means keeping the 
  experiences of challenge and success in proper balance. This can be particularly 
  difficult since players may have all different levels of skill. What one player finds 
  boring, another may find challenging, and yet another may find frustrating. Some 
  common techniques for striking a proper balance include: 
    ●  Increase difficulty with each success. This is a very common pattern in videog-
  ames — each level is harder than the last. Players build their skill until they can 
  complete a level, only to be presented with one that challenges them yet again. 
  Don’t forget, of course, to use the tense and release pattern shown above. 
    ●  Let players get through easy parts fast. Assuming your game has some method 
  of gradually increasing the difficulty, you do yourself a service by allowing skilled 
  
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  players to finish a level quickly if they can easily master it. This way, skilled 
  players will blow through easy levels, quickly getting to a challenge that is more 
  interesting to them, while less skilled players will be challenged by the early 
  levels. This lets every player quickly get to the part of the game that is a chal-
  lenge. If you arrange it differently, such that each level takes one hour to play, 
  regardless of skill level, skilled players may quickly grow bored from lack of 
  challenge. 
   ●  Create  “layers of challenge. ” A popular pattern in games is to give a grade at the 
  end of each level or mission. If you get a  “D” or “F” you must repeat the level, 
  but if you get a  “C” or better, you can continue. This creates a situation with a lot 
  of flexibility in how you can play it. Novice players are thrilled to get a  “C”, and 
  unlock the next level. As they gain experience, and have unlocked all the levels, 
  they may set themselves a new challenge — to earn an  “A” (or even  “A � ”!) on 
  earlier levels. 
   ●  Let players choose the difficulty level. A tried and true method is to let play-
  ers choose to play on  “easy, medium, or hard ” modes. Some games (many Atari 
  2600 games, for example) even let you change the difficulty level mid-game. The 
  upside of this is that players can quickly find the appropriate challenge level for 
  their skill level. The downside is that you have to create and balance multiple 
  versions of your game. Also, it can detract from the  “reality ” of your game — 
  players will argue over which version is the  “real ” one, or be left feeling unsure 
  whether any of them are  “real. ”  
   ●  Playtest with a variety of players. Many designers fall into a trap of only test-
  ing with people who are constantly exposed to the game and end up designing 
  a game that is too frustrating for novices. Others fall into the opposite trap and 
  only test their game with people who have never played before. They end up 
  designing a game that experienced players quickly grow bored with. Wise design-
  ers playtest with a mix of skilled and novice players, to be sure that their game is 
  fun at first, fun after a while, and fun much, much later.  
   One of the toughest challenges in game balancing is deciding how difficult the 
  game should get over time. Many designers are so afraid of players beating their 
  game too easily that they make later levels so fiendishly difficult to win that 90% of 
  players eventually give up on the game in frustration. These designers hope that the 
  increased challenge will extend the play time — and there is something to that — if 
  you have expended forty hours to get through level nine, you will probably be will-
  ing to work pretty hard to defeat level ten. But in truth, there are so many compet-
  ing games to play, many players just give up in frustration. As a designer, it makes 
  sense to ask yourself  “What percentage of players do I want to be able to complete 
  this game? ” and then design for that. 
   And don’t forget: Just learning to play a game at all is a challenge! For this rea-
  son, the first level or two of a game are often incredibly simplistic — the player is 
  so challenged just trying to understand the  “controls and goals ” that any additional 
  
  179
  challenge might push them right into frustration. Not to mention the fact that a few 
  early successes can do a lot to build a player’s confidence — and a confident player 
  will give up less easily on a game. 
    Challenge is a core element of gameplay, and can be so difficult to balance that it 
  merits its own lens.
   Lens #31: The Lens of Challenge 
    Challenge is at the core of almost all gameplay. You could even say that a 
  game is defined by its goals and its challenges. When examining the chal-
  lenges in your game, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  What are the challenges in my game? 
    ●  Are they too easy, too hard, or just right? 
    ●  Can my challenges accommodate a wide variety of skill levels? 
    ●  How does the level of challenge increase as the player succeeds? 
    ●  Is there enough variety in the challenges? 
    ●  What is the maximum level of challenge in my game?  
   Balance Type #3: Meaningful Choices 
    There are many different ways to give a player choices in a game. Meaningful 
  choices for a player lead them to ask themselves questions, such as: 
    ●  Where should I go? 
    ●  How should I spend my resources? 
    ●  What should I practice and try to perfect? 
    ●  How should I dress my character? 
    ●  Should I try to get through the game quickly or carefully? 
    ●  Should I focus on offense or defense? 
    ●  What strategy should I use in this situation? 
    ●  Which power should I choose? 
    ●  Should I play it safe, or take a big risk?  
    A good game gives the player meaningful choices. Not just any choices, but 
  choices that will have a real impact on what happens next, and how the game turns 
  out. Many designers fall into the trap of offering the player meaningless choices; for 
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  CHAPTER ELEVEN • GAME MECHANICS MUST BE IN BALANCE
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  example, in a racing game, you might have 50 vehicles to choose from, but if they 
  all drive the same way, it is like having no choice at all. Other designers fall into a 
  different trap — offering choices that no one would want. You might offer a soldier 
  ten guns, all different, but if one of them is clearly better than the rest, again it is 
  like having no choice at all. 
   When choices are offered to a player, but one of them is clearly better than the 
  rest, this is called a  dominant strategy. Once a dominant strategy is discovered, the 
  game is no longer fun, because the puzzle of the game has been solved — there are 
  no more choices to make. When you discover that a game you are working on has 
  a dominant strategy, you must change the rules (balance things) so that this strat-
  egy no longer dominates, and meaningful choice can be restored to the game. The 
  previous Biplane Battle example is an example of just that — a designer trying to 
  balance a game to remove a dominant strategy and restore meaningful choice to the 
  players. Hidden dominant strategies that are discovered by players are often referred 
  to as “exploits, ” since they can be exploited by players to take a shortcut to success 
  that the designer never intended. 
   In early development of a game, dominant strategies abound. As the game con-
  tinues development, these strategies start to get properly balanced. Paradoxically, 
  this often throws novice designers into a panic:  “Yesterday, I understood the right 
  way to play this game — but with these new changes, I’m not sure about the right 
  way to play it! ” They feel like they have lost their handle on their own game. But 
  in reality, the game has just taken a big step forward! It no longer has a dominant 
  strategy, and now there are meaningful choices to be made. Instead of fearing this 
  moment, you should cherish it, and take the opportunity to see if you can under-
  stand why the current configuration of rules and values is putting your game into 
  balance. 
   But this leads to another question: How many meaningful choices should we 
  give to a player? Michael Mateas points out that the number of choices a player 
  seeks is dependent on the number of things they desire. 
   ●  If Choices  � Desires, then the player is overwhelmed. 
   ●  If Choices  � Desires, the player is frustrated. 
   ●  If Choices  � Desires, the player has a feeling of freedom and fulfillment.  
   So, to properly determine the number of choices, you need to figure out the types 
  and number of things the player would like to do. In some situations, the player 
  wants only a small number of meaningful choices (choosing to take the left or right 
  fork in the road is interesting — choosing to take one of 30 side roads is overwhelm-
  ing). Other times, a huge number of choices are desired (for example, a clothes 
  shopping interface in the Sims). 
   Meaningful choices are the heart of interactivity, and having a lens to examine 
  them is quite useful.
  
  181
    Triangularity 
    One of the most exciting and interesting choices for a player to make is whether 
  to play it safe, and go for a small reward, or take a big risk, to try for a big reward. 
  This is a hard decision to make, if the game is balanced properly. I find that about 
  eight out of ten times someone comes to me asking for help on a game prototype 
  that “just isn’t fun, ” the game is missing this kind of meaningful choice. You could 
  call this “balanced asymmetric risk, ” since you are balancing a low risk with low 
  reward against a high risk for high reward, but that is kind of a mouthful. This rela-
  tionship comes up so often, and is so important, that I like to give it a shorter name: 
  triangularity. The player is one point of the triangle, the low risk choice is the 
  second point, and the high risk choice is the third. 
    
  Player
  High risk/
  high reward
  Low risk/
  low reward
    
    An example of a game that has good triangularity is Space Invaders. Most of the 
  time in the game you are shooting at low point aliens near your ship worth 10, 
  20, and 30 points. They are slow-moving and easy to shoot, and shooting them 
   Lens #32: The Lens of Meaningful Choice s
    When we make meaningful choices, it lets us feel like the things we do matter. 
  To use this lens, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  What choices am I asking the player to make? 
    ●  Are they meaningful? How? 
    ●  Am I giving the player the right number of choices? Would more make 
  them feel more powerful? Would less make the game clearer? 
    ●  Are there any dominant strategies in my game?  
  THE TWELVE MOST COMMON TYPES OF GAME BALANCE
  F I G U R E
  11.3
  
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  makes you safer because it stops them from dropping bombs on you. Every once in 
  a while, however, a little red flying saucer flies across the top of the screen. It poses 
  no threat, and it is quite difficult and dangerous to shoot. It is difficult because it is 
  moving and far away, and dangerous because to properly aim at it, you have to take 
  your eyes off your ship to look at it, and you risk getting hit by a bomb. However, 
  it is worth between 100 and 300 points! Without the flying saucer, Space Invaders 
  gets quite tedious, because your choices are few — you just shoot and shoot and 
  shoot. With the flying saucer, you occasionally have a very difficult, meaningful 
  choice to make — should you play it safe, or take a risk and go for the big points? 
  Triangularity is so important that it gets its own lens.
   Lens #33: The Lens of Triangularity 
   Giving a player the choice to play it safe for a low reward, or to take a risk for 
  a big reward is a great way to make your game interesting and exciting. To use 
  the Lens of Triangularity, ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  Do I have triangularity now? If not, how can I get it? 
   ●  Is my attempt at triangularity balanced? That is, are the rewards commen-
  surate with the risks?  
   Once you start looking for triangularity in games, you will see it everywhere. 
  A dull, monotonous game can quickly become exciting and rewarding when 
  you add a dash of triangularity.  
    A good way to make sure your triangularity is balanced is to use Lens #28: The 
  Lens of Expected Value. The classic game of Qix provides an interesting example 
  of balancing with expected values. In it, you try to draw rectangular shapes to sur-
  round territory on a blank game board. While you do this, a blob of lines, called the 
  Qix, floats around the board at random. If the Qix touches one of your rectangles 
  before you finish drawing it, you die. But if you finish drawing the rectangle, then 
  you claim that area of the board. When you have covered 75% of the board, you 
  win the level. 
   The designers of the game give the player a very explicit choice — each time 
  he draws a rectangle, he can either move quickly (drawing a blue rectangle) or at 
  half speed (drawing an orange rectangle). Since moving at half speed is twice as 
  dangerous, rectangles drawn at half speed are given double the points. This works 
  because if we assume that the chance of successfully drawing a fast, blue rectan-
  gle is 20%, and it is worth 100 points, then the expected value of attempting to 
  
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  draw one is 100 points  � 20%   � 20 points. We also know that that drawing a 
  rectangle at half speed has half the chance of succeeding, so, we get a table that 
  looks like:
    
   Speed 
   Chance of Success 
   Points 
   Expected Value 
   Fast (blue) 
   20% 
   100 
   20 
   Slow (orange) 
   10% 
   ? 
   20 
    We want the game to be balanced, so we keep the expected value constant. It is 
  pretty easy to see that if we want the game to be balanced, the point value should 
  be 200 points for the same size slow rectangle. The difficult part with this kind of 
  thing is figuring out the chance of success — we often have to estimate — but this 
  is another case where the model informs the prototype, and testing the prototype 
  informs the model, creating a virtuous circle where eventually the model is correct, 
  and the game is balanced.  
    Balancing Type #4: Skill vs. Chance 
    In Chapter 10, we talked in detail about the mechanics of skill and chance. In a real 
  sense, these are two opposing forces in any game design. Too much chance negates 
  the effects of player skill and vice versa. There is no easy answer for this one — 
  some players prefer games with as few elements of chance as possible, and other 
  players prefer the opposite. Games of skill tend to be more like athletic contests — 
  systems of judgment that determine which player is best. Games of chance often 
  have a more relaxed, casual nature — after all, much of the outcome is up to fate. 
  To strike the balance, you must use Lens #16: The Lens of the Player, to understand 
  how much skill and how much chance will be the right amount for the audience 
  of your game. Differences in preference are sometimes determined by age or gen-
  der, and sometimes even by culture; for example, German board game players seem 
  to prefer games that minimize the effects of chance more so than, say, American 
  players. 
    One very common method of balancing these is to alternate the use of chance 
  and skill in a game. For example, dealing out a hand of cards is pure chance — 
  but choosing how to play them is pure skill. Rolling a die to see how far you 
  move is pure chance — deciding where to move your piece is pure skill. This can 
  create an alternating pattern of tension and relaxation that can be very pleasing to 
  players. 
    Choosing how to balance skill and chance will determine the character of your 
  game. Examine it closely with this lens.
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   Balancing Type #5: Head vs. Hands 
   This type of balancing is quite straightforward: How much of the game should 
  involve doing a challenging physical activity (be it steering, throwing, or pushing 
  buttons dexterously) and how much of it should involve thinking? These two things 
  are not as separate as they might seem on the surface — many games involve con-
  stant strategizing and puzzle solving while simultaneously pulling off feats of speed 
  and dexterity. Other games alternate the two types of gameplay for variety. Consider 
  the “action platform ” game genre — you work your way through a level, dexter-
  ously guiding your avatar to jump over obstacles, and maybe shooting at enemies, 
  occasionally pausing to solve some small puzzle that prevents you from clearing 
  the level. Often, the intensity is increased at the end of a level by a  “boss monster, ”
  who can only be defeated through a mix of puzzle-solving ( “Oh! I have to jump on 
  his tail, and that makes him drop his shield for a second! ”) and dexterity ( “I only 
  have a second to shoot an arrow into that narrow gap! ”). 
   It is important, though, to understand what your target market prefers in a game — 
  more thinking or more dexterity? And it is equally important that your game clearly 
  communicate what balance you have chosen to put into it. Consider the very unu-
  sual game Pac Man 2: The New Adventures for the Sega Genesis. The name sug-
  gested that it would be a game of action and a little strategy, like the original Pac 
  Man. But a quick glance at the box told another story — this appeared to be a 
  2D platform game, like  Super Mario Brothers, or Sonic the Hedgehog, which meant 
  action plus a little puzzle solving. But actually playing the game revealed some-
  thing completely different! Though it visually looked like an action platform game, 
  it was really a game of strange psychological puzzles, where you subtly guided Pac 
  Man into different emotional states to get him to get past various obstacles. Players 
  expecting mostly action and little thinking were disappointed — players looking for 
   Lens #34: The Lens of Skill vs. Chance 
   To help determine how to balance skill and chance in your game, ask yourself 
  these questions: 
   ●  Are my players here to be judged (skill), or to take risks (chance)? 
   ●  Skill tends to be more serious than chance: Is my game serious or casual? 
   ●  Are parts of my game tedious? If so, will adding elements of chance enliven 
  them? 
   ●  Do parts of my game feel too random? If so, will replacing elements of 
  chance with elements of skill or strategy make the players feel more in 
  control?  
  
  185
  a game about puzzle solving generally didn’t play the game, rejecting it based on its 
  “action-based ”  appearance. 
    When Games Magazine reviews a videogame, they give it a ranking on a slid-
  ing scale where one end is  “ fingers, ” and the other end is “ brain. ” It can be easy to 
  forget that a game with a lot of button pushing can still involve a lot of thought and 
  strategy. Use Lens #27: The Lens of Skill to understand the different skills in your 
  game, and then use this lens to balance those skills.
   Lens #35: The Lens of Head and Hands 
    Yogi Berra once said  “Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical. ” To 
  make sure your game has a more realistic balance of mental and physical ele-
  ments, use the Lens of Head and Hands. Ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  Are my players looking for mindless action, or an intellectual challenge? 
    ●  Would adding more places that involve puzzle-solving in my game make it 
  more interesting? 
    ●  Are there places where the player can relax their brain, and just play the 
  game without thinking? 
    ●  Can I give the player a choice — either succeed by exercising a high level 
  of dexterity, or by finding a clever strategy that works with a minimum of 
  physical skill? 
    ●  If “ 1 ”  means all physical, and  “10 ” means all mental, what number would 
  my game get? 
    ●  This lens works particularly well when used in conjunction with Lens #16: 
  Lens of the Player.  
   Balance Type #6: Competition vs. Cooperation 
    Competition and cooperation are basic, animal urges. All higher animals are driven 
  to compete against others partly for survival, and partly to establish their status in 
  the community. Opposite of that, there is also a basic instinct to cooperate with oth-
  ers, since a team, with its many eyes and hands, and its diverse abilities, is always 
  more powerful than an individual. Competition and cooperation are so important to 
  our survival that we need to experiment with them — partly to get better at them, 
  and partly to learn about our friends and family — so we get a better sense of who 
  is good at what, and how we can work together. Games provide a very socially safe 
  way to explore how the people around us behave in stressful situations — this is a 
  secret reason we like to play games together. 
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   When it comes to games, competitive games are more common than cooperative 
  ones, though some very interesting cooperative games have been created.  Cookie and 
  Cream for the Playstation2 is an action platform puzzle game where two players play 
  side by side on parallel paths trying to get through a level. And Reiner Knizia’s Lord of 
  the Rings board game is a fascinating example of a game where the players do not com-
  pete at all, but instead coordinate their efforts in an attempt to win the game together. 
   Some games find interesting ways to blend competition and cooperation. The 
  arcade game  Joust can be played solo, where a player competes against many 
  computer-controlled enemies, or it can be played in a two-player mode, where both 
  players compete against enemies together in the same arena. There is a tension 
  between competition and cooperation in  Joust that is very interesting: On the com-
  petitive side, the players get points based on how many enemies they defeat, and 
  they can battle each other if they choose. But on the cooperative side, players can 
  get higher scores overall if they coordinate their attacks and protect each other. It is 
  up to the players to decide whether they are trying to beat each other (getting the 
  highest relative score) or trying to beat the game (trying to get the highest absolute 
  score). The game plays up this tension: some levels are designated  “Team Wave ” — 
  if both players can survive the level, they each get 3000 bonus points. Other 
  levels are designated  “Gladiator Wave ” — the first player who defeats another gets 
  3000 bonus points. This interesting alternation between cooperation and competi-
  tion gives the game a lot of variety, and lets players explore whether their partner is 
  more interested in cooperation or competition. 
   And while competition and cooperation are polar opposites, they can be quite 
  conveniently combined into a situation where you get the best of both. How? 
  Through team competition! Common in athletic sports, the rise of networked gam-
  ing has allowed team competition to grow and thrive in the world of videogames. 
   Competition and cooperation are so important that we need three lenses to 
  examine them properly.
   Lens #36: The Lens of Competition 
   Determining who is most skilled at something is a basic human urge. Games 
  of competition can satisfy that urge. Use this lens to be sure your competitive 
  game makes people want to win it. Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  Does my game give a fair measurement of player skill? 
   ●  Do people want to win my game? Why? 
   ●  Is winning this game something people can be proud of? Why? 
   ●  Can novices meaningfully compete at my game? 
   ●  Can experts meaningfully compete at my game? 
   ●  Can experts generally be sure they will defeat novices?  
  
  187
    As more and more games go online, more opportunities for different types of 
  competition and collaboration become available, from casual multiplayer games 
  of chess between two people to competing guilds of thousands of players in 
  MMORPGs. But the psychological forces that drive us to enjoy competition and 
  cooperation have not changed — the better you can understand and balance these 
  forces, the stronger your game will become. 
   Lens #37: The Lens of Cooperation 
    Collaborating and succeeding as a team is a special pleasure that can create 
  lasting social bonds. Use this lens to study the cooperative aspects of your 
  game. Ask these questions: 
    ●  Cooperation requires communication. Do my players have enough opportu-
  nity to communicate? How could communication be enhanced? 
    ●  Are my players friends already, or are they strangers? If they are strangers, 
  can I help them break the ice? 
    ●  Is there synergy (2   � 2  � 5) or antergy (2   � 2   � 3) when the players work 
  together? Why? 
    ●  Do all the players have the same role, or do they have special jobs? 
    ●  Cooperation is greatly enhanced when there is no way an individual can do 
  a task alone. Does my game have tasks like that? 
    ●  Tasks that force communication inspire cooperation. Do any of my tasks 
  force communication?  
   Lens #38: The Lens of Competition vs. Cooperation 
    Balancing competition and cooperation can be done in many interesting ways. 
  Use this lens to decide whether they are balanced properly in your game. Ask 
  these questions: 
    ●  If “ 1 ”  is Competition and “10 ” is Cooperation, what number should my 
  game get? 
    ●  Can I give players a choice whether to play cooperatively or competitively? 
    ●  Does my audience prefer competition, cooperation, or a mix? 
    ●  Is team competition something that makes sense for my game? Is my game 
  more fun with team competition, or with solo competition?  
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   Balance Type #7: Short vs. Long 
   One important thing to balance in every game is the length of the gameplay. If the 
  game is too short, players may not get a chance to develop and execute meaningful 
  strategies. But if the game goes on too long, players may grow bored, or they may 
  avoid the game because playing it requires too much of a time commitment. 
   The things that determine the length of a game are often subtle. The game of 
  Monopoly, for example, when played by the official rules, often ends in about ninety 
  minutes. But many players find these rules too harsh, and modify them to give out 
  cash jackpots, and ease the restrictions on when you must purchase properties, which 
  as a side effect makes the game last much longer, typically three hours, or even more. 
   The main factors that determine when a game ends are the win or lose condi-
  tions. By altering these conditions, you can dramatically change the length of the 
  game. The designers of the arcade game  Spy Hunter came up with a very interesting 
  system to balance the length of their game. In  Spy Hunter, you drive a car that fires 
  machine guns at enemies on a highway. In early prototypes, when your car was 
  destroyed three times, the game was over. The game is very challenging, particu-
  larly for novice players, and the designers found that these players were having very 
  short games, and feeling frustrated — so they introduced a new rule: For the first 
  ninety seconds of gameplay, the player has an unlimited supply of cars — they can-
  not lose the game during this time. After that time is up, they only have a few cars, 
  and when they are destroyed, the game is over. 
   The designers of  Minotaur (who later went on to make  Halo) had another inter-
  esting method of balancing the length of their game.  Minotaur was a networked 
  game where up to four players would run around a maze, gathering weapons and 
  spells, and try to destroy the other players in the maze. The game ends when only 
  one player is left alive. The designers saw a problem where a stalemate could result 
  if players don’t confront each other, and the game would run the risk of becoming 
  boring. One way to solve the problem would be to set a time limit, and declare a 
  winner based on a point system, but instead they did something much more elegant. 
  They created a new rule: After twenty minutes, a bell sounds, and  “Armageddon”
  begins: all surviving players are suddenly transported to a small room filled with 
  monsters and other hazards, where no one can survive for long. This way, the game 
  is guaranteed to end in less than 25 minutes, in a rather dramatic fashion, and one 
  player can still be declared the winner. 
   To properly balance the length of your games, you will want to use the Lens 
  of Time.
   Balance Type #8: Rewards 
   Why is it that people will spend so much time playing a videogame, just to get a 
  good score? We have talked earlier about how games are structures of judgment, 
  and that people want to be judged. But people don’t just want any judgment — they 
  
  189
  want to be judged favorably. Rewards are the way the game tells the player  “you 
  have done well. ”  
    There are several common types of rewards that games tend to give. Each is dif-
  ferent, but they all have one thing in common — they fulfill the player’s desires. 
    ●  Praise. The simplest of rewards, the game just tells you that you did good work, 
  either through an explicit statement, a special sound effect, or even an in-game 
  character speaking to you. It all amounts to the same thing: the game has judged 
  you, and it approves. Nintendo games are famous for giving players lots of sec-
  ondary praise via sounds and animations for every reward they get. 
    ●  Points. In many games, points serve no purpose than a measure of the play-
  er’s success, be it through skill or luck. Sometimes these points are a gateway to 
  another reward, but often, this measurement of your success is enough — par-
  ticularly if others can see it on a high score list. 
    ●  Prolonged Play. In many games (pinball, for example), the goal of the game is to 
  risk resources (in pinball, your ball) to rack up as many points as possible with-
  out losing what you have put at risk (your ball down the drain). In games with 
  this structure of  “ lives, ” the most valuable reward a player can get is an extra 
  life. Other games that have time limits reward players by adding time to their 
  play session, which really amounts to the same thing. Prolonged play is desirable 
   Lens #39: The Lens of Time 
    It is said that “timing is everything. ” Our goal as designers is to create experi-
  ences, and experiences are easily spoiled when they are too short or too long. 
  Ask these questions to make yours just the right length: 
    ●  What is it that determines the length of my gameplay activities? 
    ●  Are my players frustrated because the game ends too early? How can I 
  change that? 
    ●  Are my players bored because the game goes on for too long? How can I 
  change that? 
    ●  Setting a time limit can make gameplay more exciting. Is it a good idea for 
  my game? 
    ●  Would a hierarchy of time structures help my game? That is, several short 
  rounds that together comprise a larger round?  
    Timing can be very difficult to get right, but it can make or break a game. 
  Often, it makes sense to follow the old vaudevillian adage of  “Leave  ’em want-
  ing more. ”  
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  because it allows for a higher score and a measure of success, but it also taps 
  into our natural human drive for survival. 
   ●  A Gateway. While we have a desire to be judged favorably, we also have a desire 
  to explore. Game structures that reward success by moving you to new parts of 
  the game satisfy this basic urge. Anytime you earn access to a new level, or win 
  a key to a locked door, you have received a gateway reward. 
   ●  Spectacle. We like to enjoy beautiful and interesting things. Often, games will 
  play music or show animations as a simple reward. The  “intermission” at the 
  end of level 2 in  Pac Man was probably the first example of this in a videogame. 
  This kind of reward seldom satisfies players on its own, so it tends to be paired 
  with other types of rewards. 
   ●  Expression. Many players like to express themselves within a game with special 
  clothes or decorations. Even though these often have nothing to do with a goal 
  in the game, they can be great fun for a player, and satisfy a basic urge to make a 
  mark on the world. 
   ●  Powers. Becoming more powerful is something that everyone desires in real life, 
  and in a game, becoming more powerful is likely to improve the game’s judgment 
  of a player’s success. These powers can come in many forms: Getting  “kinged” in 
  checker s, becoming tall in Super Mario World, speeding up in Sonic the Hedgehog , 
  getting special weaponry in  Quake. The thing all powers have in common is that 
  they give you a way to reach your goal more quickly than you could before. 
   ●  Resources. While casino games and lotteries reward the player with real money, 
  videogames more frequently reward the player with resources they can only use 
  in the game (e.g., food, energy, ammunition, hit points). Some games, instead of 
  giving resources directly, give virtual money that the player can choose how to 
  spend. Usually the things that one can buy with this money are resources, pow-
  ers, prolonged play, or expression. 
   ●  Completion. Completing all the goals in a game gives a special feeling of closure 
  to players that they seldom get from solving problems in real life. In many games, 
  this is the ultimate reward — when you have reached this point, there is often no 
  point in playing the game any further.  
   Most of the rewards you will encounter in games fall into one or more of the 
  above categories, though these categories are often combined in interesting ways. 
  Many games reward the player with points, but when the points reach a certain 
  score, the player gets a bonus reward of an extra life (resource, prolonged play). 
  Often, players will get a special item (resource) that lets them do something new 
  (powers). Other games let a player enter their name or draw a picture (expression) 
  if they get a high score (points). Some games show a special animation (spectacle) 
  at the end (completion) if the player unlocks every area in the game (gateway). 
   But how to balance these rewards? That is, how many should be given out, and 
  which ones? This is a difficult question, and the answer is different for almost every 
  
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  game. Generally, the more types of rewards you can work into your game, the bet-
  ter. Two other reward rules of thumb from the world of psychology include: 
    ●  People have a tendency to get acclimated to rewards the more they receive them, 
  and what was rewarding an hour ago is no big deal now. One simple method many 
  games use to overcome this is to gradually increase the value of the rewards as 
  the player progresses in the game. In a way, this is a cheesy trick, but it works — 
  even when you know the designer is doing it and why, it still feels very rewarding 
  to suddenly get bigger rewards in conjunction with getting to a new part of a game. 
    ●  A good way to keep people from getting acclimated to rewards is to make them 
  variable instead of fixed. In other words, if every monster you defeat gives you 
  ten points, that gets predictable and boring pretty quickly — but if every monster 
  you defeat has a 2/3 chance of giving you zero points, but a 1/3 chance of giving 
  you thirty points, this stays rewarding for a much longer time, even though you 
  are giving out the same number of points on average. It’s like bringing donuts 
  to work — if you bring them every Friday, people will come to expect them and 
  take them for granted. But if you bring them every now and then on random 
  days, they are a delightful surprise each time.  
   Lens #40: The Lens of Reward 
    Everyone likes to be told they are doing a good job. Ask these questions to 
  determine if your game is giving out the right rewards in the right amounts at 
  the right times: 
    ●  What rewards is my game giving out now? Can it give out others as well? 
    ●  Are players excited when they get rewards in my game, or are they bored 
  by them? Why? 
    ●  Getting a reward you don’t understand is like getting no reward at all. Do 
  my players understand the rewards they are getting? 
    ●  Are the rewards my game gives out too regular? Can they be given out in a 
  more variable way? 
    ●  How are my rewards related to one another? Is there a way that they could 
  be better connected? 
    ●  How are my rewards building? Too fast, too slow, or just right?  
    Balancing rewards is different for every game. Not only does a designer have 
  to worry about giving out the right ones, but giving them at the right times 
  in the right amounts. This can only be determined through trial and error — 
  even then, it probably won’t be right for everyone. When trying to balance 
  rewards, it is hard to be perfect — you often have to settle for  “ good enough. ”  
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    Balance Type #9: Punishment 
   The idea of a game that punishes the player can seem a little strange — aren’t 
  games supposed to be fun? Paradoxically, though, punishment used properly can 
  increase the enjoyment that players get from games. Here are some reasons that a 
  game might punish players: 
   ●  Punishment creates endogenous value. We’ve talked about the importance 
  of creating value within a game (Lens #5: The Lens of Endogenous Value). 
  Resources in a game are worth more if there is a chance they can be taken away. 
   ●  Taking risks is exciting. Particularly if the potential rewards are balanced against 
  the risks! But you can only take risks if there are negative consequences or pun-
  ishments. Giving players a chance to risk terrible consequences makes success 
  much, much sweeter. 
   ●  Possible punishment increases challenge. We’ve discussed the importance of 
  challenging players — when failure means a punishing setback in the game, the 
  challenge of play increases. Increasing the punishment that comes with failure 
  can be one way to increase the challenge.  
   Here are some common types of punishment used in games. Many of them are 
  simply rewards in reverse. 
   ●  Shaming. The opposite of praise, this is simply the game telling you that you 
  are doing a bad job. This can happen with explicit messages (e.g.,  “Missed” or 
  “Defeated!”), or with discouraging animations, sound effects, and music. 
   ●  Loss of points. Players find this type of punishment so painful, that it is rela-
  tively rare in videogames or even in traditional games and sports. Maybe it is less 
  an issue of it being painful, and more the fact that when players can lose points, 
  it cheapens of the value of earned points. Points that can’t be taken away are 
  very valuable — points that could be subtracted on the next bad move have less 
  endogenous value. 
   ●  Shortened Play. “Losing a life ” in a game is an example of this kind of punish-
  ment. Some games that work on a timer will shorten play by taking time off the 
  clock. 
   ●  Terminated Play. Game over, man. 
   ●  Setback. When, after dying, a game returns you to the start of a level, or to 
  the last checkpoint, this is a setback punishment. In games that are all about 
  proceeding to the end, a setback is a very logical punishment. The balancing 
  challenge is to figure out exactly where the checkpoints belong to make the pun-
  ishments seem meaningful, but not unreasonable. 
   ●  Removal of Powers. The designer must tread carefully here — players greatly 
  treasure the powers they have earned, and to have them taken away may feel 
  
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  unfair to them. In Ultima Online, players who were killed in battle turned into 
  ghosts. To come back to life they had to find their way to a shrine. If they took 
  too long getting there, they would lose valuable skill points that had taken weeks 
  to earn. Many players felt this was too harsh a punishment. One way to remove 
  powers fairly is to take them away temporarily. Some amusement parks feature 
  bumper car battle tanks that shoot tennis balls at each other. The tanks have tar-
  gets on each side, and if an opponent hits one of your targets with a tennis ball, 
  your tank goes into an uncontrolled spin for five seconds, and your gun becomes 
  inoperable during that time. 
    ●  Resource Depletion. Loss of money, goods, ammunition, shields, or hit points fall 
  into this category. This is one of the most common types of game punishment.  
    One thing that psychological study has shown is that reward is always a better 
  tool for reinforcement than punishment. Whenever possible, if you need to encour-
  age a player to do something, it is better to use a reward than a punishment, if you 
  can. One great example from Blizzard’s game  Diabolo is the business of gathering 
  food in games. Many game designers at one time or another get the idea that they 
  would like to make a game with a  “ realistic ”  system of food gathering. That is, if you 
  do not gather food, your character suffers from diminished powers because of hun-
  ger. Blizzard implemented this, and found that players considered it a nuisance — 
  they must perform a fairly boring activity, or suffer a penalty. So, Blizzard turned it 
  around, and implemented a system where your player never gets hungry, but if they 
  do eat food, they get a temporary boost in abilities. Players liked this much better. 
  By changing a punishment into a reward, they were able to turn the same activity 
  from a negative to a positive. 
    When punishment is necessary, however, how much to use is a delicate ques-
  tion. When developing Toontown Online, we had to face the question of what was 
  to be the harshest punishment in a light, fun, MMORPG for kids. We ultimately 
  decided on a combination of light punishments for “ dying, ”  which in Toontown 
  is called “becoming sad, ” for the game is so lighthearted that players do not have 
  a life meter, but rather a laff meter, and the enemy’s goal is not to kill the player 
  outright, but just to make him sad enough to stop acting like a cartoon character. 
  When your laff meter goes to zero in Toontown, these things happen: 
    ●  You are teleported from the battle area back to a playground zone (setback). This 
  setback is very minor — the distance is usually only a minute’s walk. 
    ●  All the items you are carrying disappear (resource depletion). This is also minor — 
  the items are inexpensive, and can be earned again in about 10  minutes of play. 
    ●  Your character hangs his or her head sadly (shame). 
    ●  For about 30 seconds, your character walks at a painfully slow pace and is una-
  ble to leave the playground zone or engage in any meaningful gameplay (tempo-
  rary removal of powers). 
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   ●  Your laff meter (hit points) goes to zero (resource depletion), and the player will 
  probably want to wait for it to increase (it increases over time in a playground 
  zone) before exploring again.  
   This combination of light punishments is just enough to make players use cau-
  tion in battles. We tried lighter versions, and it made battles boring — there was 
  no risk in them. We tried tougher versions, and it made players too cautious in bat-
  tles. Eventually we settled on a combination which struck an appropriate balance 
  between encouraging caution and risk in the players. 
   It is crucial that all punishment in a game is for things that the player is able to 
  understand and prevent. When punishment feels random and unstoppable, it makes 
  the player feel a complete lack of control, which is a very bad feeling, and the player 
  will quickly label the game “unfair. ” Once this happens, a player is seldom willing 
  to engage in a game further. 
   Players dislike punishment, of course, and you must be thoughtful about whether 
  there are tricky ways that players can avoid your punishment. Richard Garriot’s game 
  Ultima III, though greatly beloved, contained very strict punishment. It was a game 
  that took close to one hundred hours to complete, and if your four characters per-
  ished while you were playing, your game state was completely erased, and you had 
  to begin the game again! Players generally felt this was unfair, and as a result, it was 
  common practice if your characters were near death to shut off the computer before 
  the game had a chance to erase the saved game, effectively dodging the punishment. 
   It is worth mentioning that there is a certain class of player that lives for games 
  that are insanely challenging and loves games that have strong punishments, 
  because they can feel so proud about having beaten such a difficult game. These 
  players are a fringe group, though, and even they have their limits. They will 
  quickly call a game “unfair” if they cannot see how to prevent punishment.
   Lens #41: The Lens of Punishment 
   Punishment must be used delicately, since after all, players are in a game of 
  their own free will. Balanced appropriately, it will give everything in your 
  game more meaning, and players will have a real sense of pride when they 
  succeed at your game. To examine the punishment in your game, ask yourself 
  these questions: 
   ●  What are the punishments in my game? 
   ●  Why am I punishing the players? What do I hope to achieve by it? 
   ●  Do my punishments seem fair to the players? Why or why not? 
   ●  Is there a way to turn these punishments into rewards and get the same, or 
  a better effect? 
   ●  Are my strong punishments balanced against commensurately strong rewards?  
  
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   Balance Type #10: Freedom vs. Controlled Experience 
    Games are interactive, and the point of interactivity is to give the player control, or 
  freedom, over the experience. But how much control? Giving the player control over 
  everything is not only more work for the game developer; it can also be boring for the 
  player! After all, a game isn’t meant to be a simulation of real life, but rather more inter-
  esting than real life — this sometimes means cutting out boring, complex, or unnec-
  essary decisions and actions. One simple kind of game balance that every designer 
  must consider is where to give the player freedom, and how much freedom to give. 
    In Aladdin’s Magic Carpet VR Adventure, we were faced with a very difficult 
  problem in the final scene within the Cave of Wonders. To make the conflict with 
  Jafar, the villain, be as exciting as possible, we needed to take control of the cam-
  era. But we didn’t want to compromise the freedom that players felt in the scene. 
  Observing players during playtests, though, they all wanted to do the same thing — 
  fly to the top of the hill where Jafar was standing. After several experiments, we 
  made a bold decision — we would take away freedom from the players in this scene 
  so they could have a perfect flight up the hill to confront Jafar. This was in sharp 
  contrast to the rest of the experience, where players could fly wherever they wanted 
  with no restrictions. In our tests, not a single one of our playtesters noticed we had 
  taken away their freedom, because the game had trained them that they could go 
  wherever they wanted, and this scene happened to be arranged such that everyone 
  who viewed it wanted the same thing. We decided that this was a case where the 
  balance should fall on the side of controlled experience instead of freedom, because 
  it made for a better experience for the player. 
    Balance Type #11: Simple vs. Complex 
    Simplicity and complexity of game mechanics can seem very paradoxical. Calling 
  a game “ simple ”  can be a criticism, such as “so simple it is boring. ” It can also 
  be a compliment: “so simple and elegant! ” Complexity can also be a double-edged 
  sword. Games are criticized as  “overly complex and confusing, ” or complimented 
  as “richly and intricately complex. ” To make sure your game has the  “good simplic-
  ity ”  and the “good complexity, ” but not the bad, we need to look at the nature of 
  simplicity and complexity in games and how to strike the right balance between 
  them. 
    So much praise is heaped on classic games for being ingeniously simple that it 
  might make you think that making a complex game is a bad thing. Let’s look at the 
  different kinds of complexity that show up in games: 
    ●  Innate complexity. When the very rules of the game get very complex, I call this 
  innate complexity. This is the kind of complexity that often gets a bad name. It 
  generally arises either because the designer is trying to simulate a complex real- 
  world situation, or because extra rules need to be added to a game in order to 
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  balance it. When you see a ruleset with lots of  “exception cases, ” this is gener-
  ally a ruleset that is innately complex. Games like this can be hard to learn, but 
  some people really enjoy mastering the complex rulesets. 
   ●  Emergent complexity. This is the kind of complexity that everyone praises. 
  Games like  Go that have a very simple ruleset that gives rise to very complex sit-
  uations are said to have emergent complexity. When games are praised for being 
  simple and complex at the same time, it is the emergent complexity that is being 
  praised.  
   Emergent complexity can be difficult to achieve, but is worth the effort. Ideally, 
  one can create a simple ruleset out of which emerges the thing every game designer 
  strives for:  balanced surprises. If you can design a simple game that becomes a fac-
  tory for a never-ending stream of balanced surprises, people will play your game 
  for centuries to come. The only way to find out whether you have achieved this is 
  to keep playing and changing your game over and over until the surprises start to 
  come. Of course, using Lens #23: The Lens of Emergence can help, too. 
   So, if emergent complexity is so great, why would anyone make a game that 
  is innately complex? Well, sometimes you need the innate complexity to simulate 
  a real-world situation, such as re-creating a historical battle. Other times, you add 
  more innate complexity to balance your game a little better. The pawns in chess 
  have movement rules that are innately complex: When they move, they can only 
  move forward one square, into an unoccupied space,  unless it is their first move, in 
  which case they can move one or two spaces. One exception to this is when they 
  are capturing another piece; in that case, they can only move diagonally forward, 
  but only one square, even if it is their first move. 
   This rule has some innate complexity (some keywords of innate complexity: 
  “unless, ” “except, ” “exception, ” “but,” and “even if ”), but it is one that evolved 
  gradually in an attempt to make sure pawns had a behavior that was well-balanced 
  and interesting. And, in fact, it is well worth it, for this small amount of innate com-
  plexity blossoms into a great deal more emergent complexity — particularly because 
  the pawns can only move forward, but capture diagonally — that leads to fascinat-
  ingly complex pawn structures that can form on the board that would never be pos-
  sible with a simpler ruleset.
   Lens #42: The Lens of Simplicity/Complexity 
   Striking the right balance between simplicity and complexity is difficult and 
  must be done for the right reasons. Use this lens to help your game become 
  one in which meaningful complexity arises out of a simple system. Ask your-
  self these questions: 
   ●  What elements of innate complexity do I have in my game? 
  
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   Natural vs. Artificial Balancing 
    Designers must be careful when adding innate complexity in an attempt to balance 
  a game, however. Adding too many rules to get the behavior you want is sometimes 
  called “artificial balancing ” as opposed to the “natural balancing ” that can come 
  when a desired effect arises naturally from the interactions in a game. Consider 
  Space Invaders: It has a wonderful balance of increasing difficulty that forms very 
  naturally. The invaders adhere to a very simple rule — the fewer there are, the faster 
  they go. From this some very desirable properties emerge: 
    1.   The game starts slow, and speeds up the more the player succeeds. 
    2.   It is easy to hit targets in the beginning, but the more the player succeeds, the 
  harder it is to hit targets.  
    Those two properties are not the result of innate rules, but rather, nicely balanced 
  properties that emerge from a single simple rule. 
   Elegance 
    We call simple systems that perform robustly in complex situations  elegant . 
  Elegance is one of the most desirable qualities in any game, because it means you 
  have a game that is simple to learn and understand, but is full of interesting emer-
  gent complexity. And while elegance can seem somewhat ineffable and hard to 
  capture, you can easily rate the elegance of a given game element by counting the 
  number of purposes it has. For example, the dots in  Pac Man serve the following 
  purposes: 
    1.   They give the player a short-term goal:  “ Eat the dots close to me. ”  
    2.   They give the player a long-term goal:  “ Clear all the dots from the board. ”  
    3.   They slow the player down slightly when eating them, creating good triangular-
  ity (safer to go down a corridor with no dots, riskier to go down one with dots). 
    4.   They give the player points, which are a measure of success. 
    5.   They give the player points, which can earn an extra life.  
    ●  Is there a way this innate complexity could be turned into emergent 
  complexity? 
    ●  Do elements of emergent complexity arise from my game? If not, why not? 
    ●  Are there elements of my game that are too simple?  
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   Five different purposes, just for those simple dots! This makes them very ele-
  gant. You can imagine a version of  Pac Man where the dots did not do all those 
  things; for example, if the dots didn’t slow the player down, and didn’t award points 
  or extra lives, they would have less purpose, and be less elegant. There is an old 
  Hollywood rule of thumb: If a line in a script doesn’t serve at least two purposes, 
  it should be cut. Many designers, when they find their game doesn’t feel right, first 
  think, “Hmm… what do I need to add? ” Often, a better question is “What do I need 
  to remove? ” One thing I like to do is look for all the things in my game that are only 
  serving one purpose and think about which of them can be combined. 
   In working on  Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Buccaneer Gold, we origi-
  nally planned to have two main characters: a friendly host at the start of the game 
  whose only job was to explain how to play, and a villain at the end of the game, 
  whose only purpose was to engage in a dramatic final battle. This was a short (five 
  minute) game for Disneyworld, and it felt strange to have to use up time to intro-
  duce both of these two characters, and it was a strain on the budget as well to make 
  them both look good. We started talking about just cutting either the tutorial at the 
  beginning, or the battle at the end, but they were both very important for a fulfilling 
  game. Then we hit on an idea: What if the host at the beginning also was the villain 
  at the end? This not only saved us development time, but saved game time since we 
  only needed to introduce one character. Further, it made the character seem more 
  interesting and a more credible pirate (since he tricks the player), and it also created 
  a surprising plot twist! By giving this one character several purposes, it made for a 
  game structure we felt was very elegant indeed.
   Lens #43: The Lens of Elegance 
   Most “classic games ” are considered to be masterpieces of elegance. Use this 
  lens to make your game as elegant as possible. Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What are the elements of my game? 
   ●  What are the purposes of each element? Count these up to give the element 
  an “elegance rating. ” 
   ●  For elements with only one or two purposes, can some of these be com-
  bined into each other, or removed altogether? 
   ●  For elements with several purposes, is it possible for them to take on even 
  more?  
   Character 
   As important as elegance is, though, there is such a thing as honing a thing down 
  too far. Consider the leaning tower of Pisa. Its significant tilt serves no purpose — 
  it is an accidental flaw. The lens of elegance would have us remove its tilt and 
  
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  turn it into the perfectly straight tower of Pisa. But who would want to visit that? 
  It might be elegant, but it would be boring — it would have no  character. Think of 
  the tokens in Monopoly: a hat, a shoe, a dog, a statue, a battleship. They have noth-
  ing to do with a game about real estate. Arguably, they should be themed as little 
  landlords. But no one would do that, because it would strip Monopoly of its charac-
  ter. Why is Mario a plumber? It has almost nothing to do with what he does or the 
  world he lives in. But this weird inconsistency gives him character.
   Lens #44: The Lens of Character 
    Elegance and character are opposites. They are like miniature versions of sim-
  plicity and complexity, and must be kept in balance. To make sure your game 
  has lovable, defining quirks, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  Is there anything strange in my game that players talk about excitedly? 
    ●  Does my game have funny qualities that make it unique? 
    ●  Does my game have flaws that players like?  
    Balance Type #12: Detail vs. Imagination 
    As we discussed in Chapter 9, the game is not the experience — games are sim-
  ply structures that engender mental models in the mind of the player. In doing so, 
  the games provide some level of detail, but leave it to the player to fill in the rest. 
  Deciding exactly what details should be provided and which should be left to the 
  player’s imagination is a different, but important kind of balance to strike. Here are 
  some tips for how to do it well. 
    ●  Only detail what you can do well. Players have rich, detailed imaginations. If 
  there is something you need to present that is of lower quality than your play-
  ers will be able to imagine, don’t do it — let the imagination do the heavy lift-
  ing! Let’s say you would like to play recorded dialog for your whole game, but 
  you don’t have the budget for quality voice actors, or you don’t have the storage 
  space for all that dialog. An engineer might suggest trying speech synthesis; that 
  is, letting the computer speak for the characters. After all, it is cheap, requires 
  no storage space, and can be tuned somewhat to sound like different characters, 
  right? All that is true — but also, it will make everyone sound like a robot, and 
  unless you are making a game about robots, your players will not be able to take 
  it seriously. An even cheaper alternative is to use subtitles. Some people might 
  claim that this means there is no voice at all! But that isn’t true. The player’s 
  imagination will fill in a voice — a voice far better than the one you will be able 
  to synthesize. This same idea goes for just about everything in the game: scenery, 
  sound effects, characters, animations, and special effects. If you can’t do it well, 
  try to find a way to leave it to the player’s imagination. 
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   ●  Give details the imagination can use. Players have a lot to learn when they 
  come to a new game — any clear details you can give them that make the game 
  easier to understand will be welcome. Consider the game of chess. It is mostly 
  a somewhat abstract game, but some interesting details have been filled in. The 
  game is set in a medieval era, and the pieces, which could easily could have 
  been numbered, or just made as abstract shapes, are given the roles of people 
  in a medieval court. It isn’t a lot of detail — the kings, for example, don’t have 
  names, and we know nothing about their kingdoms or their policies — but none 
  of that matters. In fact, if this were to be a real simulation of an army between 
  two kingdoms, the rules of movement and capture would make no sense at all! 
  What matters about the  “kings” in chess is that the tallest of the chess pieces 
  has movements that are slightly evocative of a real king. He is important, and 
  must move slowly, and must be carefully guarded. Any other details can be left 
  to the imaginations of the players to fill in as they see fit. Similarly, picturing the 
  “knights” as horses helps us remember that they can jump around the board in 
  ways the others cannot. By giving details that help our imaginations better grasp 
  their functionality the game becomes much more accessible to us. 
   ●  Familiar worlds do not need much detail. If you are creating a simulation of 
  something that the player is likely to know very well, such as a city street, or a 
  house interior, you have little need to simulate every little detail — since the player 
  already knows what these places are like, they will quickly fill them in with imagi-
  nation, if you give them a few relevant details. If the point of your game, though, 
  is to educate someone about a place they have never been before, imagination will 
  be of little help, and you will find it necessary to fill in a great deal of detail. 
   ●  Use the binocular effect. When spectators bring binoculars to an opera or a 
  sporting event, they use them mostly at the beginning of the event, to get a close-
  up view of the different players or performers. Once this close-up view has been 
  put into memory, the glasses can be set aside, for now the imagination goes to 
  work, filling in the close-ups on the tiny distant figures. Videogames replicate this 
  effect all the time, often by showing a close-up of a character at the beginning of 
  the game who is going to be an inch-high sprite for the rest of the experience. It 
  is an easy way to use a little detail to get a lot of imagination. 
   ●  Give details that inspire imagination. Again, chess is a great example. To be 
  able to control all the members of a royal army is a fantasy that the mind quickly 
  takes to — and of course, it is a fantasy — it only has to be tied to reality by a 
  thin thread. Giving players situations they can easily fantasize about lets their 
  imagination take wing, and all kinds of imaginary details will quickly crystallize 
  around one little detail that the designer provided.  
   We will talk more about the balance between detail and imagination in Chapter 
  18, since deciding what to leave to the imagination is a key question when it comes 
  to characters in games. Because the imagination of the player is where the game 
  playing experience takes place, the Lens of Imagination is an important tool.
  
  201
   Game Balancing Methodologies 
    We have discussed a great number of things that can be balanced within games. 
  Let us now turn our attention to general methods of balancing that can be broadly 
  applied to many types of balancing. You may find you can use some of these 
  together, but others are contradictory — this is because different designers prefer 
  different methods. You must experiment to find the method that is right for you. 
    ●  Use the Lens of the Problem Statement. Earlier, we discussed the importance of 
  clearly stating your design problems before jumping to solutions. An out-of-bal-
  ance game is a problem that will benefit greatly from a clear problem statement. 
  Many designers end up making a mess of their games by jumping in with balanc-
  ing solutions before they have thought clearly about what the problem really is. 
    ●  Doubling and halving.  
  You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.  
  – William Blake, Proverbs of Hell  
    ●  The rule of doubling and halving suggests that when changing values to balance 
  your game, you will waste time by changing them by small amounts. Instead, 
  start by doubling or halving your values in the direction they need to go. For 
  example, if a rocket does 100 points of damage, and you think that perhaps that 
  is too much, don’t decrease it by 10 or 20, but rather set the damage value to 50, 
  and see how that works. If that is too low, then try a number halfway between 
  50 and 100. By pushing the values farther than your intuition tells you, the limits 
  of good balance start to become clear more quickly. 
   Lens #45: The Lens of Imagination 
    All games have some element of imagination and some element of connection 
  to reality. Use this lens to help find the balance between detail and imagina-
  tion. Ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  What must the player understand to play my game? 
    ●  Can some element of imagination help them understand that better? 
    ●  What high-quality, realistic details can we provide in this game? 
    ●  What details would be low quality if we provided them? Can imagination 
  fill the gap instead? 
    ●  Can I give details that the imagination will be able to reuse again and again? 
    ●  What details I provide inspire imagination? 
    ●  What details I provide stifle imagination?  
  GAME BALANCING METHODOLOGIES
  
  CHAPTER ELEVEN • GAME MECHANICS MUST BE IN BALANCE
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   This rule is often attributed to Brian Reynolds, Chief Designer and Creative Director 
  at Big Huge Games. I contacted him to ask about it, and he had this to say: 
   “That’s indeed a principle I regularly use (and espouse), but the original credit 
  for it goes to none other than the illustrious Sid Meier. I often tell the story of 
  how he took me aside as a young designer (when he caught me repeatedly 
  changing something by 10%, I’m sure) back in the early 90s when we were 
  working on  Colonization, and it’s probably through the retelling of the story that 
  it got associated with me. The point of the rule is to change something so that 
  you can actually feel the difference right away. That gives you a much clearer 
  idea of the workings of the variable you are changing, and saves you getting 
  lost in the weeds wondering if you have even had an effect (or worse, seeing a 
  change where none has really been accomplished, perhaps because of an unu-
  sual series of random numbers). ” 
   ●  Train your intuition by guessing exactly. The more game design you do, the 
  better your intuition will become. You can train your intuition for better game 
  balancing by getting in the practice of guessing exactly. For example: if a projec-
  tile in your game is moving at 10 feet per second, and you get the feeling that is 
  too slow, concentrate on what the exact number might be. Maybe your intuition 
  tells you that 13 is too low, but 14 is a little too high.  “13.7? No … Maybe 13.8. 
  Yes — 13.8 just feels right. ” Once you have arrived at this intuitive guess, plug it 
  in and see. You might find it is too low, or too high, or maybe even exactly right. 
  Regardless, you will have just given your intuition some excellent data for when 
  you guess next time. You can experience the same thing with your microwave 
  oven. It is hard to know exactly what time to put in when reheating leftovers. 
  And if you just make rough guesses, rounded to 30 seconds, you’ll never get 
  much better at guessing. But if you guess exactly every time you put food in 
  the microwave (1:40? Too hot … 1:20? Too cold … 1:30? Hmm … no, 1:32 seems 
  right), in a couple months you will be able to make surprisingly accurate guesses 
  because you will have trained your intuition. 
   ●  Document your model. You should write down what you think the relationships 
  are between the things you are balancing. This will help clarify your thoughts and 
  give you a framework to record the results of your game balancing experiments. 
   ●  Tune your model as you tune your game. As was mentioned in the  “asym-
  metrical game ” section near the start of this chapter, as you experiment with bal-
  ancing your game, you will develop a better model about how things are related 
  within the game. With each balancing experiment that you try, you should not 
  only note whether it improved your game, but whether the experiment matches 
  your model for how game mechanics are related. Then you should alter your 
  model if it doesn’t match what you expected. Writing down your observations 
  and your model helps a great deal! 
   ●  Plan to balance. You know you are going to have to balance your game. As you 
  are designing it, you might have a pretty good idea of what aspects of it you will 
  
  203
  need to balance. Take advantage of that, and put in systems that make it easy to 
  change the values you expect to have to balance. If you can change these values 
  while the game is running, that is even better! The Rule of the Loop is in full 
  force while you are game balancing. 
    ●  Let the players do it. Every once in a while you will run in to a designer who 
  has this bright idea: “Let’s let the players balance the game! That way they 
  can pick the values that are right for them! ” This sounds good in theory (who 
  wouldn’t want a game that was custom tailored for a personalized level of chal-
  lenge?) but tends to fail in practice because players have a conflict of interest. 
  Yes, they want the game to give them a challenge, but at the same time, they 
  want to win the game as easily as they can! And when all the values are set 
  that way (Look at me! I have a million lives!), it is a quick rush of fun that 
  quickly gets boring since there is no challenge left. Worst of all, returning from 
  an overpowered game to a reasonable game balance is a little like trying to kick 
  heroin — the lack of power makes the ordinary game feel limiting and dull. 
  The Monopoly example serves us well again: People who play with the player-
  created rule that you get a jackpot when you land on Free Parking complain that 
  the game goes on too long, but if you convince them to play by the official rules 
  (that have no such jackpots), they often complain that it seems less exciting than 
  the old way. There are times when letting the players balance the game is a good 
  idea (usually through difficulty levels), but mostly, balancing the game is better 
  left to the designers.  
   Balancing Game Economies 
    One of the more challenging structures to balance in any game is a  “game econ-
  omy. ” The definition of a game economy is simple. We talked earlier about how to 
  balance meaningful decisions, and that is just what any economy is defined by — 
  two meaningful decisions; namely 
    ●  How will I earn money? 
    ●  How will I spend the money I have earned?  
    Now,  “ money ”  in this context can be anything that can be traded for something 
  else. If your game lets players earn skill points, and then spend them on different 
  skills, those skill points are money. What is important is that players have the two 
  choices described above — that is what makes an economy. What makes for a 
  meaningful economy is the depth and meaning in those two choices. And these two 
  choices are usually in a loop, because usually players spend their money in ways 
  that will help them earn more money, which will give them more opportunities to 
  spend money, etc. 
  BALANCING GAME ECONOMIES
  
  CHAPTER ELEVEN • GAME MECHANICS MUST BE IN BALANCE
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   Balancing economies, particularly in large online multiplayer games, where play-
  ers can buy or sell items to each other, can be very difficult, because you are really 
  balancing many of the things we have already discussed at once: 
   ●  Fairness: Do any players get unfair advantage by buying certain things, or earn-
  ing a certain way? 
   ●  Challenge: Can players buy something that makes the game too easy for them? 
  Is earning money to buy what they want too hard? 
   ●  Choices: Do players have enough ways to earn money? To spend money? 
   ●  Chance: Is earning money more skill-based or chance-based? 
   ●  Cooperation: Can players pool their funds in interesting ways? Can they collude 
  in a way that exploits  “holes” in the economy? 
   ●  Time: Does it take too long to earn money, or is it earned too quickly? 
   ●  Rewards: Is it rewarding to earn money? To spend money? 
   ●  Punishment: How do punishments affect a player’s ability to earn and spend 
  money? 
   ●  Freedom: Can players buy what they want, and earn the way they want?  
   There are many different ways to balance economies in games, from control-
  ling how much money is created by the game, to controlling the different ways to 
  earn and spend it. But the goals of balancing a game economy are the same as 
  balancing any other game mechanics — to be sure the players can enjoy a fun, 
  challenging game.
   Lens #46: The Lens of Economy 
   Giving a game an economy can give it surprising depth and a life all its own. 
  But like all living things, it can be difficult to control. Use this lens to keep 
  your economy in balance: 
   ●  How can my players earn money? Should there be other ways? 
   ●  What can my players buy? Why? 
   ●  Is money too easy to get? Too hard? How can I change this? 
   ●  Are choices about earning and spending meaningful ones? 
   ●  Is a universal currency a good idea in my game, or should there be special-
  ized currencies?  
  
  205
   Dynamic Game Balancing 
    Dreamy young game designers frequently speak of their desire to create a system 
  that will “adjust to the player’s skill level on the fly. ” That is, if the game is too easy 
  or too difficult for a player, the game will detect this, and change the difficulty until 
  it is at the right level of challenge for the player. And this is a beautiful dream. But it 
  is a dream that is rife with some surprising problems. 
    ●  It spoils the reality of the world. Players want to believe, on some level, that 
  the game world they are playing in is real. But if they know that all of their oppo-
  nents ’  abilities are not absolute, but relative to the player’s skill level, it damages 
  the illusion that these opponents are fixed challenges to be met and mastered. 
    ●  It is exploitable. If players know the game will get easier when they play badly, 
  they may choose to play badly just to make an upcoming part of the game easy 
  to get through, completely defeating the purpose of the self-balancing system. 
    ●  Players improve with practice. The Incredible Hulk for the Playstation 2 caused 
  some controversy by making the enemies get easier if you were defeated by them 
  more than a certain number of times. Many players felt insulted by this, and oth-
  ers felt disappointed — they wanted to keep practicing until they could master 
  the challenge, and the game took away that pleasure.  
    This is not to say that dynamic game balancing is a dead end. I only mean to 
  point out that implementing such a system is not so straightforward. I suspect that 
  advances in this area will involve some very clever, counter-intuitive ideas. 
   The Big Picture 
    Game balancing is a big topic both in breadth and depth. I have tried to cover as 
  many major points as possible, but each game has unique things that need to be 
  balanced, so it would be impossible to cover everything. Use the Lens of Balance to 
  look for any balancing problems the other lenses might have missed.  
   Lens #47: The Lens of Balance 
    There are many types of game balance, and each is important. However, it is 
  easy to get lost in the details and forget the big picture. Use this simple lens to 
  get out of the mire, and ask yourself the only important question: 
    ●  Does my game feel right? Why or why not?  
  THE BIG PICTURE
  
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  CHAPTER
  207
   Game Mechanics 
  Support Puzzles 
  207
  TWELVE
  F I G U R E  
   12.1
  
  CHAPTER TWELVE • GAME MECHANICS SUPPORT PUZZLES
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   Puzzles are wonderful mechanisms that form key parts of many games. Sometimes 
  they are very visible, and other times they are so enmeshed into the gameplay as 
  to make them hidden, but what all puzzles have in common is that they make the 
  player  stop and think. Examining with the Lens #35: The Lens of Head and Hands, 
  puzzles are firmly on the  “head” side. It can be argued that any time a player stops 
  during gameplay to think, they are solving a puzzle. The relationship between 
  puzzles and games is tricky. In Chapter 3, we talked about how every game is  “a
  problem-solving activity, approached playfully. ” Puzzles, too, are problem-solving 
  activities — does this make them games? In this chapter we will explore how to 
  make good puzzles, and the best ways incorporate puzzles into games. But first, we 
  too should stop and think, to better understand the puzzle-game relationship. 
   The Puzzle of Puzzles 
   There is much debate about whether puzzles are  “really games. ” Certainly, puzzles 
  are often part of games, but does that mean they  are games? In a sense, puzzles are 
  just “fun problems. ” If you go back and review Chapter 3 , you will find that, sur-
  prisingly,  “fun problem ” meets the many qualifications that we listed for the defini-
  tion of a game. So, maybe each puzzle is really a kind of game? 
   Something bothers people about calling puzzles games. A jigsaw puzzle doesn’t 
  feel like a game, nor does a crossword puzzle. Would you call Rubik’s Cube a game? 
  Probably not. So, what is missing from puzzles that we are inclined to exclude them 
  from our definition of games? First of all, most puzzles are just single-player, but 
  that can hardly be an objection — many things we immediately classify as games, 
  from solitaire to  Final Fantasy, are single-player. They still have conflict, it is just 
  between the player and system, not between player and player. 
   A young Chris Crawford once made the bold statement that puzzles are not even 
  really interactive, since they don’t actively respond to the player. This is question-
  able, partly because some puzzles do indeed respond to the player, particularly puz-
  zles in videogames. Some people have suggested that any game that has both an 
  ending and is guaranteed to give the same output to a player who always gives the 
  same input is really a puzzle, and not a game. This would mean many story-based 
  adventure games, such as  Zork, Zelda, or Final Fantasy might not qualify as games 
  at all, but only as puzzles. But this doesn’t really ring true. 
   Perhaps puzzles are kind of like penguins. The first explorers to see penguins 
  must have been kind of surprised, and probably at a loss as to how to classify them, 
  thinking something like  “Well, they kind of look like birds, but they can’t be birds, 
  because birds can fly. They must be something else. ” But further examination leads 
  to the conclusion that penguins are indeed birds: just birds that can’t fly. So what is 
  it that puzzles can’t do? 
  
  209
    Puzzlemaster Scott Kim once said that “A puzzle is fun, and has a right answer. ” 
  The irony of that is that once you find that right answer, the puzzle ceases to be 
  fun. Or as Emily Dickinson once put it:
   The Riddle we can guess
   We speedily despise —
   Not anything is stale so long
   As Yesterday’s surprise.  
    The thing that really seems to bother people about calling puzzles games is 
  that they are not replayable. Once you figure out the best strategy, you can 
  solve the puzzle every time, and it is no longer fun. Games are not usually this 
  way. Most games have enough dynamic elements that each time you play you are 
  confronted again with a new set of problems to solve. Sometimes this is because 
  you have an intelligent human opponent (checkers, chess, backgammon, etc.), and 
  sometimes it is because the game is able to generate lots of different challenges 
  for you, either through ever-advancing goals (setting a new high score record) or 
  through some kind of rich challenge-generation mechanism (solitaire, Rubik’s Cube, 
  Tetris, etc.) 
    In Chapter 10, we gave a name to the situation when a single strategy will defeat 
  a game every time: a  “dominant strategy. ” When a game has a dominant strategy, 
  it doesn’t cease to be a game, it just isn’t a very good game. Children like tic-tac-
  toe until they find the dominant strategy. At that point, the puzzle of tic-tac-toe has 
  been solved, and the game ceases to be interesting. So usually, we say games that 
  have dominant strategies are bad. Unless, of course, the whole point of the game is 
  to find that dominant strategy. This leads to an interesting definition of a puzzle:
   A puzzle is a game with a dominant strategy.  
    From this point of view, puzzles are just games that aren’t fun to replay, just 
  as penguins are birds that cannot fly. This is why both puzzles and games have 
  problem-solving at their core — puzzles are just miniature games whose goal is to 
  find the dominant strategy. 
   Aren’t Puzzles Dead? 
    When I discuss the importance of puzzles with students, there is always someone 
  who asks “Aren’t puzzles old-fashioned? I mean, sure they were a part of adventure 
  games twenty years ago, but modern videogames are based on action, not puzzles, 
  right? Besides, with all the walkthroughs on the Web, everyone can get the answers 
  to puzzles easily — so what’s the point? ”  
    And this is an understandable point of view. In the 1980s and even early 
  1990s, adventure games ( Zork, Myst, Monkey Island, King’s Quest, etc.) were very 
  AREN’T PUZZLES DEAD?
  
  CHAPTER TWELVE • GAME MECHANICS SUPPORT PUZZLES
  210
  popular, and these usually featured very explicit puzzles. With the rise of console 
  gaming, games that slid a bit more toward the  “hands” side of the spectrum and away 
  from the  “head” side became more popular. But did the puzzles go away? 
  No. Remember — a puzzle is anything that makes you stop and think, and mental 
  challenges can add significant variety to an action  - based game. As game designers 
  grew more experienced, and games developed more fluid and continuous control 
  schemes, the puzzles became less explicit and more woven into the fabric of the 
  gameplay. Instead of completely stopping play, and demanding that the player slide 
  around pieces of a puzzle before they could continue, modern games integrate the 
  puzzles into their environment. 
   For example,  The 7 th Guest, a popular game released in 1992, featured puzzles 
  that, though interesting, were often completely incongruous. While walking through 
  a house, you find cans on a shelf, and you need to rearrange them so that the letters 
  on them form a sentence. Then you would suddenly find a giant chessboard and be 
  told that to continue in the game, you must find a way to exchange the positions of 
  all the black pieces and the white pieces. Then you would look through a telescope 
  and do a puzzle about connecting planets with lines. 
   Contrast that to  Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, which has as many puzzles, 
  but smoothly integrates them into environments in the game. When confronted 
  with a river of lava, you have to figure out how to throw water jugs in the right pat-
  tern so that you can cross the river. When you are in a dungeon where the doors are 
  opened and closed by a complex series of switches, you must figure out how to use 
  items found in the dungeon (statues, etc.) to flip the switches so you can success-
  fully get through all the doors. Some of these are quite complex; for example, some 
  enemies in the dungeon are paralyzed when light falls on them. To get the doors 
  open, you must lure the enemies onto the right switches, and then shoot flaming 
  arrows near enough to paralyze them to keep the door open so you can run out. 
  But in all cases, the puzzle elements are natural parts of the environment, and the 
  goals of solving the puzzle are direct goals of the player’s avatar. 
   This gradual change from explicit, incongruous puzzles to implicit, well-
  integrated ones is less because of a change in the tastes of the gaming audience, and 
  more because game designers have matured in their skills. Look at the two puzzles 
  below with Lens #43: The Lens of Elegance, and notice how many more purposes 
  the implicit puzzle serves as opposed to the explicit one. 
   Our two examples were adventure games. Can other genres include puzzles? 
  Absolutely. When you play a fighting game, and you have to stop and think about 
  which strategies are going to work best against a particular opponent, you are solv-
  ing a puzzle. When you play a racing game, and trying figure out where on the 
  track to use your turbo booster to finish the race in under a minute, you are solving 
  a puzzle. When you play a first person shooter, and you think about which order 
  you should shoot the enemies so that you take the least damage, you are solving 
  a puzzle. 
   But what about walkthroughs on the Web? Haven’t they spoiled videogame 
  puzzles forever? They have not. We’ll see why in the next section. 
  
  211
   Good Puzzles 
    Okay — so, puzzles are everywhere. The thing we really care about is how to create 
  good puzzles that will improve our games. Here are ten principles of puzzle design 
  that can be useful in any game genre. 
   Puzzle Principle #1: Make the Goal Easily Understood 
    To get people interested in your puzzle at all, they have to know what they are sup-
  posed to do. Consider this puzzle: 
  F I G U R E  
   12.2 
  GOOD PUZZLES
    Just looking at it, it isn’t at all obvious what the goal is. Is it about color match-
  ing? Is the goal to take it apart? Or maybe to put it back together? It isn’t easy to tell 
  for sure. Contrast that to this puzzle: 
    Almost anyone can look at this and tell that the goal is to get the disk off of the 
  shaft, even though they have never seen this before. The goal is clear. 
    The same thing applies to puzzles in videogames. If players aren’t sure what they 
  are supposed to do, they will quickly lose interest, unless figuring out what to do is 
  actually fun. And there are a lot of puzzles where figuring out what to do is part 
  of the puzzle. But you must use caution with these kind of puzzles — generally, 
  only diehard puzzle fans like that kind of challenge. Consider the fate of Hasbro’s 
  Nemesis Factor. This ingenious puzzle is much revered by puzzle fanatics for being 
  creative, interesting, and challenging — it challenges the player with one hundred 
  © Paul Eibe, produced by Bits and Pieces
  F I G U R E  
   12.3 
  © Oskar van Deventer, produced by Bits and Pieces
  
  CHAPTER TWELVE • GAME MECHANICS SUPPORT PUZZLES
  212
  puzzles, gradually increasing in difficulty. Its design is incredible, and Hasbro surely 
  hoped they might have another Rubik’s Cube on their hands. But sadly, it did not 
  sell well. Why? It violated our first puzzle principle — the goal was not clear. Its 
  curious stair-step design made it difficult to guess the goal, or even guess how you 
  might interact with it at all, just by looking at it. Even after you have purchased it, 
  the game still tells you little about what you are supposed to do. The player must 
  figure out the goal of each puzzle, and then try to solve it, and each of the one hun-
  dred puzzles has a different goal. It’s the sort of thing that hardcore puzzle freaks 
  love, but a more general audience finds frustrating, because it is a very open-ended 
  kind of problem that gives little feedback about whether you are on the right track. 
   When designing puzzles, make sure to view them through Lens #25: The Lens of 
  Goals, and make sure that you are clear to the player about what you want them to 
  know about the goals of your puzzle. 
      Puzzle Principle #2: Make It Easy to Get Started 
   Once a player understands the goal of your puzzle, then they need to get started 
  solving it. With some puzzles, it is quite clear how to begin. Consider Sam Loyd’s 
  famous “15 Puzzle, ” whose goal is to slide the tiles back into numerical order from 
  1 to 15. 
  F I G U R E
   12.4 
  F I G U R E
   12.5 
   Although the series of moves to solve the puzzle is not obvious, how you would 
  get started manipulating it is very clear to most players. Contrast that to this puzzle, 
  where the goal is to figure how which digit each letter represents: 
  
  213
      Puzzle Principle #3: Give a Sense of Progress 
    What is the difference between a riddle and a puzzle? In most cases, the big dif-
  ference is progress. A riddle is just a question that demands an answer. A puzzle 
  also demands an answer, but frequently involves manipulating something so that 
  you can see or feel yourself getting closer to the solution, bit by bit. Players like this 
  sense of progress — it gives them hope that they may actually arrive at an answer. 
  Riddles are not this way — you just have to think and think, and maybe start mak-
  ing guesses, which are either right or wrong. In early computer adventure games, 
  riddles were frequently encountered, since they were so easy to put into a game —
  but the “stone wall ” they give to the player is so frustrating that they are virtually 
  absent from modern adventure games. 
    But there is a way to turn a riddle into a puzzle — it’s a game we call  “ Twenty 
  Questions. ”  This is the game where one player thinks of a thing or a person, and 
   Lens #48: The Lens of Accessibility 
    When you present a puzzle to players (or a game of any kind), they should be 
  able to clearly visualize what their first few steps would be. Ask yourself these 
  questions: 
    ●  How will players know how to begin solving my puzzle, or playing my 
  game? Do I need to explain it, or is it self-evident? 
    ●  Does my puzzle or game act like something they have seen before? If it 
  does, how can I draw attention to that similarity. If it does not, how can I 
  make them understand how it does behave? 
    ●  Does my puzzle or game draw people in, and make them want to touch it 
  and manipulate it? If not, how I can I change it so that it does?  
  GOOD PUZZLES
    Like the 15 puzzle, the goal is very clear. However, most players are at a complete 
  loss as to how to begin solving a puzzle like this. Hardcore puzzle solvers will likely 
  begin a lengthy trial-and-error session to figure out how they might approach it, but 
  most players will just abandon it as  “ too hard. ”  
    Another piece of wisdom from Scott Kim is  “To design a good puzzle, first build 
  a good toy. ” And it makes sense to pull out Lens #15: The Lens of the Toy when 
  designing your puzzle, for good toys make it obvious how to manipulate them. 
  More than that, the player is drawn toward manipulating them. This is one of the 
  things that made Rubik’s Cube so successful: even someone who has no intention 
  of trying to solve the puzzle wants to see what it feels like to touch it, hold it, and 
  twist it.
  
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  214
  the other player gets to ask twenty yes/no questions in an attempt to learn what the 
  first player is thinking of. 
   The great thing about the game of Twenty Questions is the sense of progress that 
  a player gets. By using their questions to gradually narrow down the space of pos-
  sible answers, they can get closer and closer to a solution — after all, 2 20 is over 
  one million, and this means that twenty well-crafted yes/no questions could home 
  in on one answer out of a million possibilities. When players get frustrated playing 
  Twenty Questions, it is because they feel like they aren’t getting any closer to an 
  answer. 
   One of the things that made players persistently try to solve Rubik’s Cube is the 
  sense of progress it gives. Gradually, a novice player is able to add more and more 
  colors to one side, until,  voila! An entire side is completed! This is a clear sign of 
  progress, and something that makes players quite proud! Now they just have to do 
  that five more times, right? 
   Visible progress is so important in puzzles that it becomes our next lens.
   Lens #49: The Lens of Visible Progress 
   Players need to see that they are making progress when solving a difficult prob-
  lem. To make sure they are getting this feedback, ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What does it mean to make progress in my game or puzzle? 
   ●  Is there enough progress in my game? Is there a way I can add more interim 
  steps of progressive success? 
   ●  What progress is visible, and what progress is hidden? Can I find a way to 
  reveal what is hidden?  
   Puzzle Principle #4: Give a Sense of Solvability 
   Related to a sense of progress is a sense of solvability. If players begin to suspect 
  that your puzzle is not solvable, they will become afraid that they are hopelessly 
  wasting their time and give up in disgust. You need to convince them that it is solv-
  able. Visible progress is a good way to do this, but so is outright stating that your 
  puzzle has an answer. Returning to Rubik’s Cube, it had a very elegant method of 
  making it clear to the player that it was a solvable puzzle — when purchased, it is 
  already in the solved state — the player then scrambles it up, usually by twisting 
  it about a dozen times. At this point, it is quite obviously solvable — in as many 
  moves as it took to scramble it, just backwards! But of course, most players find 
  that solving it takes many more twists than that. But as frustrated as they may get, 
  they never have any doubt that it can be solved. 
  
  215
   Puzzle Principle #5: Increase Difficulty Gradually 
    We’ve already discussed the fact that difficulty in games should increase gradu-
  ally (Lens #31: The Lens of Challenge), and successful puzzles also adhere to this 
  maxim. But how can a puzzle increase in difficulty? Isn’t it either solved or not 
  solved? Most puzzles are solved by taking a series of actions that are often small 
  steps toward a chain of goals that leads to solving the puzzle. It is these actions that 
  should gradually increase in difficulty. The classic jigsaw puzzle provides a naturally 
  balanced series of these steps. A player who tries to solve a jigsaw puzzle doesn’t 
  just start sticking pieces together until it is solved; instead they usually follow this 
  sequence of steps: 
    1.   Flip all the pieces so that the picture side is up (mindlessly easy) 
    2.   Find the corner pieces (very easy) 
    3.   Find the edge pieces (easy) 
    4.   Connect the edge pieces into a frame (a slight challenge, rewarding when 
  completed) 
    5.   Sort the remaining pieces by color (easy) 
    6.   Start assembling sections that are obviously near each other (a moderate 
  challenge) 
    7.   Assemble the pieces that could go anywhere (a significant challenge)  
    This gradual increase in difficulty is part of what gives jigsaw puzzles last-
  ing appeal. Now and then, someone releases a jigsaw puzzle that is meant to be 
  tougher than normal, and they usually do it by changing the properties of the puz-
  zle so that some (or all) of steps 1 through 6 are eliminated. 
    One Tough Puzzle, shown below, does just that. And while it is interesting as 
  a novelty, the only interesting part about it is how immediately difficult it is. The 
  pleasing nature of gradually increasing difficulty that makes jigsaw puzzles a peren-
  nial favorite is absent. 
  F I G U R E
   12.6 
  GOOD PUZZLES
  
  CHAPTER TWELVE • GAME MECHANICS SUPPORT PUZZLES
  216
    One easy way to ensure that difficulty increases gradually is to give the players 
  control over the order of the steps to your puzzle. Consider the crossword puzzle —
  players have dozens of questions to answer, with each one answered giving hints 
  about the unanswered ones. Players naturally gravitate toward answering the ques-
  tions that are easiest for them and slowly work their way up toward harder ques-
  tions. Giving the player this kind of choice is called  parallelism, and it has another 
  excellent property. 
   Puzzle Principle #6: Parallelism Lets the Player Rest 
   Puzzles make a player stop and think. A real danger is that the player will be unable 
  to think their way past your puzzle and, unable to make progress, will abandon the 
  game entirely. A good way to safeguard against this is to give them several different 
  related puzzles at once. This way, if they get tired of banging their head on one of 
  them, they can go off and try another for a while. In the process of doing that, they 
  will have taken a break from the first puzzle, and they may be ready to try it again 
  with the renewed vigor that a break can provide. The old saying that  “A change is 
  as good as a rest ” applies perfectly here. Games like crossword puzzles and Sudoku 
  do this naturally. But videogames can do it as well. It is the rare RPG that gives 
  puzzles and challenges to a player one at a time — much more common is to give 
  two or more parallel challenges at once, since the player is much less likely to grow 
  frustrated this way.
   Lens #50: The Lens of Parallelism 
   Parallelism in your puzzle brings parallel benefits to the player’s experience. 
  To use this lens, ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  Are there bottlenecks in my design where players are unable to proceed if 
  they cannot solve a particular challenge? If so, can I add parallel challenges 
  for a player to work on when this challenge stumps them? 
   ●  If parallel challenges are too similar, the parallelism offers little benefit. Are 
  my parallel challenges different enough from each other to give players the 
  benefit of variety? 
   ●  Can my parallel challenges be connected somehow? Is there a way that 
  making progress on one can make it easier to solve the others?  
      Puzzle Principle #7: Pyramid Structure Extends Interest 
   One more thing that parallelism lends itself to is pyramid puzzle structure. 
  This means a series of small puzzles that each give some kind of clue to a larger 
  
  217
  puzzle. A classic example is the Jumble scrambled word game frequently seen in 
  newspapers. 
   © Tribune Media Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved.  Reprinted with permission    
  F I G U R E
   12.7 
    This puzzle could be made simpler by just asking you to unscramble the four 
  words. But by having each unscrambled word give a few more letters for a more 
  difficult scrambled phrase, the game combines short- and long-term goals. It grad-
  ually increases difficulty, and most important, a pyramid has a point: this game 
  has a single clear and meaningful goal — to figure out the punch line of the joke 
  presented by the cartoon.
  GOOD PUZZLES
   Lens #51: The Lens of the Pyramid 
    Pyramids fascinate us because they have a singular highest point. To give your 
  puzzle the allure of the ancient pyramids, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  Is there a way all the pieces of my puzzle can feed into a singular challenge 
  at the end? 
    ●  Big pyramids are often made of little pyramids — can I have a hierarchy 
  of ever more challenging puzzle elements, gradually leading to a final 
  challenge? 
    ●  Is the challenge at the top of my pyramid interesting, compelling, and clear? 
  Does it make people want to work in order to get to it?  
      Puzzle Principle #8: Hints Extend Interest 
    “Hints?! What is the point of even having a puzzle if we are going to give hints? ” I 
  hear you cry. Well, sometimes when a player is about to give up on your puzzle in 
  frustration and disgust, a well-timed hint can renew their hope and their curiosity. 
  
  CHAPTER TWELVE • GAME MECHANICS SUPPORT PUZZLES
  218
  And while it “cheapens” the puzzle-solving experience somewhat, solving a puz-
  zle with a hint is much better than not solving it at all. One thing Hasbro’s  Nemesis 
  Factor did brilliantly was to include a hint system. It featured a  “hint” button, and 
  the player who presses it gets to hear a brief one- or two-word hint about the puzzle 
  they are currently working on like  “staircase ” or “music. ” Pushing it a second time 
  gives another less cryptic hint. To help balance this hint system, there is a slight 
  points penalty for asking for hints, but generally players are willing to take the hit 
  and get a hint than give up on the puzzle altogether! 
   Today, with walkthroughs of virtually every game available on the Internet, you 
  can argue that hints are not really necessary for hard videogame puzzles. But still, 
  you might consider them, since solving a puzzle based on a hint can be more enjoy-
  able than just cribbing the answer from someone else. 
      Puzzle Principle #9: Give the Answer! 
   No, seriously, hear me out on this one. Ask yourself this question: What is it that 
  is so pleasurable about solving puzzles? Most people answer that it is the  “Aha!”
  experience you get when you figure out the answer. But the funny thing is that 
  experience is triggered not by solving the puzzle, but by  seeing the answer. Sure, it’s 
  a little sweeter if you solved it yourself, but if you have given serious consideration 
  to a problem, your problem-solving brain is primed for a rush of pleasure at merely 
  seeing or hearing the answer. Think about mystery novels — they are just big puz-
  zles in book form. And sometimes readers guess the ending ahead of time, but more 
  often, they are surprised (Oh! The butler did it! I see now!), which is just as pleas-
  urable, or weirdly,  more pleasurable than if they had figured it out themselves. 
   So, how can you put this into practice? In the age of the Internet, you probably 
  won’t have to — if your game is known at all, answers to your puzzles will quickly 
  be posted online. But why not consider saving your players the trouble, and give 
  them a way to find out the answers to your puzzles from within your game, if they 
  are truly stumped? 
      Puzzle Principle #10: Perceptual Shifts are a 
  Double-Edged Sword 
   Consider this puzzle:
   Can you arrange six matchsticks so they form four equilateral triangles?  
   No, seriously, consider it. And by that, I mean, try to solve it. 
   Need a hint? You can find one at www.artofgamedesign.com if you need it. 
   I’m guessing one of three things happened. Either (A) you’ve seen this one 
  before, and solving it involved no pleasurable  “Aha,” although maybe there was a 
  
  219
  little pleasurable smugness; or (B) you had a  “perceptual shift, ” that is, a big leap in 
  your assumptions, and came up with the right answer, which was very exciting; or 
  (C) someone told you the answer, and you had a little bit of  “Aha! ” combined with 
  a little bit of shame for not figuring it out yourself; or (D) you gave up in frustration, 
  feeling kind of ashamed. 
    The point I want to make with this is that puzzles like this, that involve a per-
  ceptual shift where  “either you get it or you don’t, ” are a problematic double-edged 
  sword. When a player is able to make the perceptual shift, they receive a great deal 
  of pleasure and solve the puzzle. But if they are not able to make the perceptual 
  shift, they get nothing. Puzzles like this involve almost no possibility of progress 
  or gradual increase in difficulty — just a lot of staring, and straining for inspiration 
  to come. They are almost like riddles in this way, and generally, you will find they 
  should be used sparingly in videogames or in any other medium where the player 
  expects to be able to make continual progress.  
   A Final Piece 
    This concludes the ten principles of puzzle design. There are certainly others, but 
  these ten can take you a long way if you use them in your designs. Puzzles can add 
  a meaningful mental dimension to any game. Before we move on to a new topic, I’ll 
  leave you with a final lens that is useful to see if your game has enough puzzles of 
  the right kind.
   Lens #52: The Lens of the Puzzle 
    Puzzles make the player stop and think. To ensure your puzzles are doing eve-
  rything you want to shape the player experience, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  What are the puzzles in my game? 
    ●  Should I have more puzzles, or less? Why? 
    ●  Which of the ten puzzle principles apply to each of my puzzles? 
    ●  Do I have any incongruous puzzles? How can I better integrate them into 
  the game? (Use Lens #43: The Lens of Elegance to help do this).  
    In the last few chapters, we have focused on game internals — it is now time 
  to consider an external element — the interface of the game.   ? 
  A FINAL PIECE
  
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  CHAPTER
  221
   Players Play Games 
  Through an  Interface  
  221
  THIRTEEN
  F I G U R E
  13.1
  
  CHAPTER THIRTEEN • PLAYERS PLAY GAMES THROUGH AN INTERFACE
  222
   Between Yin and Yang 
  F I G U R E
  13.2
    Remember in Chapter 9 when we talked about the strange relationship between 
  player and game? Specifically, that the player puts their mind inside the game 
  world, but that game world really only exists in the mind of the player? This magi-
  cal situation, which is at the heart of all we care about, is made possible by the 
  game interface, which is where player and game come together. Interface is the infi-
  nitely thin membrane that separates white/yang/player and black/yin/game. When 
  the interface fails, the delicate flame of experience that rises from the player/game 
  interaction is suddenly snuffed out. For this reason, it is crucial for us to understand 
  how our game interface works, and to make it as robust, as powerful, and as invis-
  ible as we can. 
   Before we proceed, though, we should consider the goal of a good interface. It 
  isn’t “to look nice ” or “to be fluid, ” although those are nice qualities. The goal of an 
  interface is to make players feel in control of their experience. This idea is important 
  enough that we should keep a lens around for frequent examination of whether a 
  player feels in control.   
   Lens #53: The Lens of Control 
   This lens has uses beyond just examining your interface, since meaningful 
  control is essential for immersive interactivity. To use this lens, ask yourself 
  these questions: 
   ●  When players use the interface, does it do what is expected? If not, why 
  not? 
  
  223
   Breaking it Down 
    Like many things we encounter in game design, interface is not simple or easily 
  described. “ Interface ”  can mean many things — a game controller, a display device, 
  a system of manipulating a virtual character, the way the game communicates infor-
  mation to the player, and many other things. To avoid confusion, and to understand 
  it properly, we need to separate it out into component parts. 
    Let’s work from the outside in. Initially, we know that we have a player, and a 
  game world. 
    ●  Intuitive interfaces give a feeling of control. Is your interface easy to master, 
  or hard to master? 
    ●  Do your players feel they have a strong influence over the outcome of the 
  game? If not, how can you change that? 
    ●  Feeling powerful   � feeling in control. Do your players feel powerful? Can 
  you make them feel more powerful somehow?  
  Player
  World
  F I G U R E
  13.3
     On the simplest level, the interface is everything that is in between them. So, 
  what is in there? There is some way that the player touches something to make 
  changes in the world. This could be by manipulating pieces on a game board, or by 
  using a game controller or keyboard and mouse. Let’s call this  physical input. And 
  similarly, there is some way the player can see what is going on in the game world. 
  BREAKING IT DOWN
  
  CHAPTER THIRTEEN • PLAYERS PLAY GAMES THROUGH AN INTERFACE
  224
  It could be by looking at a game board, or it could be some kind of display screen 
  with audio or other sensory output. Let’s call this  physical output. So we have: 
  Player
  Physical
  input
  Physical
  output
  World
  F I G U R E
  13.4
   This looks pretty simple, and is the way most people naively think about game 
  interface. But some important things are missing from this picture. While there are 
  times when the physical input and output are directly connected to elements in the 
  game world, there are other times that there is some amount of intermediate inter-
  face. When you play  Pac Man, and there is a score display at the top of the screen, 
  this is not really part of the game world — it is really part of the interface. The same 
  goes for menus and buttons on mouse-based interfaces, or when you hit an enemy 
  for ten points of damage and a stylized “10 ” floats out of his body. When you play 
  most 3D games, you do not see the entire world, but instead you see a view into 
  the world from a virtual camera with a position in the virtual space of the game 
  world. All these things are part of a conceptual layer that exists between the physi-
  cal input/output and the game world. This layer is usually called  virtual interface , 
  and has both input elements (such as a virtual menu where the player makes a 
  selection) and output elements (such as a score display) (see Figure 13.5). 
    Sometimes, the virtual layer is so thin it is almost non-existent, but other times 
  it is very dense, full of virtual buttons, sliders, displays, and menus that help the 
  player play the game, but aren’t part of the game world. 
   And that makes a pretty complete picture of the major interface elements 
  involved in a game. But we’ve left out something crucial to the design of any game 
  interface: mapping. On every arrow on the right side of the diagram, some special 
  things are happening — it is not as if data are simply passed through — rather, 
  these data go through a special transformation based on how the software is 
  designed. Every one of the arrows on the game side represents a separate piece of 
  computer code. How all this behaves together in composite defines the interface for 
  
  225
  your game. Some quick examples of the kinds of logic that can be contained in each 
  of those six arrows: 
    1.   Physical Input  → World: If pushing a thumbstick makes my avatar run, the map-
  ping tells how fast it will run, and how quickly it will slow down if I let go. If I 
  push the thumbstick harder, does my character run faster? Will my character accel-
  erate over time? Will  “ double tapping ” the thumbstick make my character dash? 
    2.   World  → Physical Output: If you cannot see the entire world at once, what 
  parts of it can you see? How will it be shown? 
    3.   Physical Input  → Virtual Interface: In a mouse-based menu interface, what 
  does clicking do? What does double clicking do? Can I drag parts of the interface 
  around? 
    4.   Virtual Interface → World: When the player manipulates the virtual interface, 
  what effect does this have on the world? If they select an item in the world, and 
  use a pop-up menu to take an action on it, does that action take effect immedi-
  ately, or after some delay? 
    5.   World  → Virtual Interface: How are changes in the world manifested in the 
  virtual interface? When do scores and energy bars change? Do events in the 
  world lead to special pop-up windows or menus, or mode changes in the inter-
  face? When players enter a battle, will special battle menus appear? 
    6.   Virtual Interface → Physical Output: What data are shown to the player, and 
  where does it go on the screen? What colors will it be? What fonts? Will hit 
  points pulse or make a sound when they are very low?  
    For close examination of these six types of connections, we introduce two new 
  lenses.
  BREAKING IT DOWN
  Player
  Physical
  input
  Virtual
  interface
  World
  Physical
  output
  F I G U R E
  13.5
  
  CHAPTER THIRTEEN • PLAYERS PLAY GAMES THROUGH AN INTERFACE
  226
   Lens #54: The Lens of Physical Interface 
   Somehow, the player has a physical interaction with your game. Copying exist-
  ing physical interfaces is an easy trap to fall into. Use this lens to be sure that 
  your physical interface is well-suited to your game by asking these questions: 
   ●  What does the player pick up and touch? Can this be made more pleasing? 
   ●  How does this map to the actions in the game world? Can the mapping be 
  more direct? 
   ●  If you can’t create a custom physical interface, what metaphor are you 
  using when you map the inputs to the game world? 
   ●  How does the physical interface look under the Lens of the Toy? 
   ●  How does the player see, hear, and touch the world of the game? Is there a 
  way to include a physical output device that will make the world become 
  more real in the player’s imagination?  
   The world of videogames occasionally goes through dry spells where 
  designers feel it is not feasible to create custom physical interfaces. But the 
  marketplace thrives on experimentation and novelty, and suddenly specially 
  crafted physical interfaces, like the  Dance Dance Revolution mat, the Guitar 
  Hero guitar, and the Wiimote appear, bringing new life to old gameplay by giv-
  ing players a new way to interact with old game mechanics.  
   Lens #55: The Lens of Virtual Interface 
   Designing virtual interfaces can be very tricky. Done poorly, they become a 
  wall between the player and the game world. Done well, they amplify the 
  power and control a player has in the game world. Ask these questions to 
  make sure that your virtual interface is enhancing player experience as much 
  as possible: 
   ●  What information does a player need to receive that isn’t obvious just by 
  looking at the game world? 
   ●  When does the player need this information? All the time? Only occasion-
  ally? Only at the end of a level? 
   ●  How can this information be delivered to the player in a way that won’t 
  interfere with the player’s interactions with the game world? 
  
  227
    Of course, these six kinds of mapping cannot be designed independently — they 
  must all work in unison to create a great interface. But before we move on, we 
  must consider two other important kinds of mapping, represented by the arrows 
  that come and go from the player, or more specifically, from the player’s imagina-
  tion. This is when a player becomes immersed in a game, no longer pushing but-
  tons and watching a TV screen, instead, they are running, jumping, and swinging 
  a sword. And you can hear this in a player’s language. A player generally won’t say 
  “I controlled my avatar so he ran to the castle, and then I pressed the red button to 
  make him throw a grappling hook, then I started tapping the blue button to make 
  my avatar climb up. ” No, a player describes the gameplay this way:  “I ran up the 
  hill, threw my grappling hook, and started climbing the castle wall. ” Players project 
  themselves into games, and on some level disregard that the interface is there at all, 
  unless it suddenly becomes confusing. A person’s ability to project consciousness 
  into whatever they are controlling is almost alarming. But it is only possible if the 
  interface becomes second nature to the player, and this gives us our next lens.   
    ●  Are there elements of the game world that are easier to interact with using 
  a virtual interface (like a pop-up menu, for instance) than they are to inter-
  act with directly? 
    ●  What kind of virtual interface is best suited to my physical interface? Pop-
  up menus, for example, are a poor match for a gamepad controller.  
   Lens #56: The Lens of Transparency 
    The ideal interface becomes invisible to the player letting the player’s imagi-
  nation be completely immersed in the game world. To ensure invisibility, ask 
  yourself these questions: 
    ●  What are the players desires? Does the interface let the players do what 
  they want? 
    ●  Is the interface simple enough that with practice, players will be able to use 
  it without thinking? 
    ●  Do new players find the interface intuitive? If not, can it be made more intui-
  tive, somehow? Would allowing players to customize the controls help, or hurt? 
    ●  Does the interface work well in all situations, or are there cases (near a 
  corner, going very fast, etc.) when it behaves in ways that will confuse the 
  player? 
  BREAKING IT DOWN
  
  CHAPTER THIRTEEN • PLAYERS PLAY GAMES THROUGH AN INTERFACE
  228
    This interface, a parody from the Web comic Penny Arcade, is probably not 
  transparent. 
   The Loop of Interaction 
   Information flows in a loop from player to game to player to game, round and 
  round. It is almost like this flow pushes a waterwheel that generates experience 
  when it spins. But it can’t be just any information that flows around this loop. The 
  information that is returned to the player by the game dramatically affects what the 
  player will do next. This information is generally called  feedback, and the quality of 
  this feedback can exert a powerful influence on how much the player understands 
  and enjoys what is happening in your game. 
   The importance of good feedback is easily overlooked. One example is the net 
  on a basketball hoop. The net does not affect the gameplay at all — but it slows the 
  ball as it descends from the hoop, so that all players can clearly see that it went in.   
   A less obvious example is the Swiffer (Figure 13.7), a simple device designed to be 
  a better solution for cleaning floors than the traditional broom/dustpan combination. 
   ●  Can players continue to use the interface well in stressful situations, or do 
  they start fumbling with the controls, or missing crucial information? If so, 
  how can this be improved? 
   ●  Does something confuse players about the interface? On which of the six 
  interface arrows is it happening?  
      www.penny-arcade.com. Used with permission.    
  F I G U R E
  13.6
  
  229
  Some people who have attempted to redesign the broom and dustpan have merely 
  modified the existing solution. It would appear that the designers of the Swiffer used 
  Lens #12: The Lens of the Problem Statement to invent a brand new solution. If we 
  look at some of the problems with the broom/dustpan solution: 
    Problem #1: It’s impossible to sweep all the dust into the dustpan. 
    Problem #2:  When standing, the dustpan is hard to use. When crouching, the 
  broom is hard to use. 
    Problem #3: The broom doesn’t really get all the dust. 
    Problem #4:  Your hands get kind of dirty when you try to sweep dust into the 
  dustpan. 
    Problem #5:  Transferring the dirt from the dustpan to the trash is perilous — it 
  often spills or blows around.  
    We see that the Swiffer, with its disposable cloth, solves these problems fairly well: 
    Problem #1 : No dustpan is needed. 
    Problem #2 : There is no need to crouch when using the Swiffer. 
    Problem #3 : The Swiffer cloth captures far more dust than a broom can. 
    Problem #4 : Your hands stay clean. 
    Problem #5 : The cloth is easily disposed of.  
    So, the Swiffer solves a lot of problems, which is makes it very appealing. 
  But it has an appeal beyond these practical things. It has a strong psychological 
  F I G U R E
  13.7
  THE LOOP OF INTERACTION
  
  CHAPTER THIRTEEN • PLAYERS PLAY GAMES THROUGH AN INTERFACE
  230
  appeal — frankly, it is fun to use. Why? Because the design addresses problems that 
  most people wouldn’t state as problems. For example: 
   Problem #6:  The user gets little feedback about how well they have cleaned the 
  floor.  
   Unless a floor is really dirty, it is hard to see whether your sweeping is making 
  any difference just by looking at the floor. You might say,  “Who cares? All that mat-
  ters is how well it cleans, right? ” But this lack of feedback can make the entire task 
  feel somewhat futile, which means that the user enjoys it less, and will clean their 
  floor less often. In other words, less feedback   � dirtier floor. But the Swiffer solves 
  this problem very well: 
   Problem #6: The dirt you have removed from the floor is clearly visible on the 
  cleaning cloth when you are done.  
  This feedback shows the user quite clearly that what they have done makes a 
  real difference in how clean the floor is. This triggers all kinds of pleasures — sat-
  isfaction of having done something useful, the pleasure of purification, and even 
  the pleasure of having secret knowledge that others cannot see. And though this 
  feedback doesn’t come until the end of the task, the user comes to anticipate it and 
  looks forward to seeing this concrete evidence of a job well done.  
   Lens #57: The Lens of Feedback 
   The feedback a player gets from the game is many things: judgment, reward, 
  instruction, encouragement, and challenge. Use this lens to be sure your feed-
  back loop is creating the experience you want by asking these questions at 
  every moment in your game: 
   ●  What do players need to know at this moment? 
   ●  What do players want to know at this moment? 
   ●  What do you want players to feel at this moment? How can you give feed-
  back that creates that feeling? 
   ●  What do the players want to feel at this moment? Is there an opportunity 
  for them to create a situation where they will feel that? 
   ●  What is the player’s goal at this moment? What feedback will help them 
  toward that goal?  
  Using this lens takes some effort, since feedback in a game is continuous, 
  but needs to be different in different situations. It takes a lot of mental effort to 
  use this lens in every moment of your game, but it is time well spent, because 
  it will help guarantee that the game is clear, challenging, and rewarding.
  
  231
  F I G U R E
  13.8
   Experiences without feedback are frustrating and confusing. At many cross-
  walks in the United States, pedestrians can push a button that will make the 
  DON’T WALK sign change to a WALK sign so they can cross the street safely. But 
  it can’t change right away, since that would cause traffic accidents. So the poor 
  pedestrian often has to wait up to a minute to see whether pressing the button 
  had any effect. As a result, you see all kinds of strange button-pressing behavior: 
  some people push the button and hold it for several seconds, others push it sev-
  eral times in a row, just to be safe. And the whole experience is accompanied by 
  a sense of uncertainty — pedestrians can often be seen nervously studying the 
  lights and DON’T WALK sign to see if it is going to change, because they might 
  not have pushed the button correctly. 
    What a delight it was to visit the United Kingdom, and find that in some areas 
  the crosswalk buttons give immediate feedback in the form of an illuminated 
  WAIT sign that comes on when the button has been pushed, and turns off when 
  the WALK period has ended (Figure 13.9)! The addition of some simple feedback 
  turned an experience where a pedestrian feels frustrated into one where they can 
  feel confident and in control. 
    Generally, it is a good rule of thumb that if your interface does not respond to 
  player input within a tenth of a second, the player is going to feel like something 
  is wrong with the interface. A typically problematic example of this often appears 
  when you make a game with a  “ jump ”  button. If the animator working on the jump 
  animation is new to videogames, he is very likely to put a  “wind up ” or “anticipa-
  tion ”  on the jump animation, where the character crouches down, getting ready to 
  THE LOOP OF INTERACTION
  
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  jump, for probably one-quarter to one-half a second. This is sound animation prac-
  tice, but because this breaks the tenth of a second rule (I push the jump button, but 
  my character doesn’t actually end up in the air until a half second later), it drives 
  players crazy with frustration. 
   But let’s return to our sweeping example: A dirty cloth is not the only feedback 
  that the Swiffer gives the user. Let’s consider another problem with the broom and 
  dustpan that most people would be unlikely to state. 
   Problem #7: Sweeping is boring.  
   Well, of course it is! It’s sweeping! But what do we mean by boring? We need to 
  break this down further. Specifically: 
   ●  Sweeping is repetitive (same motion over and over)  .
   ●  It requires you to focus your attention on something with no surprises (if you 
  don’t monitor that little pile of dust, it goes everywhere).  
   How does the Swiffer meet this challenge? 
   Solution #7 : Using the Swiffer is fun!  
      Helpful Feedback    
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    This may well be the single biggest selling point of the Swiffer. In television 
  advertisements for the Swiffer, they show people joyously dancing through houses 
  cleaning floors, and some ads featured people picking up the Swiffer out of sheer 
  curiosity, and then cleaning the floors while playing with the Swiffer like a child 
  plays with a toy. And the Swiffer does very well under Lens #15: The Lens of the 
  Toy — it is fun to play with... but why? It’s just a cloth on a stick, right? Yes, in 
  one sense, but the base of the Swiffer, where the cloth goes is attached to the stick 
  with a special sort of hinge, so that when you rotate your wrist, even slightly, the 
  base that holds the cloth rotates dramatically. A little motion from my wrist makes 
  the cleaning mechanism move easily, fluidly, and powerfully — getting into exactly 
  the position you want it to be in with a minimum of effort. Using it feels kind of 
  like running a magic race car around the floor of your house. The motion that the 
  cleaning base shows is  second-order motion; that is, motion that is derived from 
  the action of the player. When a system shows a lot of second-order motion that a 
  player can easily control, and that gives the player a lot of power and rewards, we 
  say that it is a  juicy system — like a ripe peach, just a little bit of interaction with it 
  gives you a continuous flow of delicious reward. Juiciness is often overlooked as an 
  important quality in a game. To avoid overlooking it, use this lens.   
   Lens #58: The Lens of Juiciness 
    To call an interface  “ juicy ”  might seem kind of silly — although it is very com-
  mon to hear an interface with very little feedback described as  “ dry. ”  Juicy 
  interfaces are fun the moment you pick them up. To maximize juiciness, ask 
  yourself these questions: 
    ●  Is my interface giving the player continuous feedback for their actions? If 
  not, why not? 
    ●  Is second-order motion created by the actions of the player? Is this motion 
  powerful and interesting? 
    ●  Juicy systems reward the player many ways at once. When I give the player 
  a reward, how many ways am I simultaneously rewarding them? Can I find 
  more ways?  
    We discussed in Chapter 3 how the difference between work and play is one of 
  attitude. I chose this non-game example of the Swiffer as an illustration because 
  the feedback it gives is so powerful that it changes work into play. And it is impor-
  tant for your interface to be fun, if possible — since your game is meant to be fun, 
  and you run the risk of creating inner contradictions and a self-defeating experience 
  if you put a dry, painful interface as the player’s gateway to your supposedly fun 
  THE LOOP OF INTERACTION
  
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  experience. Remember, fun is pleasure with surprises, so if your interface is going to 
  be fun, it should give both. 
    Channels of Information 
   One important goal of any interface is to communicate information. Determining 
  the best way for your game to communicate necessary information to the player 
  requires some thoughtful design, since games can often contain a great deal of 
  information, and often much of it is needed at the same time. To figure out the 
  best way to present the information in your game, try following these steps. 
  Referring back to our interface data flow diagram from the beginning of the 
  chapter , we are mostly talking about arrows 5 (World  → Virtual Interface) and 6 
  (Virtual Interface → Physical Output). 
      Step 1: List and Prioritize Information 
   A game has to present a lot of information, but it is not all equally important. Let’s 
  say we were designing the interface for a game similar to the classic NES game, 
  Legend of Zelda. We might begin by listing all of the information the player needs to 
  see. A simple unprioritized list might look like 
   1.   Number of rubies 
   2.   Number of keys 
   3.   Health 
   4.   Immediate surroundings 
   5.   Distant surroundings 
   6.   Other inventory 
   7.   Current weapon 
   8.   Current treasure 
   9.   Number of bombs  
   Now, we might sort these by importance: 
    Need to know every moment: 
   4.   Immediate surroundings  
   Need to glance at from time to time while playing: 
   1.   Number of rubies 
   2.   Number of keys 
  
  235
    3.   Health 
    5.   Distant surroundings 
    7.   Current weapon 
    8.   Current treasure 
    9.   Number of bombs  
    Need to know only occasionally: 
    6.   Other inventory  
   Step 2: List Channels 
    A channel of information is just a way of communicating a stream of data. Exactly 
  what the channels are varies from game to game — and there is a lot of flexibility in 
  how you choose them. Some possible channels of information might be 
    ●  The top center of the screen 
    ●  The bottom right of the screen 
    ●  My avatar 
    ●  Game sound effects 
    ●  Game music 
    ●  The border of the game screen 
    ●  The chest of the approaching enemy 
    ●  The word balloon over a character’s head  
    It can be a good idea to list out the possible channels that you think you might 
  use. In  Legend of Zelda, the main channels of information the designers settled on 
  were 
    ●  Main display area 
    ●  Dashboard of information at the top of the screen  
    Also, they decided there would be a  “mode change ” the player could activate by 
  hitting the “ select ”  button (we’ll discuss mode changes later in the chapter) , which 
  has different channels of information: 
    ●  Auxiliary display area 
    ●  Dashboard of information at the bottom of the screen  
  CHANNELS OF INFORMATION
  
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      Step 3: Map Information to Channels 
   Now, the difficult task comes of mapping the types of information to the different 
  channels. This is usually done partly by instinct, partly by experience, and mostly 
  by trial and error — drawing lots of little sketches, thinking about them, and then 
  redrawing them, until you think you have something worth trying out. In Zelda, the 
  mapping is as follows: 
   Main display area: 
   4.   Immediate surroundings  
   Dashboard of information at the top of the screen: 
   1.   Number of rubies 
   2.   Number of keys 
   3.   Health 
   5.   Distant surroundings 
   7.   Current weapon 
   8.   Current treasure 
   9.   Number of bombs  
    Auxiliary display area: 
   6.   Other inventory  
   Taking a look at the main screen and sub-screen, you can see other interesting 
  choices that were made:   
  F I G U R E
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  237
    Note that the dashboard information is so important to gameplay that it needs to 
  be shown all the time on both the main and sub-screens. And the contents of that 
  dashboard really involve seven different channels of information. Notice how they 
  split them up — health was deemed so important that it got nearly one-third of the 
  interface. Rubies, keys, and bombs, though their functions are different, each have 
  to communicate a two-digit number, so they are all grouped together. The weapon 
  and treasure you are holding are so important that they have little boxes around 
  them. The “ A ” and “ B ”  are reminders to the player about which buttons to hit in 
  order to use these items. 
    Also note on the inventory screen how extra space was used to give the player 
  some instruction on how to use it. 
    You can see that even though this is a relatively simple interface compared to 
  more modern games, there were many decisions the designer made about how to 
  lay it out, and these decisions made a significant impact on the game experience. 
      Step 4: Review Use of Dimensions 
    A channel of information in a game can have several dimensions. For example, if 
  you have decided to map  “damage to an enemy ” to “numbers that fly out of that 
  enemy, ” you have several dimensions you can work with on that channel. Some of 
  these might be 
    ●  The number you display 
    ●  The color of the number 
    ●  The size of the numerals 
    ●  The font of the numerals  
  F I G U R E
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  CHANNELS OF INFORMATION
  
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   Now you have to decide which of these dimensions, if any, you want to use. 
  Surely you will use the first one, the number. But will the color mean anything? 
  Perhaps you will use the other dimensions as  reinforcers of the information — 
  numbers under 50 will be white and small, numbers from 50 to 99 will be yellow 
  and medium-sized, but numbers over 100 will be red and very large and in a special 
  font to emphasize the amount of damage. 
   And while using multiple dimensions on a channel to reinforce a piece of infor-
  mation is a way to make the information very clear (and also kind of juicy), you 
  could also take a different approach and decide to put different pieces of informa-
  tion on the different dimensions. For example, you might decide to color the num-
  bers to indicate friend (white) or foe (red). Then you might make the size of the 
  numbers indicate how close the character is to defeat — small numerals might 
  mean the character has a lot of hit points left, while large numerals might mean 
  they are about to die. This kind of technique can be very efficient and elegant. By 
  using a single number, you have communicated three different pieces of informa-
  tion. The risk is that you have to educate the player on what these different dimen-
  sions on one channel of information represent, which might be difficult for some 
  players to understand or remember. Good use of channels and dimensions is what 
  makes for an elegant, well laid out interface, so we keep a special lens around for 
  this kind of examination.  
   Lens #59: The Lens of Channels and Dimensions 
   Choosing how to map game information to channels and dimensions is the 
  heart of designing your game interface. Use this lens to make sure you do it 
  thoughtfully and well. Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What data need to travel to and from the player? 
   ●  Which data are most important? 
   ●  What channels do I have available to transmit this data? 
   ●  Which channels are most appropriate for which data? Why? 
   ●  Which dimensions are available on the different channels? 
   ●  How should I use those dimensions?  
   Modes 
   What is an interface mode? Simply put, it is a change in one of the mapping arrows 
  (1–6) in our interface diagram. For example, if pressing the B button changes the 
  functionality of the gamepad so that instead of making your avatar run around it 
  makes your avatar aim a water hose instead, that is a mode change — the mapping 
  
  239
  on arrow #1 (Physical Interface  → World) has just changed. Mode changes can hap-
  pen as a result of mapping changes on any of the six arrows. 
    Modes are a great way to add variety to your game, but you must be very careful, 
  since you run a risk of confusing the player if they don’t realize that a mode change 
  has occurred. Here are a few tips to avoid getting in trouble with interface modes. 
      Mode Tip #1: Use as Few Modes as Possible 
    The fewer the modes, the less chance a player is going to get confused. Having mul-
  tiple interface modes isn’t a bad thing, but you should add modes cautiously, for 
  each one is something new the player is going to have to learn and understand. 
   Mode Tip #2: Avoid Overlapping Modes 
    Just as we have channels of information from the game to the player, there are simi-
  lar channels of information from the player to the game. Each button or thumbstick 
  is a channel of information, for example. Let’s say you have a game that lets you 
  change between walking mode (the thumbstick navigates) and throwing mode (the 
  thumbstick aims). Later, you decide to add a driving mode as well (the thumbstick 
  steers a car). What happens if the player changes into throwing mode while they 
  are driving? You could try to allow this, potentially putting you into two modes at 
  once (driving and throwing). And while this might work, it also might be a disaster 
  if the thumbstick is simultaneously steering a car and controlling an aiming inter-
  face. It might be wiser to move the aiming, in all cases, to a second thumbstick, if 
  your physical interface has one. By making your modes distinct and non-overlapping, 
  you keep yourself out of trouble. If you find you need to have overlapping modes, 
  make sure they use different channels of information on the interface. For example, 
  the thumbstick could have two navigating modes (flying or walking) and the but-
  ton have two shooting modes (shoot fireball or lightning bolt). These modes are on 
  completely different dimensions, so they can overlap safely — I can switch between 
  shooting fireballs and shooting lightning bolts while either walking or flying with 
  no confusing effects. 
      Mode Tip #3: Make Different Modes Look as Different as Possible 
    In other words, look at your modes with the Lens #57: The Lens of Feedback and 
  Lens #56: The Lens of Transparency. If a player doesn’t know what mode they are 
  in, they are going to be confused and frustrated. The old Unix text editing system, 
  vi (pronounced  “ V.I. ” ) was a symphony of confusing modes. Most people would 
  expect that a text editor, when it started up, would be in a mode that would allow 
  you to enter text. But not so for  vi. It was actually in a mode where each letter of 
  the keyboard would either issue a command, like  “delete line, ” or it would put the 
  editor into a new mode. But hitting these keys would give no feedback about what 
  mode you were in. If you actually wanted to enter text, you had to type a letter  “ i, ”
  CHANNELS OF INFORMATION
  
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  and then you would be in text insert mode, which looked exactly like command 
  entry mode. It was impossible to figure out on your own, and even seasoned  vi 
  users would occasionally get confused about what mode they were in. 
   Some great ways to make your modes look different in video games are listed next. 
   ●  Change something large and visible on the screen. In Halo 2, and most first 
  person shooters, when you change weapons, it is very visible. As a side note, the 
  amount of info you have left is given through an interesting channel — it is right 
  on the back of your gun. 
   ●  Change the action your avatar is taking. In the classic arcade game  Jungle King , 
  you go from a vine swinging mode to a swimming mode. Because your avatar is 
  doing something so obviously different, it is clear that the mode has changed 
  (also his hair changes color — that might be overkill). 
   ●  Change the on screen data. In Final Fantasy VII, and most RPGs, when you 
  enter combat mode, many combat statistics and menus suddenly come up, and it 
  is obvious there has been a mode change. 
   ●  Change the camera perspective. This is often overlooked as an indicator of a 
  mode change, but it can be very effective.   
   Lens #60: The Lens of Modes 
   An interface of any complexity is going to require modes. To make sure your 
  modes make the player feel powerful and in control and do not confuse or 
  overwhelm, ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What modes do I need in my game? Why? 
   ●  Can any modes be collapsed, or combined? 
   ●  Are any of the modes overlapping? If so, can I put them on different input 
  channels? 
   ●  When the game changes modes, how does the player know that? Can the 
  game communicate the mode change in more than one way?  
   Other Interface Tips 
   Okay — we’ve covered interface data flow, feedback, channels, dimensions, and 
  modes. That’s a good start. But whole books have been written about the topic 
  of interface design, and we have so many other interesting things to discuss, we 
  must move on! But before we do, here are some general tips for making good game 
  interfaces. 
  
  241
   Interface Tip #1: Steal 
    More politely, we would call this the  “top down approach ” to interface design. If 
  you are designing an interface for a known game genre, say an action/platform 
  game, you can begin with the interface of a known success in this area, and then 
  change it around to suit the things that are unique about your game. This can save 
  you a lot of design time, and has the benefit of being a familiar interface to your 
  users. Of course, if your game has nothing new to offer, this will make it feel like 
  a clone — but it is often surprising how one little change leads to another, which 
  leads to another, and before you know it, your clone interface has morphed into 
  something quite different. 
   Interface Tip #2: Customize 
    Also called the bottom up approach, it is the opposite of stealing. With this 
  approach, you design your interface from scratch, by listing out information, chan-
  nels, and dimensions like we explained earlier. This is a great way to get an inter-
  face that looks unique and is custom to your particular game. If your gameplay is 
  novel, you may find this is the only path available to you. But even if your game-
  play is nothing new, you may be surprised when you try to build it from the bottom 
  up — you may find that you invent a whole new way to play your game, because 
  everyone else has just been copying what is successful, and you took the time to 
  actually examine the problem, and tried to do a better job. 
   Interface Tip #3: Theme Your Interface 
    Often it is a different artist who designs the interface artwork than the one who 
  designs the game world. In Chapter 5 we talked about the importance of theming 
  everything, and interface is no exception. Go over every inch of your interface with 
  Lens #9: The Lens of Unification, and see if you can find a way to tie it all together 
  with the rest of the experience. 
   Interface Tip #4: Sound Maps to Touch 
    Usually, when we think of using sound in a game, we think of creating a soundscape 
  to give a sense of place (tweeting birds in a meadow), or to make actions seem 
  more realistic (hearing glass break when you see it break), or to give the player 
  feedback about their progress in the game (a musical glissando when you pick up 
  a treasure). But there is an often overlooked aspect to sound that has a direct bear-
  ing on interface: the human mind easily maps sound to touch. This is important, 
  since when we manipulate things in the real world, touch is a central component of 
  OTHER INTERFACE TIPS
  
  CHAPTER THIRTEEN • PLAYERS PLAY GAMES THROUGH AN INTERFACE
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  feedback we get about manipulation. In a virtual interface we get little if any infor-
  mation through our touch sense. But you can simulate touch by playing appropriate 
  sounds. First you have to think about what you would like your interface to feel like 
  if it were real, and then you have to decide what sounds will best create that feeling. 
  If you do this successfully, people will marvel at what a pleasure your interface is to 
  use, but they will have difficulty expressing exactly why. 
      Interface Tip #5:  Balance Options and Simplicity with Layers 
   When designing an interface, you will be confronted by two conflicting desires: the 
  desire to give the player as many options as possible, and the desire to make your 
  interface as simple as possible. As with so many things in game design, the key to 
  success is striking a balance. And one good way to achieve this balance is by cre-
  ating layers of interface through modes and sub-modes. If you have done a good 
  job of prioritizing your interface, you will have a good head start toward figuring 
  out how to do this. A typical videogame example of this is hiding Inventory and 
  Configuration menus under an infrequently used button, such as  “select.”  
   Interface Tip #6: Use Metaphors 
   A great shortcut to giving a player understanding of how your interface works is by 
  making it resemble something the player has seen before. For example, in designing 
  the game Toytopia, my team had a very unusual constraint. In this game, the player 
  issues keyboard commands (go up, go right, etc.) to a small team of windup toys. 
  Since it was a networked game, the plan was to keep things in sync by introducing 
  a delay between when a player issued a command, and when a toy would receive 
  it. This way, we could keep games in sync on different players ’ machines because 
  the local artificial delay would be the same length as the unavoidable network delay 
  of a signal traveling from one computer to another. Unfortunately (and not surpris-
  ingly) players found this to be confusing — they are used to a button push taking 
  action immediately — not taking a half second before something happens. The team 
  was frustrated to the point of considering abandoning the whole scheme, but then 
  someone had the idea that if we showed a visible radio signal traveling from the vir-
  tual button to the toy, and accompanied it by a  “radio transmission ” sound effect, it 
  might help players understand the mechanism better. And it worked! With the new 
  system, the radio transmission metaphor clearly explained the delay in action, and 
  also gave the players some immediate feedback about what was happening. And 
  under Lens #9: The Lens of Unification, this change helped reinforce the theme, 
  which was about radio-controlled toys.  
  
  243
   Interface Tip #7: Test, Test, Test! 
    No one gets an interface right the first time. New games require new interfaces, and 
  you cannot take it for granted that your new interface is going to be clear, power-
  giving, and fun unless you have people try it out. Test it as early as possible, and 
  as often as possible. Build prototypes of your interface well before you have a com-
  plete playable game. Make paper and cardboard prototypes of any button or menu 
  systems that you have, and get people to act out playing the game and using the 
  interface so that you can see where they are having trouble. Most important, by 
  working with players this way, like an anthropologist, you will start to get better 
  ideas about their intentions from moment to moment, which will inform all of your 
  interface decisions. 
      Interface Tip #8: Break the Rules to Help Your Player 
    Since many games are variations on existing themes, there is a lot of copying of 
  interface designs from game to game. So much so, that certain rules of thumb 
  tend to show up for each genre of game. These can be useful, but it is easy to 
  follow them slavishly without thinking about whether they are really a good idea 
  for the players of your game. One example involves PC games using a mouse. The 
  left mouse button is considered the main button, and some games choose to use 
  the right mouse button for other functionality. So, a rule of thumb is that the right 
  mouse button should generally not do anything, unless you are in a special mode 
  where it has a purpose. However, this rule is often taken too far — and in simple 
  games, such as children’s games, where the right mouse button isn’t used at all, 
  most designers tend to leave it completely disabled, so that all gameplay happens 
   The  Toytopia control panel.  A  “ down ” message has just been sent to Winnie the Pooh . © Disney 
  Enterprises, Inc. 
  F I G U R E
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  OTHER INTERFACE TIPS
  
  CHAPTER THIRTEEN • PLAYERS PLAY GAMES THROUGH AN INTERFACE
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  through the left mouse button. But when children use a mouse, they frequently 
  click the wrong mouse button because their hands are small. Smart designers break 
  this rule of thumb, and make the left and right mouse buttons both map to the 
  same action, so that either button can be pressed successfully. Really, why wouldn’t 
  you do this for every game that only needs one mouse button? 
   The game interface is indeed the gateway to the experience. Let us pass now 
  through that gateway, and look more closely at the experience itself.  
  
  CHAPTER
  245
   Experiences Can 
  be Judged by Their 
  Interest  Curves 
  245
  FOURTEEN
  F I G U R E
   14.1 
  
  CHAPTER FOURTEEN • EXPERIENCES CAN BE JUDGED BY THEIR INTEREST CURVES
  246
   My First Lens 
   When I was sixteen, I landed my first job working as a professional entertainer. It 
  was in a show troupe at a local amusement park. I had hopes of being a part of 
  shows where I could make good use of my much-practiced juggling skills, but my 
  job ended up being a mix of a lot of things — puppeteering, wearing a raccoon 
  costume, working the mixing board backstage, and hosting audience participation 
  comedy shows. But one day the head of the troupe, a magician named Mark Tripp, 
  came to me, explaining  “Listen — that new stage on the east side of the park is 
  almost finished. We’re going to move the music revue over there, and I’m going to 
  be putting on a magic show. On my days off, we need some other show to fill the 
  gap. Do you think you and Tom could put together a juggling show? ”
   Naturally, I was very excited — Tom and I had been practicing together every 
  chance we could get, hoping that we might get an opportunity to do our own show. 
  We talked it over, and put together a rough script, with brief descriptions of the 
  various tricks we could do, and the patter and jokes that would link them together. 
  We practiced it until we felt it was ready for a trial run. In a couple days, our big 
  moment came, and we got to try the show in front of an audience. We opened with 
  a balancing routine, followed by some ring juggling, then club juggling, then club 
  passing, and ending with five ball juggling, which we felt was our hardest trick. It 
  was exhilarating to be performing our very own show. At the end we took our bows 
  and went backstage triumphantly. 
   Mark was backstage waiting for us.  “Well, what did you think? ” we asked proudly. 
   “Not bad, ” he said, “but it could be a lot better. ”
   “Better?” I said, surprised, “but we didn’t drop anything! ”
   “True, ” he replied,  “but were you listening to that audience? ”
   I thought back. “Well, they were a little slow to warm up, I guess, but they really 
  liked the club passing routine! ”
   “Yes, but how about the five ball juggling — your last routine? ”
   We had to admit that didn’t go over as big as we thought it would. 
   “Let me see your script, ” he said. He read it over carefully, sometimes nodding, 
  sometimes squinting at it. He thought for a moment, and said, “You have some 
  good stuff in this act, but the progression isn’t quite right. ” Tom and I looked at 
  each other. 
    “Progression? ” I asked. 
   “Yeah, ” he responded, picking up a pencil,  “See, your show right now is kind of 
  shaped like this, ” and he sketched this shape on the back of the script: 
  F I G U R E
   14.2a 
  
  247
     He went on.  “Audiences generally prefer to see a show shaped more like this. ”  
  INTEREST CURVES
    “ See? ”
    I didn’t see. But I had the feeling I was looking at something very important. 
    “It’s simple. You need to start with more of a bang — to get their attention. Then 
  you back off, and do something a little smaller, to give them a chance to relax, and 
  get to know you. Then you gradually build up with bigger and bigger routines, until 
  you give them a grand finale that exceeds their expectations. If you put your ring 
  routine first, and your club passing routine last, I think you’ll have a much better 
  show. ”  
    The next day, we tried the show again, changing almost nothing but the order 
  of the routines — and Mark was absolutely right. The audience was excited from 
  the very beginning, and then their interest and excitement slowly built up over the 
  course of the show to a grand climax with our club passing routine. Even though 
  we dropped things a couple times in the second show, the audience response was 
  twice what we had at the first show, with a few people jumping to their feet and 
  shouting at the climax of the final routine. 
    Mark was waiting for us backstage, smiling this time.  “It seems like it went bet-
  ter today, ” he said. Tom replied,  “After you suggested that we change the show, it 
  seemed so obvious. It’s weird that we couldn’t see it on our own. ”
    “It’s not weird at all, ” said Mark. “When you are working on a show, you are 
  thinking about all the details, and how one thing links to another. It requires a real 
  change in perspective to rise above the show, and look at it as a whole from the 
  audience’s point of view. But it makes a real difference, huh? ”  
    “ It sure does! ” I said,  “ I guess we have a lot to think about. ”  
    “ Well, don’t think about it now — you two have a puppet show in five minutes. ” 
   Interest Curves 
    Since my time at the amusement park, I have found myself using this technique 
  again and again when designing games, and have always found it useful. But what 
  are these graphs, really? Let’s take a moment and examine them in detail. 
    The quality of an entertainment experience can be measured by the extent to 
  which its unfolding sequence of events is able to hold a guest’s interest. I use the 
  F I G U R E
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  248
  term “guest” instead of “player ” because it is a term that works with games as well 
  as more general experiences. The level of interest over the course of the experience 
  can be plotted out in an interest curve. Figure 14.3  shows an example of an interest 
  curve for a successful entertainment experience. 
    At point (A), the guest comes into the experience with some level of interest; other-
  wise they probably wouldn’t be there. This initial interest comes from preconceived 
  expectations about how entertaining the experience will be. Depending on the type 
  of experience, these expectations are influenced by the packaging, advertisements, 
  advice from friends, etc. While we want this initial interest to be as high as possible 
  to get guests in the door, overinflating it can actually make the overall experience 
  less interesting.  
   Then the experience starts. Quickly we come to point (B), sometimes called 
  “the hook. ” This is something that really grabs you and gets you excited about the 
  experience. In a musical it is the opening number. In the Beatles song  Revolution, it 
  is the screaming guitar riff. In Hamlet, it is the appearance of the ghost. In a videog-
  ame, it often takes the form of a little movie before the game starts. Having a good 
  hook is very important. It gives the guest a hint of what is to come and provides a 
  nice interest spike, which will help sustain focus over the less interesting part where 
  the experience is beginning to unfold and not much has happened yet. 
   Once the hook is over, we settle down to business. If the experience is well-
  crafted, the guest’s interest will continually rise, temporarily peaking at points like 
  (C) and (E), and occasionally dropping down a bit to points like (D) and (F), only 
  in anticipation of rising again. 
   Finally, at point (G), there is a climax of some kind, and by point (H), the story 
  is resolved, the guest is satisfied, and the experience is over. Hopefully, the guest 
  goes out with some interest left over, perhaps even more than when they came in. 
  When show business veterans say  “leave them wanting more, ” this is what they are 
  talking about. 
   Of course, not every good entertainment experience follows this exact curve. But 
  most successful entertainment experiences will contain some of the elements that 
  our picture of a good interest curve displays. 
  Time
  Interest
  A
  B
  F
  C
  D
  E
  H
  G
  F I G U R E
   14.3 
  
  249
     This diagram, on the other hand, shows an interest curve for a less successful 
  entertainment experience. There are lots of possibilities for bad interest curves, but 
  this one is particularly bad, although not as uncommon as one might hope. 
    As in our good curve, the guest comes in with some interest at point (a), but is 
  immediately disappointed, and due to the lack of a decent hook, the guest’s interest 
  begins to wane. 
    Eventually, something somewhat interesting happens, which is good, but it 
  doesn’t last, peaking at point (b), and the guest’s interest continues its downhill 
  slide until it crosses, at point (c), the interest threshold. This is the point where the 
  guest has become so disinterested in the experience that he changes the channel, 
  leaves the theater, closes the book, or shuts off the game. 
    This dismal dullness doesn’t continue forever, and something interesting does 
  happen later at point (d), but it doesn’t last, and instead of coming to a climax, the 
  experience just peters out at point (e) — not that it matters, since the guest prob-
  ably gave up on it some time ago. 
    Interest curves can be a very useful tool when creating an entertainment experi-
  ence. By charting out the level of expected interest over the course of an experience, 
  trouble spots often become clear and can be corrected. Further, when observing 
  guests having the experience, it is useful to compare their level of observed interest 
  to the level of interest that you, as an entertainer, anticipated they would have. Often, 
  plotting different curves for different demographics is a useful exercise. Depending 
  on your experience, it might be great for some groups, but boring for others (e.g., 
  “guy movies ” vs.  “chick flicks ”), or it might be an experience with  “something for 
  everyone, ” meaning well-structured curves for several different demographic groups. 
   Patterns Inside Patterns 
    Once you start thinking about games and entertainment experiences in terms of 
  interest curves, you start seeing the pattern of the good interest curve everywhere. 
  Interest
  Time
  a
  b
  c
  d
  e
  F I G U R E
   14.4 
  PATTERNS INSIDE PATTERNS
  
  CHAPTER FOURTEEN • EXPERIENCES CAN BE JUDGED BY THEIR INTEREST CURVES
  250
  You can see it in the three-act structure of a Hollywood movie. You can see it in the 
  structure of popular songs (musical intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, big 
  finish). When Aristotle says that every tragedy has a complication and a denoue-
  ment, you can see it there. When comedians talk about the  “rule of three, ” you can 
  see the interest curve. Anytime someone tells a story that is interesting, engaging, or 
  funny, the structure is there, like in this  “High Dive Horror ” story, which was sent 
  in by a girl to the  “Embarrassing Moments ” column of a teen magazine:
   High Dive Horror
   I was at an indoor pool, and my friends had dared me to jump off the highest 
  diving board. I’m really afraid of heights, but I climbed all the way up anyway. 
  I was looking down, trying to convince myself to jump, when my stomach just 
  turned over and I barfed — right into the pool! Even worse, it fell on a group 
  of cute guys! I climbed down as fast as I could and hid in the bathroom, but 
  everyone knew what I’d done!  
   You can even see the pattern quite concretely in the layout of a rollercoaster 
  track. And naturally, this pattern shows up in games. The first time I found myself 
  using it was when I was working on the Mark 2 version of Aladdin’s Magic Carpet 
  virtual reality experience for Disneyland. Some of us on the team had been discuss-
  ing how, although the experience was a lot of fun, it seemed to drag a little bit at 
  one point, and we were talking about how to improve that. It occurred to me that 
  drawing an interest curve of the game would probably be a good idea. It had a 
  shape roughly like this: 
  F I G U R E
   14.5 
    And suddenly it was very clear to me that the flat part was a real problem. How 
  to fix it wasn’t obvious. Simply putting more interesting moments in it might not be 
  enough — since if the interest level was too high, it would diminish the interest of 
  what was to come later. I finally realized that it might make the most sense to cut 
  the flat part from the game entirely. Talking to the show director, he was opposed 
  to cutting it — he felt we’d put too much work into it to cut it now, which was 
  understandable because we were pretty late in development at this point. Instead, 
  he suggested putting a shortcut at the beginning of the flat part so that some play-
  ers could bypass that area if they wanted. We put the shortcut in (a merchant’s tent 
  
  251
  you could fly into that magically transported you to the heart of the city), and it was 
  clear that players who knew about it preferred to take it. Observing the game in use 
  after installation, it was common to see the game operators watching the players 
  progress on monitors suddenly lean down to a player and whisper in their ear  “ go 
  in that tent! ” When I first witnessed this, I asked the operator why she told them 
  that, and she replied,  “Well, I don’t know  … they just seem to have more fun when 
  they go that way. ”  
    But the Magic Carpet experience was a brief one — only about five minutes long. 
  It makes sense to ask whether this pattern is meaningful at all for longer experi-
  ences. Will what works for a five-minute experience still work for one that goes on 
  for hours? As some evidence that it does, consider the game of  Half Life 2, one of 
  the most critically acclaimed games of all time. Look at this graph of the number of 
  player deaths that happen through a game of  Half Life 2, Episode 1, which has an 
  average completion time of five hours and thirty-nine minutes. 
  19
  14
  9
  4
  Undue alarm
  ep1_citadel_00
  Direct intervention
  ep1_citadel_03
  Average number of deaths (per map)
  Easy
  Lowlife
  ep1_c17_00
  Urban flight
  ep1_c17_01
  Exit 17
  ep1_c17_05
  ep1_citadel_01
  ep1_citadel_02
  ep1_citadel_02b
  ep1_citadel_04
  ep1_c17_00a
  ep1_c17_02
  ep1_c17_02b
  ep1_c17_02a
  ep1_c17_06
  Medium
  Hard
  F I G U R E
   14.6 
      © 2008, Valve Corporation. Used with permission.    
     The three lines indicate the three difficulty settings for the game. Do these shapes 
  look familiar? It can certainly be argued that the number of times a player dies is a 
  good indicator of challenge, which is connected to how interesting the experience is. 
    But what about even longer experiences like multiplayer games, where a player 
  might play for hundreds of hours? How can the same pattern hold up for a five 
  hundred hour experience? The answer is a little surprising:  Interest curve patterns 
  can be fractal.  
    In other words, each long peak, upon closer examination, can have an internal 
  structure that looks like the overall pattern, something like 
  PATTERNS INSIDE PATTERNS
  
  CHAPTER FOURTEEN • EXPERIENCES CAN BE JUDGED BY THEIR INTEREST CURVES
  252
   A Fractal Interest Curve 
  F I G U R E
   14.7 
     And of course, this can go as many layers deep as you like. Typical videogames 
  have this pattern in roughly three levels: 
   1.   Overall game: Intro movie, followed by a series of levels of rising interest, end-
  ing with a major climax where the player defeats the game. 
   2.   Each level: New aesthetics or challenges engage the player at the start, and then 
  the player is confronted with a series of challenges (battles, puzzles, etc.) that 
  provide rising interest until the end of the level, which often ends with some 
  kind of “boss battle. ” 
   3.   Each challenge: Every challenge the player encounters hopefully has a good 
  interest curve in itself, with an interesting introduction, and stepped rising chal-
  lenges as you work your way through it.  
   Multiplayer games have to give the player an even larger structure, which we’ll dis-
  cuss further in Chapter 22. 
   Interest curves will prove to be one of the most useful and versatile tools you can 
  use as a game designer, so let’s add them to our toolbox.
   Lens #61: The Lens of the Interest Curve 
   Exactly what captivates the human mind often seems different for every per-
  son, but the most pleasurable patterns of that captivation are remarkably 
  
  253
    What Comprises Interest? 
    At this point, you might find your analytical left-brain crying out,  “I like these 
  charts and graphs, but how can I objectively evaluate how interesting something 
  is to another person? This all seems very touchy-feely! ” And it is very touchy-feely. 
  Many people ask what the  “units of interest ” are. And there is no good answer for 
  that — we do not yet have a Fun-o-meter that can give a reading in  “ millifuns. ”  But 
  that’s okay, because all we care about are relative changes in interest — absolute 
  interest is less important. 
    To determine the interest level, you have to experience it with your whole self, 
  using your empathy and imagination, and using skills of the right-brain as well as 
  the left. Still, your left-brain may be happy to know that overall interest can be bro-
  ken down further into other factors. There are many ways to do that, but I like to 
  use these three: 
   Factor 1: Inherent Interest 
    Some events are simply more interesting than others. Generally, risk is more inter-
  esting than safety, fancy is more interesting than plain, and the unusual is more 
  interesting than the ordinary. A story about a man wrestling an alligator is probably 
  similar for everyone. To see how a player’s interest in your experience changes 
  over time, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  If I draw an interest curve of my experience, how is it generally shaped? 
    ●  Does it have a hook? 
    ●  Does it have gradually rising interest, punctuated by periods of rest? 
    ●  Is there a grand finale, more interesting than everything else? 
    ●  What changes would give me a better interest curve? 
    ●  Is there a fractal structure to my interest curve? Should there be? 
    ●  Do my intuitions about the interest curve match the observed interest of 
  the players? If I ask playtesters to draw an interest curve, what does it 
  look like?  
     Since all players are different, you may find it quite useful to use the Lens 
  of the Interest Curve and Lens #16: The Lens of the Player at the same time, 
  creating a unique interest curve for each of the types of players your game is 
  trying to reach.  
  WHAT COMPRISES INTEREST?
  
  CHAPTER FOURTEEN • EXPERIENCES CAN BE JUDGED BY THEIR INTEREST CURVES
  254
  going to be more interesting than a story about a man eating a cheese sandwich. 
  We simply have internal drives that push us to be more interested in some things 
  than others. Lens #4: The Lens of Curiosity comes in handy when evaluating inher-
  ent interest, but it is a useful enough concept that it gets its own lens.
   Lens #62: The Lens of Inherent Interest 
   Some things are just interesting. Use this lens to be sure your game has inher-
  ently interesting qualities by asking these questions: 
   ●  What aspects of my game will capture the interest of a player immediately? 
   ●  Does my game let the player see or do something they have never seen or 
  done before? 
   ●  What base instincts does my game appeal to? Can it appeal to more of 
  them? 
   ●  What higher instincts does my game appeal to? Can it appeal to more of 
  those? 
   ●  Does dramatic change and anticipation of dramatic change happen in my 
  game? How can it be more dramatic?  
   The events don’t stand alone, however. They build on one another, creating 
  what is often called the story arc. Part of the inherent interest of events depends 
  on how they relate to one another. For example, in the story of Goldilocks and the 
  Three Bears, most of the events in the story aren’t very interesting: Goldilocks eats 
  porridge, sits in chairs, and takes a nap. But these boring events make possible 
  the more interesting part of the story where the bears discover their home has 
  been disturbed. 
   Factor 2: Poetry of Presentation 
   This refers to the aesthetics of the entertainment experience. The more beautiful the 
  artistry used in presenting the experience, whether that artistry be writing, music, 
  dance, acting, comedy, cinematography, graphic design, or whatever, the more inter-
  esting and compelling the guests will find it. Of course, if you can give a beautiful 
  presentation to something that is inherently interesting in the first place, all the bet-
  ter. We will discuss this further in Chapter 20, but let’s add this useful idea to our 
  toolbox right now.
  
  255
   Factor 3: Projection 
    This is the extent to which you compel a guest to use their powers of empathy 
  and imagination to put themselves into the experience. This factor is crucial to 
  understanding the commonality between story and gameplay, and requires some 
  explanation. 
   Lens #63: The Lens of Beauty 
    We love to experience things of great beauty. Use this lens to make your game 
  a joy forever by asking yourself these questions: 
    ●  What elements make up my game? How can each one can be more beautiful? 
    ●  Some things are not beautiful in themselves, but are beautiful in combi-
  nation. How can the elements of my game be composed in a way that is 
  poetic and beautiful? 
    ●  What does beauty mean within the context of my game?  
  F I G U R E
   14.8 
  Self
  Strangers
  Friends
     Consider the example of winning the lottery (an inherently interesting event). 
  If a stranger wins the lottery, you might be mildly interested in hearing about it. If 
  one of your friends wins the lottery, that is somewhat more interesting. If you win 
  the lottery, you will surely be interested enough to focus your attention on that fact. 
  Events that happen to us are just more interesting than events that happen to other 
  people. 
  WHAT COMPRISES INTEREST?
  
  CHAPTER FOURTEEN • EXPERIENCES CAN BE JUDGED BY THEIR INTEREST CURVES
  256
   You would think that this would put storytellers at a disadvantage, since the 
  stories they tell are usually about someone else, often someone you have never 
  heard of, or even someone who doesn’t actually exist. However, storytellers know 
  that guests have the power of empathy, the ability to put themselves in the place of 
  another person. An important part of the art of storytelling is to create characters 
  that the guests can empathize with easily, for the more the guests can empathize 
  with the characters, the more interesting the events become that happen to those 
  characters. When you start almost any entertainment experience, the characters in 
  it are strangers. As you get to know them, they become like your friends and you 
  begin to care about what happens to them, and your interest in events involving 
  them grows. At some point, you might even mentally put yourself in their place, 
  bringing you to the height of projection. 
   In terms of trying to build projection, imagination is as important as empa-
  thy. Humans exist in two worlds: the outward-facing world of perception, and the 
  inward-facing world of imagination. Every entertainment experience creates its own 
  little world in the imagination. This world does not have to be realistic (although it 
  might be), but it does need to be internally consistent. When the world is consistent 
  and compelling, it fills the guest’s imagination, and mentally, the guest enters the 
  world. We often say that the guest is  “immersed ” in the world. This kind of immer-
  sion increases projection, boosting the overall interest of the guest significantly. The 
  suspension of disbelief that keeps the guest immersed in the story world is fragile 
  indeed. One small contradiction is all it takes to bring the guest back to reality, and 
  “take them out ” of the experience. 
   Episodic forms of entertainment, such as soap operas, sitcoms, and serial-
  ized fiction, take advantage of the power of projection by creating characters and 
  a world that persist from one entertainment experience to the next. Returning 
  guests are already familiar with these persistent characters and settings, and each 
  time they experience an episode, their projection grows, and the fantasy world 
  becomes “more real. ” This episodic strategy can quickly backfire, however, if 
  the creator fails to carefully maintain the integrity of the characters and the world. 
  If new aspects of the world contradict previously established aspects, or if the 
  regular characters start to do or say things that are  “out of character ” to serve 
  the storyline of some new episode, then not only is the episode compromised, but 
  the integrity of the entire fantasy world, which spans all episodes, past, present, 
  and future. From the guest’s point of view, one bad episode can spoil the entire 
  series, because the compromised characters and setting will seem phony from 
  the point of contradiction onward, and it will be difficult for the guest to sustain 
  projection. 
   Another way to build up the player’s projection into the world you have cre-
  ated is to provide multiple ways to enter that world. Many people think of toys and 
  games based on popular movies or television shows as nothing but a gimmicky 
  way to make a few extra dollars by riding the coattails of a successful entertainment 
  experience. But these toys and games provide new ways for children to access an 
  
  257
  established fantasy world. The toys let them spend more time in that world, and the 
  longer they spend imagining they are in the fantasy world, the greater their projec-
  tion into that world and the characters in it becomes. We will talk more about this 
  idea in Chapter 17. 
    Interactive entertainment has an even more remarkable advantage, in terms of 
  projection. The guest can  be the main character. The events actually happen to 
  the guest and are all the more interesting for that reason. Also, unlike story-based 
  entertainment, where the story world exists only in the guest’s imagination, interac-
  tive entertainment creates significant overlap between perception and imagination, 
  allowing the guest to directly manipulate and change the story world. This is why 
  videogames can present events with little inherent interest or poetry, but still be 
  compelling to guests. What they lack in inherent interest and poetry of presentation, 
  they can often make up for in projection. 
    We will discuss projection further in Chapter 18 when we talk about avatars, but 
  let’s introduce a lens to examine it now.
   Lens #64: The Lens of Projection 
    One key indicator that someone is enjoying an experience is that they have 
  projected their imaginations into it. When they do this, their enjoyment of 
  the experience increases significantly, in a sort of virtuous circle. To examine 
  whether your game is well-suited to induce projection from your players, ask 
  yourself these questions: 
    ●  What is there in my game that players can relate to? What else can I add? 
    ●  What is there in my game that will capture a player’s imagination? What 
  else can I add? 
    ●  Are there places in the game that players have always wanted to visit? 
    ●  Does the player get to be a character they could imagine themselves to be? 
    ●  Are there other characters in the game that the players would be interested 
  to meet (or to spy on)? 
    ●  Do the players get to do things that they would like to do in real life, but 
  can’t? 
    ●  Is there an activity in the game that once a player starts doing, it is hard to 
  stop?  
  WHAT COMPRISES INTEREST?
  
  CHAPTER FOURTEEN • EXPERIENCES CAN BE JUDGED BY THEIR INTEREST CURVES
  258
    How about a violin concerto? The events (two sticks rubbed together) are not 
  that inherently interesting, and the projection is usually not very notable. In this 
  case, the poetry has to carry the experience. If the music isn’t beautifully played, 
  the performance will not be very interesting. Now, there are exceptions. The inher-
  ent interest can build up when the music is well-structured, or when the evening’s 
  program is well-structured. If the music makes you feel as if you are in another 
  place, or if you feel a particular empathy for the musician, there may be significant 
  projection (see Figure 14.10). 
    Consider the popular videogame,  Tetris. The game mainly consists of an end-
  less sequence of falling blocks. This leaves little room for inherent interest or poetry 
  of presentation; however, the projection can be intense. The guest makes all the 
  decisions, and success or failure is completely contingent on the guest’s perform-
  ance. This is a shortcut that traditional storytelling is unable to take. In terms of an 
   Interest Factor Examples 
   To ensure the relationship between the interest factors is clear, let’s compare some 
  different entertainment experiences. 
    Some brave street performers attract attention by juggling running chainsaws. 
  This is an inherently interesting event. It is hard not to at least look up when it is 
  going on around you. The poetry with which it is presented, however, is usually 
  somewhat limited. There is some projection, though, as it is easy to imagine what 
  it would be like to catch the wrong end of a chainsaw. When you witness the act in 
  person, the projection is even greater. 
  Inherent
  interest
  Poetry
  Projection
  F I G U R E
   14.9 
  
  259
  Inherent
  interest
  Poetry
  Projection
  F I G U R E
   14.10 
  Inherent
  interest
  Poetry
  Projection
  F I G U R E
   14.11 
  PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
  interesting entertainment experience, the large amount of projection makes up for 
  what is lacking in poetry or inherent interest (see Figure 14.11). 
   Putting It All Together 
    Some people find it useful to qualify the types of interest that happen at 
  different points in their experience, letting you see which types of interest are 
  holding the audience’s interest at different times, creating graphs that look 
  something like :
  
  CHAPTER FOURTEEN • EXPERIENCES CAN BE JUDGED BY THEIR INTEREST CURVES
  260
    However you do it, examining the interest that a player has in a game is the best 
  way to measure the quality of the experience you are creating. Opinions sometimes 
  differ about what shapes are best for an interest curve, but if you don’t take a step 
  back and draw an interest curve of your experience, you risk not being able to see 
  the forest for the trees. If you get in the habit of creating interest curves, though, 
  you will have insights into design that others are likely to miss. 
   But a problem looms up before us. Games do not always follow the same pattern 
  of experience. They are not linear. If that is true, then how can interest curves be 
  of any use to us? To address that question properly, we must first spend some time 
  discussing the most traditional type of linear entertainment experience.  
  Interest
  Time
  Projection
  Poetry
  Inherent interest
  F I G U R E
   14.12 
  
  CHAPTER
  261
   One Kind of Experience 
  Is the Story 
  261
  FIFTEEN
  F I G U R E
   15.1 
  
  CHAPTER FIFTEEN • ONE KIND OF EXPERIENCE IS THE STORY
  262
   God never wrote a good play in his life.
   – Kurt Vonnegut,  Cat’s Cradle 
   Story/Game Duality 
   At the dawn of the twentieth century, physicists started noticing something very 
  strange. They noticed that electromagnetic waves and subatomic particles, which 
  had long been thought to be fairly well-understood phenomena, were interacting in 
  unexpected ways. Years of theorizing, experimenting, and theorizing again led to a 
  bizarre conclusion: Waves and particles were the same thing  … both manifestations 
  of a singular phenomenon. This “wave-particle duality ” challenged the underpin-
  nings of all that was known about matter and energy, and made it clear that we 
  didn’t understand the universe quite as well as we had thought. 
   Now it is the dawn of the next century, and storytellers are faced with a similar 
  conundrum. With the advent of computer games, story and gameplay, two age-old 
  enterprises with very different sets of rules, show a similar duality. Storytellers are 
  now faced with a medium where they cannot be certain what path their story will 
  take, just as the physicists found that they could no longer be certain what path their 
  electrons would take. Both groups can now only speak in terms of probabilities. 
   Historically, stories have been single-threaded experiences that can be enjoyed 
  by an individual, and games have been experiences with many possible outcomes 
  that are enjoyed by a group. The introduction of the single-player computer game 
  challenged these paradigms. Early computer games were simply traditional games, 
  such as tic-tac-toe or chess, but with the computer acting as the opponent. In the 
  mid-1970s, adventure games with storylines began to appear that let the player 
  become the main character in the story. Thousands of experiments combining story 
  and gameplay began to take place. Some used computers and electronics, others 
  used pencil and paper. Some were brilliant successes, others were dismal failures. 
  The one thing these experiments proved was that experiences could be created that 
  had elements of both story and gameplay. This fact seriously called into question 
  the assumption that stories and games are governed by different sets of rules. 
   There is still much debate about the relationship between story and gameplay. 
  Some people are so story-oriented that they believe that adding gameplay is guar-
  anteed to ruin a good story. Others feel the opposite — that a game with strong 
  story elements has been cheapened somehow. Still others prefer a middle-of-the-
  road approach. As game designer Bob Bates once told me:  “Story and gameplay are 
  like oil and vinegar. Theoretically they don’t mix, but if you put them in a bottle 
  and shake them up real good, they’re pretty good on a salad. ”
   Setting theory aside, and taking a good look at the game titles that people really 
  enjoy, there can be no doubt that stories must do something to enhance gameplay, 
  since most games have some kind of strong story element, and it is the rare game 
  
  263
  that has no story element at all. Some stories are thick, epic tales, like the elabo-
  rate multi-hour storytelling of the  Final Fantasy series. Others are incredibly subtle. 
  Consider the game of chess. It could be a completely abstract game, but it isn’t — it 
  has a gossamer thin layer of story about two warring medieval kingdoms. And even 
  games with no story built in them at all tend to inspire players to make up a story 
  to give the game context meaning. I played Liar’s Dice with some school–age kids 
  recently, which is a completely abstract dice game. They liked the game, but after 
  a few rounds, one of them said,  “Let’s pretend we are pirates — playing for our 
  souls! ” which was greeted with enthusiasm all around the table. 
    Ultimately, of course, we don’t care about creating either stories or games — 
  we care about creating experiences. Stories and games can each be thought of as 
  machines that help create experiences. In this chapter we will be discuss how sto-
  ries and games can be combined and what techniques work best for creating experi-
  ences that neither a gameless story or a storyless game could create on its own. 
   The Myth of Passive Entertainment 
    Before we go any further, I want to deal with the persistent myth that interactive sto-
  rytelling is completely different from traditional storytelling. I would have thought 
  that by this day and age, with story-based games taking in billions of dollars each 
  year, this antiquated misconception would be obsolete and long-forgotten. Sadly, it 
  seems to spring up, weed-like, in the minds of each new generation of novice game 
  designers. The argument generally goes like this:
   Interactive stories are fundamentally different from non-interactive stories, 
  because in non-interactive stories, you are completely passive, just sitting there, 
  as the story plods on, with or without you.  
    At this point, the speaker usually rolls back his eyes, lolls his tongue, and drools 
  to underline the point.
   In interactive stories, on the other hand, you are active and involved, continu-
  ally making decisions. You are doing things, not just passively observing them. 
  Really, interactive storytelling is a fundamentally new art form, and as a result, 
  interactive designers have little to learn from traditional storytellers.  
    The idea that the mechanics of traditional storytelling, which are innate to the 
  human ability to communicate, are somehow nullified by interactivity is absurd. It is 
  a poorly told story that doesn’t compel the listener to think and make decisions dur-
  ing the telling. When one is engaged in any kind of storyline, interactive or not, one 
  is continually making decisions: “What will happen next? ” “What should the hero 
  do? ” “Where did that rabbit go? ” “Don’t open that door! ” The difference only comes 
  in the participant’s ability to  take action. The desire to act and all the thought and 
  emotion that go with that are present in both. A masterful storyteller knows how to 
  create this desire within a listener’s mind, and then knows exactly how and when 
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  (and when not) to fulfill it. This skill translates well into interactive media, although 
  it is made more difficult because the storyteller must predict, account for, respond to, 
  and smoothly integrate the actions of the participant into the experience. 
   In other words, while interactive storytelling is more challenging than traditional 
  storytelling, by no means is it fundamentally different. And since story is an impor-
  tant part of so many game designs, game designers are well-served to learn all they 
  can about traditional storytelling techniques. 
   The Dream 
   “But wait! ” I hear you cry out.  “I have a dream of beautiful interactive storytelling —
  a dream that rises above mere gameplay, a dream where a wonderfully told story 
  is completely interactive, and makes the participant feel like they are in the great-
  est movie ever made, while still having complete freedom of action, thought, and 
  expression! Surely this dream can’t be achieved if we continue to imitate past forms 
  of story and gameplay. ”
   And I admit that it is a beautiful dream — one that has spurred the creation 
  of many fascinating experiments in interactive storytelling. But so far, no one has 
  come anywhere close to realizing this dream. But this hasn’t stopped people from 
  creating interactive storytelling experiences that are truly wonderful, enjoyable, and 
  memorable, despite the fact that they are somewhat limited in the structure and in 
  the freedom they give the participant. 
   Shortly, we’ll discuss the reasons this dream hasn’t become a reality, and may 
  never become a reality. But first, let’s talk about what actually works. 
   The Reality 
   Real World Method 1: The String of Pearls 
   For all the grand dreams of interactive storytelling, there are two methods that dom-
  inate the world of game design. The first and most dominant in videogames is com-
  monly called the “string of pearls ” or sometimes the “rivers and lakes ” method. It is 
  called this because it can be visually represented like this: 
  F I G U R E
   15.2 
  
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     The idea is that a completely non-interactive story (the string) is presented in the 
  form of text, a slideshow, or an animated sequence and then the player is given a 
  period of free movement and control (the pearl) with a fixed goal in mind. When 
  the goal is achieved, the player travels down the string via another non-interactive 
  sequence, to the next pearl, etc. In other words, cut scene, game level, cut scene, 
  game level …  
    Many people criticize this method as  “not really being interactive, ” but players 
  sure do enjoy it. And really there should be little wonder at that. The string of pearls 
  method gives the player an experience where they get to enjoy a finely crafted story, 
  punctuated with periods of interactivity and challenge. The reward for succeeding 
  at the challenge? More story and new challenges. Though some snobs will scoff, 
  it is a neat little system that works very well, and it strikes a nice balance between 
  gameplay and storytelling. 
   Real World Method 2: The Story Machine 
    To understand this method, we have to take a good look at what a story is. 
  It is nothing more than a sequence of events that someone relates to someone 
  else.  “I was out of gum, so I went to the drugstore ” is a story. Just not a very 
  interesting one. A good game, however, tends to generate series of events that 
  are interesting, often so interesting that people want to tell someone else what 
  happened. From this point of view, a good game is like a story machine — 
  generating sequences of events that are very interesting indeed. Think of the thou-
  sands of stories created by the game of baseball or the game of golf. The design-
  ers or these games never had these stories in mind when they designed the 
  games, but the games produced them, nonetheless. Curiously, the more pre-
  scripting the designer puts into their game (like with the string of pearls), the fewer 
  stories their game is likely to produce. Some videogames, such as  The Sims or 
  Roller Coaster Tycoon, are specifically designed to be story generators, and are very 
  effective in this regard. Some critics say that these games don’t really count 
  as “interactive stories, ” because the stories have no author. But we don’t care 
  about that, because all we care about is creating great experiences — if someone 
  experiences something they consider a great story, and it has no author, does that 
  diminish the impact of the experience? Certainly not. In fact, it’s an interesting ques-
  tion to consider which is more challenging — to create a great story or to create 
  a system that generates great stories when people interact with it. Either way, this 
  is a powerful method of interactive storytelling, and one that should not be ignored 
  or taken for granted. Use this lens to determine how to make your game a better 
  story generator.
  THE REALITY
  
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   In terms of methods of interactive storytelling, these two methods surely cover 
  99% of all games ever created. What is interesting is how opposite they are from each 
  other. The string of pearls requires a linear story to be created ahead of time, and the 
  story machine thrives when as little story as possible has been created ahead of time. 
  “But surely there is something in between! ” I hear the dreamer cry.  “Neither of these 
  methods are the real, true dream of interactive storytelling! The first method is basically 
  a linear path, and the second one isn’t really storytelling at all — it’s just game design! 
  What about my vision of a wonderfully branching story tree, full of AI characters, and 
  dozens of satisfying endings, so that a participant will want to enjoy it over and over? ”
   And this is a good question. Why isn’t this vision a reality? Why isn’t it the dom-
  inant form of interactive storytelling? The usual suspects (conservative publishers, a 
  weak-minded mass audience, lazy designers) are not to blame. The reason that this 
  vision isn’t a reality is because it is riddled with many challenging problems that 
  haven’t been successfully solved yet — and may never be solved. These problems 
  are real and serious, and deserve careful consideration.  
   The Problems 
    Problem #1: Good Stories Have Unity 
   Really, it is a simple thing to make an interactive story tree. Just keep making 
  choices that lead to more choices that lead to more choices. Do that, and you’ll get 
  all kinds of stories. But how many of them will be enjoyable? What kind of interest 
   Lens #65: The Lens of the Story Machine 
   A good game is a machine that generates stories when people play it. To 
  make sure your story machine is as productive as possible, ask yourself these 
  questions: 
   ●  When players have different choices about how to achieve goals, new and 
  different stories can arise. How can I add more of these choices? 
   ●  Different conflicts lead to different stories. How can I allow more types of 
  conflict to arise from my game? 
   ●  When players can personalize the characters and setting, they will care 
  more about story outcomes, and similar stories can start to feel very differ-
  ent. How can I let players personalize the story? 
   ●  Good stories have good interest curves. Do my rules lead to stories with 
  good interest curves? 
   ●  A story is only good if you can tell it. Who can your players tell the story to 
  that will actually care?  
  
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  curve will they have? One thing that we know about good stories is that they have 
  intense unity — the problem that is presented in the first five minutes of the story 
  is a driving force that has meaning all the way until the end. Imagine an interac-
  tive Cinderella story.  “You are Cinderella. Your stepmother has told you to clean 
  out the fireplace. Do you: (a) do it or (b) pack your bags, and leave? If Cinderella 
  leaves, and say, gets a job as an administrative assistant, it isn’t the Cinderella story 
  anymore. The reason for Cinderella’s wretched situation is so that she can rise out 
  of it dramatically, suddenly, and unexpectedly. No ending you could write for the 
  Cinderella story can compare with the ending that it already has, because the whole 
  thing is crafted as a unit — the beginning and ending are of a piece. To craft a story 
  with twenty endings and one beginning that is the perfect beginning for each of 
  the twenty is challenging, to say the least. As a result, most interactive stories with 
  many branching paths end up feeling kind of watery, weak, and disconnected. 
   Problem #2: The Combinatorial Explosion 
    I fear there are too many realities.  
  – John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley  
    It seems so simple to propose: I’ll give the player three choices in this scene, 
  and three in the next, and so on. But let’s say your story is 10 choices deep — if 
  each choice leads to a unique event, and three new choices, you will need to write 
  88,573 different outcomes to the choices the player will make. And if 10 choices 
  sounds kind of short, and you want to have 20 opportunities for three choices from 
  the beginning to the end of the story, that means you’ll need to write 5,230,176,601 
  outcomes. These large numbers make any kind of meaningful branching storytelling 
  impossible in our short life spans. And sadly, the main way that most interactive 
  storytellers deal with this perplexing plethora of plotlines is to start fusing outcomes 
  together — something like: 
  THE PROBLEMS
  F I G U R E
   15.3 
  
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  268
    And this certainly makes the storytelling more manageable, but look at what 
  has just happened. For all the choices the player had (well, not that many here, 
  really), they all end up at the same place. How meaningful can these choices have 
  been if they all lead to the same conclusion? The combinatorial explosion is frustrat-
  ing because it leads to compromises on top of Band-Aids on top of compromises, 
  and ultimately a weak story. And you still have to write a lot more scenes than the 
  player will ever see. 
   Problem #3: Multiple Endings Disappoint 
   One thing that interactive storytellers like to fantasize about is how wonderful it is 
  that a story can have multiple endings. After all, this means the player will be able 
  to play again and again with a different experience every time! And like many fan-
  tasies, the reality tends to disappoint. Many games have experimented with having 
  multiple endings to their game story. Almost universally, the player ends up think-
  ing two things when they encounter their first ending in one of these. 
   1.   “Is this the real ending? ” In other words, the happiest ending, or the ending 
  that is most unified with the story beginning. We all like to dream that we can 
  find a way to write equally valid endings, but because good stories have unity, 
  this generally doesn’t happen. And when players start to suspect they may be 
  on the wrong track, they stop experiencing the story and start thinking about 
  what they should have done instead, which defeats any attempt at storytelling. 
  The string of pearls has a tremendous advantage here — the player is always on 
  the correct story path, and they know it — any problem-solving action is surely 
  a path toward a rewarding ending. 
   2.   “Do I have to play this whole thing again to see another ending? ” In other 
  words, the multiple endings go against the idea of unity, and as much as we 
  would like to dream that the gameplay would be significantly different if the 
  player made different choices, it almost never is, and so the player now has to 
  go on a long repetitive trudge to explore the story tree, which probably will not 
  be worth the effort and tedium, since there is likely a lot of repeated content 
  upon a second playing (in an attempt to manage a combinatorial explosion), 
  which will look pretty bad under Lens #2: The Lens of Surprise. Some games 
  have tried novel approaches to deal with this problem. The infamous game 
  Psychic Detective (once summed up in a review as  “One of the worst games ever 
  made. Also, a masterpiece ”) was a continuously moving 30-minute experience 
  that always culminated in a final psychic battle with the villain, in which your 
  powers were determined by the path you took through the game. As a result, 
  to master the game, you had to play it through over and over again. Since most 
  of the game consists of video clips, and the game tree has some significant 
  bottlenecks that you must experience every time, the designers filmed multiple 
  
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  versions of the bottleneck areas, each with different dialog, but containing the 
  same information. As hard as the designers worked to solve the problem of 
  repeated content (and many other problems), players generally found the proc-
  ess of replaying the interactive story somewhat tedious.  
    There are exceptions, of course.  Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic featured 
  a novel type of player choice — did they want to play the game on the  “light side ”
  or “dark side ” of the force — that is, with good or evil goals? Depending on which 
  of the paths you choose, you have different adventures, different quests, and ulti-
  mately a different ending. It can be argued that this isn’t really a case of two differ-
  ent endings on the same story, but two completely different stories — so different 
  that they are each equally valid. 
   Problem #4: Not Enough Verbs 
    The things that videogame characters spend their time doing are very different than 
  the things that characters in movies and books spend their time doing:
   Videogame Verbs:  run, shoot, jump, climb, throw, cast, punch, fly  
  Movie Verbs:  talk, ask, negotiate, convince, argue, shout, plead, complain  
    Videogame characters are severely limited in their ability to do anything that 
  requires something to happen above the neck. Most of what happens in stories is 
  communication, and at the present time, videogames just can’t support that. Game 
  designer Chris Swain has suggested that when technology advances to the point 
  that players can have an intelligent, spoken conversation with computer-controlled 
  game characters, it will have an effect similar to the introduction of talking pictures. 
  Suddenly, a medium that was mostly considered an amusing novelty will quickly 
  become the dominant form of cultural storytelling. Until then, however, the lack of 
  usable verbs in videogames significantly hampers our ability to use games as a sto-
  rytelling medium. 
   Problem #5: Time Travel Makes Tragedy Obsolete 
    Of all the problems that interactive storytelling faces, this final one is quite pos-
  sibly the most overlooked, the most crippling, and the most insoluble. The ques-
  tion is often asked,  “Why don’t videogames make us cry? ” and this may well be 
  the answer. Tragic stories are often considered the most serious, most important, 
  and most moving type of story. Unfortunately, they are generally off limits to the 
  interactive storyteller. 
    Freedom and control are one of the most exciting parts of any interactive story, but 
  they come at a terrible price: the storyteller must give up inevitability. In a powerful 
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  tragic story, there is a moment where you can see the horrible thing that is going 
  to happen, and you feel yourself wishing, begging, and hoping that it won’t —
  but you are powerless to stop this path toward inevitable destiny. This rush of being 
  carried along toward certain doom is something that videogame stories simply can-
  not support, for it is as if every protagonist has a time machine, and anything seri-
  ously bad that happens can always be undone. How could you make a game out 
  of Romeo and Juliet, for example, where Shakespeare’s ending (they both commit 
  suicide) is the “real ” ending for the game? 
   Not all good stories are tragic of course. But any experience that met the qualifi-
  cations of the dream of interactive fiction should at least have the potential for trag-
  edy. Instead we get what the narrator in  Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time intones 
  when your character dies:  “Wait — that’s not what really happened …” Freedom 
  and destiny are polar opposites. As such, any solution to this problem will have to 
  be very clever indeed.  
   The Dream Reborn 
   The problems with the dream of interactive storytelling are not trivial. Perhaps, one 
  day, artificial personalities so realistic that it is impossible to tell them from humans 
  will be intimately involved in our story and game experiences, but even that does 
  not solve all of the problems presented here — anymore than a well-run game of 
  Dungeons and Dragons, where human intelligence is behind every game character, 
  can solve all these problems. No magic solution is likely to solve all five at once. 
  This is not a reason to despair, the reason the dream is a failure is because it is 
  flawed. Flawed because it is obsessed with story, not with experience, and experi-
  ence is all we care about. Focusing on story structure at the expense of experience 
  is the same sin as focusing too much on technology, on aesthetics, or on game-
  play structure at the expense of experience. Does this mean we need to discard our 
  dreams? No — we just need to improve them. When you change your dream to 
  one of creating innovative, meaningful, and mind-expanding experiences, and keep 
  in mind these may need to mix and blend traditional story and game structures in 
  untraditional ways, the dream can come true for you every day. The following tips 
  and Chapter 16 address some interesting ways to make the story elements of your 
  game as interesting and involving as possible. 
    Story Tips for Game Designers 
      Story Tip #1: Goals, Obstacles, and Conflicts 
   It is an old maxim of Hollywood screenwriting that the main ingredients for a story 
  are (1) A character with a goal and (2) obstacles that keep him from reaching that 
  goal. 
  
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    As the character tries to overcome the obstacles, interesting conflicts tend to 
  arise, particularly when another character has a conflicting goal. This simple pat-
  tern leads to very interesting stories because it means the character has to engage in 
  problem-solving (which we find very interesting), because conflicts lead to unpre-
  dictable results, in other words, surprises (which we find very interesting), and 
  because the bigger the obstacle, the bigger the potential for dramatic change (which 
  we find very interesting). 
    Are these ingredients just as useful when creating videogame stories? Absolutely 
  and maybe even more so. We’ve already discussed Lens #25: The Lens of Goals —
  the goal of the main character will be the goal of the player, and will be the driving 
  force that keeps them moving along the string of pearls, if you choose to create one. 
  And the obstacles that character meets will be the challenges the player faces. If you 
  want your game to have a solidly integrated story, it is very important that these 
  things line up — if you give the player a challenge that has nothing to do with the 
  obstacles the main character faces, you have just weakened the experience consider-
  ably. But if you can find a way to make the challenges of the game meaningful, dra-
  matic obstacles for the main character as well, your story and game structure will 
  fuse into one, which goes a long way toward making the player feel like part of the 
  story. We already have a Lens of Goals — here is its sister lens.
   Lens #66: The Lens of the Obstacle 
    A goal with no obstacles is not worth pursuing. Use this lens to make sure 
  your obstacles are ones that your players will want to overcome. 
    ●  What is the relationship between the main character and the goal? Why 
  does the character care about it? 
    ●  What are the obstacles between the character and the goal? 
    ●  Is there an antagonist who is behind the obstacles? What is the relationship 
  between the protagonist and the antagonist? 
    ●  Do the obstacles gradually increase in difficulty? 
    ●  Some say  “The bigger the obstacle, the better the story. ” Are your obstacles 
  big enough? Can they be bigger? 
    ●  Great stories often involve the protagonist transforming in order to over-
  come the obstacle. How does your protagonist transform?  
   Story Tip #2: Provide Simplicity and Transcendence 
    One thing that game worlds and fantasy worlds tend to have in common is that 
  they offer the player a combination of  simplicity (the game world is simpler than 
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  the real world) and  transcendence (the player is more powerful in the game world 
  than they are in the real world). This potent combination explains why so many 
  types of story worlds show up again and again in games, such as the following: 
   ●  Medieval: The stream of swords and sorcery worlds seems to be never-ending. 
  These worlds are simpler than the world we know, because the technologies are 
  primitive. But they are seldom accurate simulations of medieval times — there is 
  almost always some kind of magic added — this provides the transcendence. The 
  continued success of this genre surely stems from the fact that it combines the 
  simple and the transcendent in such a primal way. 
   ●  Futuristic: Many games and science fiction stories are set in the future. But these 
  very seldom are any kind of realistic interpretation of the future we are likely to 
  see — one with continued suburban sprawl, safer cars, longer work hours, and 
  ever more complicated cell phone plans. No — the future that we see in these 
  worlds is usually more of a post–apocalyptic future; in other words, a bomb went 
  off, or we are on some strange frontier planet, and the world is much simpler. 
  And of course we have access to sufficiently advanced technologies — which, as 
  Arthur C. Clarke noted, are indistinguishable from magic — at least in terms of 
  transcendence. 
   ●  War: In war, things are simpler, since all normal rules and laws are set aside. 
  And the transcendence comes from powerful weaponry that lets participants 
  become like gods, deciding who lives and who dies. It is a horror in reality, but 
  in fantasy it gives a player powerful feelings of simplicity and transcendence. 
   ●  Modern: Modern settings are unusual for game stories, unless the player sud-
  denly has surprisingly more power than normal. This can be accomplished in 
  many ways. The Grand Theft Auto series uses criminal life to give both simplic-
  ity (life is simpler when you don’t obey laws) and transcendence (you are more 
  powerful when you don’t obey laws).  The Sims creates a simplified dollhouse 
  version of human life, and it gives the player transcendent godlike powers to con-
  trol the characters in the game.  
   Simplicity and transcendence form a powerful combination that is easily botched. 
  Use this lens to make sure you combine them just right.
   Lens #67: The Lens of Simplicity and Transcendence 
   To make sure you have the right mix of simplicity and transcendence, ask 
  yourself these questions: 
   ●  How is my world simpler than the real world? Can it be simpler in other 
  ways? 
  
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      Story Tip #3: Consider the Hero’s Journey 
    In 1949, mythologist Joseph Campbell published his first book,  The Hero with a 
  Thousand Faces. In this text, he describes an underlying structure that most myth-
  ological stories seem to share, which he calls the monomyth, or hero’s journey. 
  He goes into great detail about how this structure underlies the stories of Moses, 
  Buddha, Christ, Odysseus, Prometheus, Osiris, and many others. Many writers 
  and artists found great inspiration in Campbell’s work. Most famously, George Lucas 
  based the structure of Star Wars around structures Campbell described, with great 
  success. 
    In 1992, Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood writer and producer, published a book 
  called The Writer’s Journey, which was a practical guide to writing stories using the 
  archetypes that Campbell describes. Vogler’s book is not as scholarly as Campbell’s 
  text, but it serves as a far more accessible and practical guide for writers who would 
  like to use the hero’s journey as a framework. The Wachowski brothers, who wrote 
  The Matrix (which rather clearly follows the hero’s journey model), are said to have 
  used Vogler’s book as a guide. As accessible as the text is, it is often criticized for 
  being over-formulaic, and for shoehorning too many stories into a single formula. 
  Nonetheless, many people find it gives them useful insights into the structure of 
  heroic stories. 
    Because so many videogames revolve around a theme of heroism, it is only 
  logical that the hero’s journey is a relevant structure for a powerful videogame 
  story. Since several books and a plethora of Web sites already exist describing 
  how to structure a story around the hero’s journey, I will only give an overview of 
  it here. 
    Vogler’s Synopsis of the Hero’s Journey 
      1.   The Ordinary World — Establishing scenes that show our hero is a regular per-
  son leading an ordinary life. 
    2.   The Call to Adventure — The hero is presented with a challenge that disrupts 
  their ordinary life. 
    3.   Refusal of the Call — The hero makes excuses about why he can’t go on the 
  adventure. 
    ●  What kind of transcendent power do I give to the player? How can I give 
  even more without removing challenge from the game? 
    ●  Is my combination of simplicity and transcendence contrived, or does it 
  provide my players with a special kind of wish fulfillment?  
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   4.   Meeting with the Mentor — Some wise figure gives advice, training, or aid. 
   5.   Crossing the Threshold — The hero leaves the ordinary world (often under 
  pressure) and enters the adventure world. 
   6.   Tests, Allies, Enemies — The hero faces minor challenges, makes allies, con-
  fronts enemies, and learns the workings of the adventure world. 
   7.   Approaching the Cave — The hero encounters setbacks and needs to try some-
  thing new. 
   8.   The Ordeal — The hero faces a peak life or death crisis. 
   9.   The Reward — The hero survives, overcomes their fear, and gets the reward. 
   10.  The Road Back — The hero returns to the ordinary world, but the problems still 
  aren’t all solved. 
   11.   Resurrection — The hero faces a still greater crisis, and has to use everything 
  he has learned. 
   12.   Returning with the Elixir — The journey is now well and truly complete, 
  and the hero’s success has improved the lives of everyone in the ordinary 
  world.  
   By no means do you need to have all twelve of these steps in your heroic story —
  you can tell a good heroic story with fewer or more, or in a different order. 
   As a side note, it is an interesting exercise to look at the hero’s journey through 
  Lens #61: The Lens of Interest Curve — you will see a familiar form emerge. 
   Some storytellers take great offense at the idea that good storytelling can be 
  accomplished by formula. But the Hero’s Journey is not so much a formula, guar-
  anteed to produce an entertaining story; rather, it is a  form that many entertaining 
  stories tend to take. Think of it as a skeleton. Just as humans have tremendous vari-
  ety despite all of us having the same 208 bones, heroic stories can take millions of 
  forms despite some common internal structure. 
   Most storytellers seem to agree that using the Hero’s Journey as a starting point 
  for your writing isn’t a very good idea. As Bob Bates puts it:
   The Hero’s Journey isn’t a box of tools you can use to fix every story problem. 
  But it’s somewhat similar to a circuit tester. You can clamp the leads around a 
  problem spot in your story and check to see if there’s enough mythical current 
  flowing. And if you don’t have enough juice, it can help point out the source of 
  the problem.  
   Better to write your story first, and if you notice that it might have something 
  in common with elements of the monomyth, then spend some time considering 
  whether your story might be improved by following archetypical structures and ele-
  ments more closely. In other words, use the Hero’s Journey as a lens.
  
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   Story Tip #4: Put Your Story to Work! 
    As we discussed in Chapter 4, it is possible to start a design in any corner of the 
  tetrad — story, gameplay, technology or aesthetics. And many designs begin with 
  a story. Following that story too slavishly, at the expense of the other elements, is 
  a common mistake — and an especially silly one, since story is, in some ways, the 
  most pliable of all the elements! Story elements can often be changed with just a 
  few words, where changing elements of gameplay might takes weeks of balancing, 
  and changing elements of technology might take months of reprogramming. 
    I once heard some developers of a 3D game talk about some development head-
  aches they were having. Their game involved flying over a planet in a spaceship 
  and shooting down enemy ships. The game was 3D, and to maintain perform-
  ance, they could not afford to draw distant terrain. To keep the terrain from look-
  ing strange when it popped in, they had planned to use the old trick of making the 
  world foggy. But due to some quirk of the 3D hardware, the only fog they could 
  make was a weird green color that looked completely unrealistic. Initially, the team 
  assumed they would have to scrap this solution, when suddenly, story to the res-
  cue! Someone had the idea that the maybe the evil aliens who had taken over the 
  planet had done so by shrouding it with toxic gas. This little change in the story 
  suddenly made a technical approach that supported the desired gameplay mechanic 
  completely possible. As a side effect, it arguably improved the story, making the 
  alien takeover seem all the more dramatic. 
    I had a similar experience developing my Mordak’s Revenge board game. My 
  initial design for the gameplay required players to travel about the board, collect-
  ing five keys. When they had all five, they had to journey to the stronghold of the 
  evil wizard Mordak to unlock the stronghold and battle him. In playtests, it quickly 
  became clear that it would be a better game mechanic if Mordak could somehow 
  come to the player who had collected the keys, since it was more immediate, and it 
   Lens #68: The Lens of the Hero’s Journey 
    Many heroic stories have similar structure. Use this lens to make sure you 
  haven’t missed out on any elements that might improve your story. Ask your-
  self these questions: 
    ●  Does my story have elements that qualify it as a heroic story? 
    ●  If so, how does it match up with the structure of the Hero’s Journey? 
    ●  Would my story be improved by including more archetypical elements? 
    ●  Does my story match this form so closely that it feels hackneyed?  
  STORY TIPS FOR GAME DESIGNERS
  
  CHAPTER FIFTEEN • ONE KIND OF EXPERIENCE IS THE STORY
  276
  meant that the battle against Mordak could be fought in a variety of terrains. But I 
  was troubled because then the story didn’t make any sense. So, once again, story to 
  the rescue! What if, instead, Mordak had a secret stronghold that no one could find? 
  And instead of collecting keys, the players had to collect five summoning stones? 
  When all five were collected, Mordak could be summoned immediately out of his 
  stronghold and forced to battle the player in whatever terrain the player was cur-
  rently in. This simple change to the story made the desired gameplay possible. It 
  also was more novel than my somewhat trite  “villain in the castle ” story. 
   Always keep in mind how limber, flexible, and powerful story can be — don’t be 
  afraid to mold your story to support the gameplay you think is best. 
      Tip #5: Keep Your Story World Consistent 
   There is an old French saying that goes:
   If you add a spoonful of wine to a barrelful of sewage, you get a barrelful of 
  sewage. 
  If you add a spoonful of sewage to a barrelful of wine, you get a barrelful of 
  sewage.  
   In some ways, story worlds are fragile like the barrelful of wine. One small incon-
  sistency in the logic of the world, and the reality of the world is broken forever. In 
  Hollywood, the term  “jumping the shark ” is used to describe a television show that 
  has deteriorated to a point that it can never be taken seriously again. The term is a 
  reference to the popular seventies show  Happy Days. As a season finale, the writ-
  ers had Fonzie, the most popular character in the show, jump over a line of school 
  buses on his motorcycle. The episode was greatly hyped and had excellent ratings. 
  In the next season, in an attempt to repeat this success, and to play off the popular-
  ity of the film Jaws, they had a waterskiing Fonzie jump over a shark. This was so 
  ridiculous, and so far out of Fonzie’s character, that fans of the show were repulsed. 
  The problem was not so much that one particular episode had a ridiculous premise, 
  but rather that the character and his world were forever tainted and could never be 
  taken seriously again. One small error in consistency can make the whole world 
  break apart, damaging its past, present, and future. 
   If you have a set of rules that define how things work in your world, stick 
  with them, and take them seriously. If, for example, in your world you can pick 
  up a microwave oven and put it in your pocket, that might be a little strange, but 
  maybe in your world pockets are magic and can hold all kinds of things. If later, 
  though, a player tries to put an ironing board in their pocket and is told  “that is 
  too big for you to carry, ” the player will be frustrated, will stop taking your 
  story world seriously, and will stop projecting his imagination into it. Invisibly, in 
  the blink of an eye, your world will have changed from a real, live place to a sad, 
  broken toy. 
  
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      Story Tip #6: Make your Story World Accessible 
    In Jules Verne’s classic tale,  From the Earth to the Moon (1865), he tells the story 
  of three men who travel to the moon in a spaceship fired from a giant cannon. 
  Despite the fact that the book goes into great detail about the science of the cannon, 
  the premise seems ridiculous to modern eyes because any cannon blast powerful 
  enough to launch a spacecraft would surely kill everyone inside. We know from 
  experience that rockets are a far safer and realistic method of sending people to the 
  moon. One might think that Verne did not use rockets in his story because they had 
  not yet been invented — but this was not the case. Rockets were commonly used 
  as weapons at that time — consider the  “ rockets ’  red glare ” in the Star Spangled 
  Banner (1814), for instance. 
    So, surely Verne knew about rockets, and he seems to have had enough of a 
  scientific mind to realize that they were a much more reasonable method of putting 
  a craft into space than a cannon would be. So why did he write his story this way? 
  The answer seems to be that it was much more accessible to his audience. 
    Consider the progressions of military technology over the course of the 19 th cen-
  tury. First, rockets: 
    1812: William Congreve’s Rockets: 6.5 ” diameter, 42 pounds, two mile range. 
    1840: William Hale’s Rockets: Same as Congreve’s, but slightly more accurate.  
    In nearly thirty years, rockets showed no growth, and only slight improvement. 
    But now consider cannons: 
    1855: Dahlgren’s Gun: 100 pound shell, three mile range. 
    1860: Rodman’s Columbiad: 1000 pound shell, six mile range.  
    In a mere five years, the size of a cannon shell had increased by ten times! 
  Keeping in mind that the American Civil War was making international headlines 
  in 1865, it only took a small leap of the imagination to picture even larger and more 
  powerful cannons appearing within the next few years — possibly large enough to 
  fire shells clear to the moon. 
    Verne surely understood that rockets were the most likely method of man reach-
  ing the moon — but he was a storyteller, not a scientist, and he had the good sense 
  to know that when you are telling a story, truth isn’t always your friend. What the 
  player will believe and enjoy is more important that what is physically accurate. 
    When I worked on  Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Buccaneer Gold, sev-
  eral examples of this principle arose. One was the speed of the boat — initially we 
  took pains to make sure our pirate ship traveled at a realistic speed. But we quickly 
  found that this speed was so slow (or appeared to be, at our height from the water) 
  that players quickly became bored. So, we cast reality to the winds, as it were, and 
  just made the boat go at a speed that felt realistic and exciting, even though it was 
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  not realistic at all. Another example can be clearly seen in this screenshot from 
  the game: 
   © Disney Enterprises, Inc. Used with permission. 
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   15.4 
    Look at those boats and consider which way the wind is blowing. Weirdly, it 
  seems to be behind all of them. And indeed it is. To ask players to understand how 
  to sail a ship with the wind was simply too much to ask in an action game — and 
  no player ever asked us about that — they simply assumed that the boats drove 
  like cars or motorboats, because that is what they were familiar with. As a minor 
  detail, consider the flags at the top of the ship masts — they are being blown in the 
  opposite direction as the sails! The modeler of the ships initially had them facing 
  the correct way, but it looked strange to our playtesters, who were more used to 
  seeing a flag flying on a car antenna than on a ship’s mast. Our players would fre-
  quently ask why the flags pointed the wrong way, and we would explain:  “No, see, 
  the wind is blowing from  behind the ships …” and they would say  “Oh… hmm …. I 
  guess that’s right. ” But after a while, we got tired of explaining it, so we just made 
  the flags point the other way, and people stopped asking about them, because now 
  they looked  “normal.”
   There are times, though, that your story requires something strange that the player 
  has never seen before, that can’t be made readily accessible. In these cases, it is very 
  important that you call special attention to that thing, and make the players under-
  stand what it is, and how it works. I once had a team of students who made a little 
  game about a two hamsters in a pet store who fall in love, but are unable to meet 
  
  279
  because they are in separate cages. Their game had the player use a little hamster can-
  non to try to launch the boy hamster to the girl hamster’s cage. It was pointed out to 
  them that there is no such thing as a hamster cannon, and as a result the story seemed 
  kind of strange and hard to believe. One solution would have been to change the can-
  non to something else that could launch the boy hamster, like perhaps a hamster 
  wheel, but the team wanted to keep the cannon, so they took a different approach. 
  In the establishing shots of the pet shop, they prominently featured signs reading 
  “Special! Hamster Cannons on sale! ” This not only served as an intriguing hook for 
  the experience, creating anticipation to see what a hamster cannon would look like, 
  but it introduced this very strange item to the player so that when it showed up, it 
  didn’t seem so strange after all — just a natural part of an unusual world. Surreal 
  elements are not at all uncommon in games, and it is important that you understand 
  how to smoothly integrate them. One handy way to do that is to use this lens.
   Lens #69: The Lens of the Weirdest Thing 
    Having weird things in your story can help give meaning to unusual game 
  mechanics — it can capture the interest of the player, and it can make your 
  world seem special. Too many things that are too weird, though, will render 
  your story puzzling and inaccessible. To make sure your story is the good kind 
  of weird, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  What’s the weirdest thing in my story? 
    ●  How can I make sure that the weirdest thing doesn’t confuse or alienate the 
  player? 
    ●  If there are multiple weird things, should I may be get rid of, or coalesce, 
  some of them? 
    ●  If there is nothing weird in my story, is the story still interesting?  
   Story Tip #7: Use Clichés Judiciously 
    One criticism videogame stories seem unable to escape is overuse of cliché. After 
  all, you can only save the world from evil aliens, use your wizardry against an evil 
  dragon, or fight a dungeon full of zombies with a shotgun a certain number of times 
  before it becomes tedious. This drives some designers to avoid any story setting or 
  theme that has been done before — sometimes pushing their story and setting into 
  something so offbeat that players are unable to understand what it is, or relate to it 
  at all. 
    For all their potential to be abused, clichés have the tremendous advantage of being 
  familiar to the player, and what is familiar is understandable and comprehensible. 
  STORY TIPS FOR GAME DESIGNERS
  
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  It has been said that every successful videogame finds a way to combine something 
  familiar with something novel. Some designers would never make a game about nin-
  jas, because ninjas have been done to death. But what if you made a story about a 
  lonely ninja, or an incompetent ninja, a ninja dog, a robotic ninja, or a third grade 
  girl who leads a secret life as a ninja? All of these storylines have the potential to be 
  something new and different, while having a hook into a world the player already 
  understands. 
   It is certainly an error to overuse clichés, but it is an equal error to exile them 
  from your toolbox. 
      Story Tip #8: Sometimes a Map Brings a Story to Life 
   When we think of writing stories, we generally think of words, characters, and plot-
  lines. But stories can come from unexpected places. Robert Louis Stevenson had no 
  intention of writing what is considered his greatest work:  Treasure Island. Obligated 
  to entertain a schoolboy during a particularly rainy vacation, he and the boy took 
  turns drawing pictures. On a whim, Stevenson drew a map of a fanciful island, 
  which suddenly took on a life of its own.
   …as I paused upon my map of ‘Treasure Island ’, the future character of the 
  book began to appear there visibly among imaginary woods; and their brown 
  faces and bright weapons peeped out upon me from unexpected quarters, as 
  they passed to and fro, fighting and hunting treasure, on these few square 
  inches of a flat projection. The next thing I knew I had some papers before me 
  and was writing out a list of chapters.  
   Most videogames do not happen in world of words, but in a physical place. By 
  making sketches and drawings of this place, often a story will naturally take shape, 
  as you are compelled to consider who lives there, what they do, and why. 
   So much more can be said about story, we cannot possibly cover it all here. But 
  whatever you create, whether it be an abstract game with only the thinnest veneer 
  of theme and setting, or a vast epic adventure with hundreds of detailed characters, 
  you are wise to make the story elements of your game as meaningful and powerful 
  as possible. So, we end this chapter with a general purpose lens, which can benefit 
  any game as a tool for studying this very important quadrant of the elemental tetrad.
   Lens #70: The Lens of Story 
   Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  Does my game really need a story? Why? 
   ●  Why will players be interested in this story? 
  
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    ●  How does the story support the other parts of the tetrad (aesthetics, tech-
  nology, gameplay)? Can it do a better job? 
    ●  How do the other parts of the tetrad support the story? Can they do a better 
  job? 
    ●  How can my story be better?  
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   The Feeling of Freedom 
   In previous chapters, we touched on the conflict between story and gameplay. At 
  its heart, this is a conflict about freedom. The wonderful thing about games and 
  interactive experiences is the freedom that the player feels — this freedom gives the 
  player the wonderful feeling of control, and makes it easy for them to project their 
  imaginations into the world you have created. The feeling of freedom is so impor-
  tant in a game that it merits a new lens.   
   Lens #71: The Lens of Freedom 
   A feeling of freedom is one of the things that separates games from other 
  forms of entertainment. To make sure your players feel as free as possible, ask 
  yourself these questions: 
   ●  When do my players have freedom of action? Do they feel free at these 
  times? 
   ●  When are they constrained? Do they feel constrained at these times? 
   ●  Are there any places I can let them feel more free than they do now? 
   ●  Are there any places where they are overwhelmed by too much freedom?  
   And even though it makes it very difficult for us to control the interest curve for 
  the player, when we give them those wonderful feelings of interactivity and control, 
  we have to give them freedom, right? 
   Wrong. 
   We don’t always have to give the player true freedom — we only have to give 
  the player the feeling of freedom. For, as we’ve discussed, all that’s real is what you 
  feel — if a clever designer can make a player feel free, when really the player has 
  very few choices, or even no choice at all, then suddenly we have the best of both 
  worlds — the player has the wonderful feeling of freedom, and the designer has 
  managed to economically create an experience with an ideal interest curve and an 
  ideal set of events. 
   But how is such a thing possible? How can one create the feeling of freedom, 
  when no freedom, or very limited freedom exists? After all, a designer has no con-
  trol over what a player does when they enter a game, right? 
   No, not right. It is true that the designer does not have direct control over what 
  a player does, but through various subtle means, they can exert  indirect control over 
  the actions of a player. And this indirect control is possibly the most subtle, delicate, 
  artful, and important technique of any we will encounter. 
   To understand what I’m talking about, let’s look at some of the methods of indi-
  rect control. There are many of them, varied and subtle, but generally, these six do 
  most of the work. 
  
  285
   Indirect Control Method #1: Constraints 
    Consider the difference between these two requests:
   Request 1: Pick a color: _____________ 
  Request 2: Pick a color:   a. red  b. blue  c. green  
    Both of them give the answerer freedom of choice, and they are both asking for 
  about the same thing. But the difference is tremendous because for Request 1, the 
  answerer could have chosen one of millions of different answers —  “fire engine 
  red, ” “cauliflower blue, ” “mauvish taupe, ” “sky blue pink, ” “no, you pick a color, ” 
  or just about anything, really. 
    But for Request 2, the answerer only has three choices. They still have freedom, 
  they still get to choose, but we have managed to cut the number of choices from mil-
  lions to three! And the answerers who were going to pick red, blue, or green anyway 
  won’t even notice the difference. And still others will prefer Request 2 over Request 1,
  because too much freedom can be a daunting thing — it forces your imagination to 
  work hard. In my amusement park days, I sometimes worked in the candy store, in 
  front of a big display of sixty flavors of old-fashioned stick candy. A hundred times 
  a day, people would come in and ask  “What flavors do you have back there? ” At 
  first, I thought I would be a smart aleck, and recite all sixty flavors — as I did this, 
  the customer’s eyes would get wide with fear, and right around the 32nd flavor they 
  would say,  “Stop! Stop! That’s enough! ” They were completely overwhelmed by so 
  many choices. After a while, I thought of a new approach. When they asked about 
  the flavors, I would say  “We have every flavor you can imagine. Go on, name the 
  flavors you would like — I’m sure we have them. ”  
    At first they would be impressed with this powerful freedom. But then they 
  would furrow up their brows, think hard, and say,  “ Uh … cherry? No, wait … I don’t 
  want that … Hmm …. peppermint? No … Oh, just forget it, ” and they would walk 
  away in frustration. Finally I figured out a strategy that sold a lot of candy sticks. 
  When someone would ask about the flavors, I would say  “We have just about every 
  flavor you can imagine, but our most popular flavors are Cherry, Blueberry, Lemon, 
  Root Beer, Wintergreen, and Licorice. ” They were delighted at having the feeling of 
  freedom, but also glad to have a small number of attractive choices; in fact most 
  customers would choose from the  “popular six, ” a list I made up, and a list I would 
  change frequently to help ensure the other flavors didn’t get too old on the shelf. 
  This is an example of indirect control in action — by constraining their choices, 
  I made it more likely they would make a choice. But not just any choice — the 
  choices I guided them toward. And despite my tricky methods of constraining their 
  choices, they retained a feeling of freedom, and perhaps felt an enhanced feeling of 
  freedom, since their choices were clearer than when I didn’t guide them at all. 
    This method of indirect control by constraint is used in games all the time. If a 
  game puts a player in an empty room with two doors, the player will almost cer-
  tainly go through one of them. Which one, we don’t necessarily know, but they 
  INDIRECT CONTROL METHOD #1: CONSTRAINTS
  
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  will surely go through one, since a door is a message that says  “open me, ” and 
  players are naturally curious. After all, there is nowhere else to go. If you ask the 
  player if they had choices, they would say they did, for even two options is a choice. 
  Compare this to putting a player in an open field, out on a city street, or in a shop-
  ping mall. In those cases, where they go and what they do is far more open-ended 
  and difficult to predict — unless you use other methods of indirect control. 
    Indirect Control Method #2: Goals 
   The most common and straightforward use of indirect control in game design is 
  through goals. If a player has two doors they can go through, I don’t really know 
  which one they are going to enter. But if I give them a goal of  “go find all the 
  bananas, ” and one of the doors clearly has bananas behind it, I can make a pretty 
  good guess about where they are going to go. 
   Earlier, we talked about the importance of establishing good goals to give play-
  ers a reason to care about your game. Once clear and achievable goals have been 
  established, though, you can take advantage of that fact by sculpting your world 
  around the goals, since your players will only go places and do things that they 
  think will help fulfill the goals. If your driving game is about racing through a city 
  to get to a finish line, you don’t have to build a complete street map, because if 
  you clearly mark the fastest route, people will mostly stick to that. You might add 
  a small number of side streets (especially if some are shortcuts!) to give a feeling 
  of freedom, but the goal you have selected will indirectly control players to avoid 
  exploring every little side street. Creating content that players will never see does 
  not give them more freedom — it just wastes development resources that could be 
  used to improve the places that the players will see. 
   One fascinating real-world example of this can be seen in the men’s restrooms of 
  Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport. Users of the urinals in these restrooms quickly notice 
  that they contain a fly. This is not an actual fly; rather, it is just an etching in the 
  surface of the porcelain. Why? The designers were trying to solve the problem of 
  “sloppy marksmanship, ” which results in the need for more janitorial service. The 
  etched fly creates an implicit goal — hit the fly. By placing the fly in the center of 
  the urinal (and slightly to one side to soften the angle of incidence), the bathrooms 
  stay cleaner. The  “players ” have not had their freedom diminished in the least, but 
  are indirectly controlled toward the behavior that the designers find optimal. 
   Indirect Control Method #3: Interface 
   We’ve already talked about feedback, transparency, juiciness, and important aspects 
  of a good interface. But there is something else to consider about your interface: indi-
  rect control. Because players want interfaces to be transparent, they don’t really think 
  about the interface, if they can help it. In other words, they set up their expectations 
  
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  about what they can and cannot do in a game based on the interface. If your  “ rock 
  star ”  game has a plastic guitar as the physical interface, your players are probably 
  going to expect to play the guitar, and it probably will not occur to them that they 
  might want to do something else. If you give them a gamepad instead, they might 
  wonder if they can play different instruments, do stage dives, or any number of other 
  things a rock star might do. But that plastic guitar secretly steals away those options —
  silently limiting the players to a single activity. When we built our virtual pirates 
  attraction with a wooden ship’s wheel and thirty-pound spun-aluminum cannons, no 
  guest ever asked whether they could sword fight as part of the game — that option 
  never entered their minds. 
    And it isn’t just the physical interface that has this power — the virtual interface 
  has it, too. Even the avatar you control, which is part of the virtual interface, exerts 
  indirect control over the player. If the player controls Lara Croft, they will try to do 
  certain things. If they control a dragonfly, an elephant, or a Sherman tank, they will 
  try to do very different things. Choice of avatar is partly about who a player will 
  relate to, but it is also about implicitly limiting the player’s options. 
    Indirect Control Method #4: Visual Design 
    We are led to believe a lie  
  when we see with, not through, the eye.  
  – William Blake  
    Anyone who works in an area of the visual arts knows that layout affects where 
  the guest will look. This becomes very important in an interactive experience, since 
  guests tend to go to what draws their attention. Therefore, if you can control where 
  someone is going to look, you can control where they are going to go. Figure 16.2 
  shows a simple example.  
    It is difficult, looking at this picture, for your eyes not to be led to the center of 
  the page. A guest looking at this scene in an interactive experience would be very 
  likely to examine the central triangle before considering what might be at the edges 
  of the frame. This is in sharp contrast to Figure 16.3.   
    Here, the guest’s eyes are compelled to explore the edges of the frame, and 
  beyond. If this scene were part of an interactive experience, it would be a good 
  bet that the guest would be trying to find out more about the objects on the edges, 
  rather than the circle in the middle of the scene. Most likely, they would try to push 
  past the borders of the screen, if they could. 
    These examples are abstract, but there are plenty of real-world examples that 
  illustrate the same thing. The designers of quilts, for example, think a great deal 
  about how to draw the eye. It is often said that a good quilt design makes the eye 
  flit continuously around the quilt, never letting it come to rest on a single image. 
  INDIRECT CONTROL METHOD #4: VISUAL DESIGN
  
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  F I G U R E
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  F I G U R E
  16.3
  
  289
   © Disney Enterprises, Inc. Used with permission. 
  F I G U R E
  16.4
  INDIRECT CONTROL METHOD #4: VISUAL DESIGN
  Set designers, illustrators, architects, and cinematographers use these principles to 
  guide the eye of their guests and indirectly control their focus. One excellent exam-
  ple is the castle at the center of Disneyland. Walt Disney knew that there was some 
  risk of guests entering the park and milling about at the entrance, unsure of where 
  to go. The castle is placed such that the guests ’ eyes are immediately drawn to it 
  upon entering the park (similar to the first figure), and their feet are quick to follow. 
  Soon the guests are at the Disneyland hub, with several visual landmarks beckoning 
  them in different directions (similar to the second figure). Indirectly, Walt was able 
  to control guests to do just what he wanted them to do: Move quickly to the center 
  of Disneyland, and then branch out randomly to other parts of the park. Of course, 
  the guests are seldom aware of this manipulation. After all, no one told them where 
  to go. All the guests know is that without much thinking, and with total freedom, 
  they ended up somewhere interesting and had a fun entertainment experience. 
    Walt even had a name for this kind of manipulation. He called it a visual 
  “ weenie, ”  a reference to the way dogs are sometimes controlled on a movie set: A 
  trainer holds a hot dog or piece of meat in the air, and moves it around to control 
  where the dog will look, since nothing draws the attention of a dog better than food. 
    One of the keys to good level design is that the player’s eyes pull them through 
  the level, effortlessly. It makes the player feel in control and immersed in the world. 
  Understanding what pulls the eye of the player can give you tremendous power over 
  the choices players want to make. When the Disney VR Studio worked on the Mark 
  2 version of  Aladdin’s Magic Carpet Ride: VR Adventure, we faced a significant 
  conundrum. One very important scene was the palace throne room, shown here: 
  
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  290
    The animation director wanted players to fly into this room, then fly up to that 
  little throne at the base of the elephant statue, and sit for a moment and listen to a 
  message from the Sultan before they continued their gameplay. We had hoped that 
  the little Sultan, dressed in white hopping up and down on that throne, would be 
  enough to draw people over to listen to him — but that didn’t happen. These play-
  ers were on flying carpets! They wanted to fly all around, up to the ceiling, around 
  the pillars, anywhere they could. Their implicit goal was to fly and have fun — 
  visiting the Sultan didn’t fit in with that plan. Seeing no other choice, we were 
  all set to implement a system that seized control from the players, dragging them 
  across the room to the Sultan, and gluing them to the spot while he talked. No one 
  liked this idea, since we all knew it meant robbing the players of their precious feel-
  ing of freedom. 
   But then the art director had an idea. 
   He painted a single red line on the floor, like this: 
   © Disney Enterprises, Inc. Used with permission. 
  F I G U R E
  16.5
    His thinking was that maybe guests would follow the red line. We were all some-
  what skeptical, but it was an easy thing for us to prototype. And to our stunned 
  amazement, guests did exactly that! Upon entering the room, instead of flying every 
  which way like we had seen before, they followed the red line like it was some 
  kind of tractor beam, right up to the Sultan’s throne. And when he started talk-
  ing (by that time guests were right up close to him), they waited to hear what he 
  had to say! It didn’t work every single time, but it did work over 90% of the time, 
  
  291
  which was perfectly adequate for this experience. The most startling part was in the 
  interviews afterwards — upon asking players why they followed the red line in the 
  throne room, they would say  “What red line? ” It didn’t register in their conscious 
  memory at all. 
    At first this didn’t make sense to me: How could a simple red line wipe the idea 
  of flying around the room out of the minds of the players? But then I realized — it 
  was seeing the columns, and the chandeliers that put the idea of flying around into 
  their minds. The red line was so visually dominant in the scene, that it stopped 
  them from noticing these other things, and so the idea to do these other things 
  didn’t even occur to them. 
    Curiously, we faced a new version of this problem in the Mark 3 version of the 
  game. In this version, which was for four simultaneous players, we didn’t want 
  them all to go to the Sultan. We wanted them to split up and go different places — 
  we wanted some players to visit the Sultan, and others to fly through doors on the 
  left and right sides of the room. But the tyrannical red line was making all four play-
  ers fly up to the Sultan. Again we started discussing how we probably had to force 
  the players to split up — but then we had a different thought — could we change 
  the red line to make that happen? We tried this: 
   © Disney Enterprises, Inc. Used with permission. 
  F I G U R E
  16.6
    And it worked beautifully. In most cases, two players would visit the throne, one 
  player would branch left following the line to the left door, and one player would 
  branch right, following the line to the right door. 
  INDIRECT CONTROL METHOD #4: VISUAL DESIGN
  
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   Indirect Control Method #5: Characters 
   One very straightforward method of indirectly controlling the player is through 
  computer-controlled characters in the game. If you can use your storytelling ability 
  to make the player actually care about the characters — that is, willingly wanting 
  to obey them, protect them, help them, or destroy them — you suddenly have an 
  excellent tool to control what the player will and will not try to do. 
   In the game Animal Crossing, a mysterious council called the HRA (Happy Room 
  Academy) periodically evaluates how well you have decorated the interior of your 
  house, and awards you points based on how well you have done. Players work very 
  hard to get these points — partly because it is a goal of the game, but I think also 
  partly because it feels embarrassing to think that someone is looking at the inside of 
  your house and shaking their head in disgust, even if they are only imaginary. 
   In the game Ico, your goal is to protect a princess who travels with you. The 
  designers have a very clever timer mechanism in the game — evil spirits appear 
  if you stay still too long, grab the princess, and try to drag her into a hole in the 
  ground. Even though they can’t hurt her unless they succeed in carrying her away, 
  and it takes some time for them to actually pull her into the hole, I found myself 
  snapping into action the moment they appeared, for the very idea of them touching 
  her made me feel like I was letting her down. 
   Characters can be a great way to manipulate the choices the player is trying to 
  make, or how they feel about those choices. But first you have to make the player 
  care about how those imaginary characters feel. 
   Indirect Control Method #6: Music 
   When most designers think of adding music to a game, they usually think of the 
  mood they want to create, and the atmosphere of the game. But music can also 
  have a significant effect on what players do. 
   Restaurants use this method all the time. Fast music makes people eat faster, 
  so during a lunch rush, many restaurants play high energy dance music, because 
  faster eating means more profits. And of course, during a slow period, like three in 
  the afternoon, they do the opposite. An empty restaurant often is a sign of a bad 
  restaurant, so to make diners linger, they play slow music, which slows down the 
  eating and makes customers consider ordering an extra cup of coffee or a dessert. 
  Of course, the patrons don’t realize this is happening — they think they have total 
  freedom over their actions. 
   If it works for restaurant managers, it can work for you. Think about what kind 
  of music you should play to make players 
   ●  Look around for something hidden 
   ●  Destroy everything possible without slowing down 
  
  293
    ●  Realize they are heading the wrong way 
    ●  Move slowly and carefully 
    ●  Worry about accidentally hurting innocent bystanders 
    ●  Go as far and as fast as possible without looking back  
    Music is the language of the soul, and as such, it speaks to players on a deep 
  level — a level so deep that it can changes their moods, desires, and actions — and 
  they don’t even realize it is happening. 
    These six methods of indirect control can be very powerful ways to balance free-
  dom and good storytelling. To decide whether your game might benefit from some 
  artful indirect control, use this lens.   
   Lens #72: The Lens of Indirect Control 
    Every designer has a vision of what they would like the players to do to have 
  an ideal play experience. To help ensure the players do these things of their 
  own free will, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  Ideally, what would I like the players to do? 
    ●  Can I set constraints to get players to do it? 
    ●  Can I set goals to get players to do it? 
    ●  Can I design my interface to get players to do it? 
    ●  Can I use visual design to get players to do it? 
    ●  Can I use in-game characters to get players to do it? 
    ●  Can I use music or sound to get players to do it? 
    ●  Is there some other method I can use to coerce players toward ideal behav-
  ior without impinging on their feeling of freedom?  
   Collusion 
    While designing Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Buccaneer Gold, we faced a 
  significant challenge. We had to create a very powerful interactive experience that 
  would only last five minutes. The interest curve had to be excellent, since a family of 
  four could be paying as much as $20 just to play this game one time. But at the same 
  time, we knew this couldn’t just be a linear experience, because the very essence 
  of being a pirate involved a feeling of tremendous freedom. Based on our previous 
  experiences, we knew that this was a great opportunity for some indirect control. 
  COLLUSION
  
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   Our early prototypes of the game made one thing clear: If we just set people out on 
  the ocean to battle enemies, they had great fun for about two minutes and twenty sec-
  onds. Then their zeal would wane, and they would sometimes ask,  “so... is this all we 
  do?” Clearly this was an unacceptable interest curve. Players wanted more build up. 
  We thought a way to achieve this would be with some more interesting scenarios. We 
  thought that by putting these scenarios near islands that the players could approach, 
  it would be a great way to guide them to where interesting things were happening — 
  kind of like the castle guides people in Disneyland. So, we drew up an initial map: 
   © Disney Enterprises, Inc. Used with permission. 
  F I G U R E
  16.7
    Players would start in the center, where we expected they would fight some enemies, 
  and then they would hopefully sail for one of the islands, each designed to be inter-
  esting and visible from a distance. Which island they went to was up to them —
  they had freedom to choose, for each island had different types of encounters. At one, 
  evil pirates were besieging a burning town. At another, a surprising mining operation 
  was taking place on the side of a volcano. At a third, the royal navy was transporting 
  huge quantities of gold, and guarding their stronghold with catapults that launched 
  fireballs. We were sure that these big islands would draw a lot of player interest. 
   Boy, were we wrong. Taking a look at Figure 16.8, you can see the problem. 
   The players have been told that their goal is to sink the pirate ships. Here they 
  are surrounded by large, threatening pirate ships with bright white sails. Look at 
  that poor volcano in the distance. It is hardly noticeable and has nothing to do with 
  the player goals! 
   We saw right away that this wasn’t working. And we started considering the 
  possibility of putting the pirate ship on a fixed path that guided them to the islands. 
  
  295
  But then we had a funny idea. What if the enemy pirate ships didn’t act in their 
  own best interest? Up until now, we had been spending a lot of time writing fancy 
  algorithms to make the enemy ships attack with interesting and intelligent strate-
  gies. Our new idea was to scrap all that and change the logic of the ships. With the 
  new system, at the start of the game, when the players encounter ships on the open 
  ocean, the ships would attack the players, but then they would start to flee. The 
  players, fixed on their goal of destroying enemy ships, would pursue them. We then 
  tried to time things so that right about when the players destroyed the enemy ships, 
  the ships had arrived at one of the islands (chosen randomly). With the ships sunk, 
  the players would look up to find themselves at an interesting island scenario. They 
  would do battle there, only to be attacked by new ships that again fled — to where? 
  To whatever island the players had not visited yet. 
    This strategy worked magnificently. With a feeling of total freedom, the players 
  would have a very structured experience: they would start with an exciting battle, 
  followed by a mini-scenario, followed by a new naval battle, followed by another, 
  new mini-scenario. We knew we had to have a big finish, but we couldn’t be sure 
  where the players would be. So a little bit after the fourth minute, the big finish 
  came to them, in the form of a sudden fog and an attack by ghost pirates who 
  engaged the players in an epic final battle. 
    The whole thing was only possible because we did something very unusual — 
  we made the characters in the game have two simultaneous goals. On one hand, 
  their goal is to engage the players in a challenging battle. On the other hand, their 
  goal is to lead the players to interesting places to keep the flow of the experience 
  optimal. I call this principle collusion, since the game characters are colluding with 
  the designer to make an experience that will be optimal for the players. It is an 
  interesting form of indirect control that joins methods of using goals, characters, 
  and visual design for a single unified effect. 
      © Disney Enterprises Inc. Used with permission.    
  F I G U R E
  16.8
  COLLUSION
  
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  296
   There is some evidence that this kind of indirect control via collusion may be cen-
  tral to the future of interactive storytelling. The fascinating  Façade experience, created 
  by Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas, takes this idea to a new level. In  Façade, you 
  play the role of a guest at a dinner party, hosted by Grace and Trip, a married cou-
  ple. Your interface is one that mainly consists of speaking through typed text, which 
  offers tremendous freedom and flexibility. As you play, you quickly notice that you 
  are the only guest at the party, and weirdly, it is their anniversary. The situation is 
  very uncomfortable because of their constant bickering, each trying to get you to take 
  sides in their arguments. It is a very unusual game experience with goals that are 
  more like those in a novel or television show than in a videogame.   
  F I G U R E
  16.9
   Something else is unusual, too. The game seems to play quite differently on differ-
  ent sessions — each time you play, you hear perhaps 10% of the dialog that was 
  recorded. This is not a string of pearls structure, or even a branching structure. This 
  is a simulation where Grace and Trip are artificially intelligent characters who have 
  goals they are trying to achieve. This is done through fairly standard AI models of 
  goals related to behaviors that are triggered by sensors (Figure 16.10).   
   However, like our tricky pirate ships, Grace and Trip are not just trying to satisfy 
  their own goals. They also are very aware that they are part of a story, and as such, 
  should be trying to make it interesting. As they make their choices about what to say 
  and do, part of their decision concerns whether what they are saying is of the proper 
  tension for this part of the story, and the designers encoded a timeline of what they 
  thought was appropriate tension over time for the experience (Figure 16.11).   
   Does that graph look familiar? By having Grace and Trip make decisions that fol-
  low this tension graph, while simultaneously trying to fulfill the goals they have as 
  characters in the story, their behavior makes sense while keeping the player inter-
  ested in the sequence of events. 
  
  297
  World
  Sensor1
  Mental
  Act
  Goal3
  Goal1
  Seq.
  behavior1
  WME1
  WMEn
  Sensors
  Working memory
  Behavior1
  Behavior2
  Behaviorn
  Behavior library
  Active behavior tree
  Available for execution
  Goal2
  Par.
  behavior2
  Root
  behavior
  F I G U R E
  16.10
  F I G U R E
  16.11
  COLLUSION
    It would seem that we have only scratched the surface of the type of experiences 
  that might be possible through clever use of collusion. If you’d like to consider how 
  you might use it in your game, use this lens.
  
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   The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote:
   When the best leader’s work is done the people say  “We did it ourselves! ”  
   Hopefully you will find the subtle techniques of indirect control useful when trying 
  to lead your players to engaging experiences where they will feel control, mastery, 
  and success. 
   But where is it that these engaging experiences will take place?  
   Lens #73: The Lens of Collusion 
   Characters should fulfill their roles in the game world, but when possible, also 
  serve as the many minions of the game designer, working toward the design-
  er’s ultimate aim, which is to ensure an engaging experience for the player. 
  To make sure your characters are living up to this responsibility, ask yourself 
  these questions: 
   ●  What do I want the player to experience? 
   ●  How can the characters help fulfill this experience, without compromising 
  their goals in the game world?  
  
  CHAPTER
  299
   Stories and Games 
  Take Place in  Worlds 
  299
  SEVENTEEN
  F I G U R E
  17.1
  
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  300
   Transmedia Worlds 
   In May of 1977 the film  Star Wars premiered. It was a surprise hit with young and old 
  alike, but especially with the young. Children were going to see it again and again. 
  It took nearly a year for Kenner Toys to produce a line of action figures based on the 
  movie characters, but even a year after the film’s release, the toys were a tremendous 
  success, selling as fast as they could be produced, and continuing to sell well for 
  years. Other Star Wars merchandise was produced — posters, jigsaw puzzles, sleep-
  ing bags, paper plates, and just about everything else you can imagine — but nothing 
  was as popular as the action figures. 
  F I G U R E
  17.2
    Some people believe that selling this kind of merchandise is just a way to cash 
  in on hype, and that ultimately, it cheapens a film. I mean, these toys look kind of 
  cheesy compared to what you see in the movie. 
   So, why did they sell so many action figures? For some people, they were just a 
  cool decoration — something they could look at, and remember the film. But for 
  most children, they were something else — they were a gateway into the Star Wars
  universe. 
   For if you observed children playing with them, you would notice something 
  very strange. Seldom would they act out scenes from the movie, as an adult might 
  expect. Instead, they would make up all kinds of stories featuring these characters 
  with only a loose relationship to the plotline from the movie, which was fairly com-
  plex, and somewhat difficult for a child to fully comprehend. This might lead you 
  to conclude that it was the characters that were so popular, not the story from  Star 
  Wars. But often, you would see children give these characters completely different 
  names, and completely different relationships than they had in the film, as they 
  enacted dramas and comedies starring this cast of characters in bedrooms and back-
  yards everywhere in the world. 
  
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    So, if it wasn’t the plotline or the characters that the kids were so excited by, 
  then what was left? The answer is that it was the  world of Star Wars that was so 
  compelling — and the toys provided another gateway into that world — one that 
  was better than the movie, in some ways, since it was interactive, participatory, 
  flexible, portable, and social. And weirdly, these toys made the Star Wars world 
  more meaningful for children, not less, because the toys afforded them the abil-
  ity to visit the world, sculpt it, change it, and make it their own. And as  Star Wars 
  sequels started to appear, there was great anticipation, but how much of that antici-
  pation was a desire to hear a new story, and how much of it was the excitement of 
  re-entering that world? 
    Henry Jenkins coined the term transmedia worlds to refer to fantasy worlds that 
  can be entered through many different media — print, video, animation, toys, games, 
  and many others. This is a very useful concept, for it really is as if the world exists 
  apart from the media that support it. Many people find this a bizarre concept — 
  they think of books, films, games, and toys as separate things, each standing on their 
  own. But more and more often, the real product that is created is not a story, or a toy, 
  or a game, but a world. But you can’t sell a world, so these various products are sold 
  as gateways into this world, each leading to different parts of it. And if the world is 
  well-constructed, the more gateways you visit, the more real and solid the world will 
  become in your imagination. But if these gateways contradict each other or provide 
  inconsistent information, the world crumbles quickly into dust and ashes, and sud-
  denly the products are worth nothing. 
    Why is this? Why do worlds become so real for us, more real than the media 
  that define them? It is because we want them to be real. Some part of us wants to 
  believe that these worlds aren’t just stories in books, sets of rules, or actors on a 
  screen, but that these worlds actually exist, and that maybe, somehow, someday, 
  we can find our way to them. 
    This is why people so casually throw out magazines, but hesitate before throw-
  ing out a comic book — after all, there’s a world in there. 
   The Power of Pokemon 
    Pokemon is arguably one of the most successful transmedia worlds of all time. Since 
  its introduction, the combined sales of all Pokemon products combined is over 
  $15 billion, making it the second most lucrative videogame franchise of all time, 
  second only to Mario. And though many tried to write it off as a short-term 
  fad, ten years later, new Pokemon games are consistently top sellers. It is worth 
  understanding the history of Pokemon to better understand the power of its trans-
  media world. 
    Pokemon began as a game for the Nintendo Gameboy system. Its designer, Tajiri 
  Satoshi, had collected insects as a boy, and seeing the  “game link ” feature that 
  allowed message passing between two Gameboys in 1991, he had a vision of insects 
  traveling along the cable. He approached Nintendo about the idea, and then he 
  THE POWER OF POKEMON
  
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  and his team spent five years developing and perfecting the title. In 1996,  “Pocket 
  Monsters ” (the direct translation of the Japanese title) as a pair of games (red and 
  green) was launched. It was essentially a traditional RPG (not unlike  Ultima or 
  Final Fantasy), except that you could capture the monsters you fought and make 
  them part of your team. 
   The graphics and game action were not elaborate or advanced — but the inter-
  actions were rich and interesting, since the team had spent five years to properly 
  balance the game. It is important to realize how primitive the graphics really were. 
  The original Gameboy only allowed four shades of olive for the graphics, and two 
  battling Pokemon would basically stand next to each other and wiggle as the player 
  chose attacks from a simple menu. 
   The game was a huge success — so much so that a comic book and an anime 
  series were soon planned. Unlike many TV shows that are only loosely connected 
  to the videogame they were based on (the dreadful Hanna Barbera Pac Man car-
  toon, for example), the Pokemon show reflected the intricate rules of the gameplay 
  very closely, and the adventures of the main character were directly based on the 
  quest path through the Gameboy game. The result was a show that so mirrored the 
  mechanics of the game, that watching it players better understood what strategies to 
  use in the game. 
   But most important, the TV show gave game players a new gateway into the 
  Pokemon universe — one that showed the Pokemon in full color with dramatic ani-
  mation and sound. When viewers would return to the Gameboy, these vivid images 
  were retained in their imaginations, making the crudeness of Gameboy graphics 
  and sound completely irrelevant. This is sometimes called the  “binocular effect, ” so 
  named because it is like when people take binoculars to a sporting event or opera 
  glasses to the theater. No one watches the whole event through the binoculars. 
  Instead, the binoculars are used early on to give a close-up view of the distant fig-
  ures. Once someone has seen them close up, they can map that image onto the tiny 
  figures they see on the stage in their visual imagination. 
   These two gateways had tremendous synergy — wanting to succeed at the game 
  gave reasons to watch the TV show, and watching the TV show made playing the 
  game more vivid and exciting. 
   And if this wasn’t enough, in 1999 Nintendo worked with Wizards of the Coast, 
  the company that produced the breakthrough  Magic: The Gathering collectible card 
  game, to create a new collectible card game, based on the world of Pokemon. This 
  game, like the TV show, held as closely as possible to the core mechanics of the 
  Gameboy game. This gave players a third method of entry into this world — one 
  that was both portable and very social. Although the Gameboy game featured 
  the game link cable for trading Pokemon, the truth was that players only used it 
  occasionally — most of the time it was played as a solo adventure. Not so with 
  the card game — its low price and accessibility made it very popular with children 
  (especially boys), playing off their interest in competing with their peers, and fitting 
  in naturally with the Pokemon slogan of  “Gotta catch ’em all! ”
  
  303
    These three complementary gateways into a single solid world made the prop-
  erty a near unstoppable force. People who didn’t understand the Pokemon universe 
  were completely bewildered: Is this thing a game, or a TV show, or what? What 
  is it about the storyline that is so great that kids want to spend all this money on 
  it? I was fortunate enough to be at a roundtable discussion in 1999 with the head 
  of a major entertainment company. Someone asked him what he thought of  “ this 
  Pokemon craze, ” and he replied,  “The movie comes out in a few months, and that’ll 
  be the end of it. ” He was wrong, of course, because he fundamentally did not get 
  the idea of transmedia worlds. He was completely mired in the old Hollywood way 
  of thinking about story worlds — a big Hollywood movie defines the world, then 
  there are toys, games, and TV shows that mimic that. The idea of a world that could 
  be based in the ruleset of a handheld videogame, or a world that could get stronger 
  with each new medium you add to it was completely unfamiliar to him (he is not in 
  charge of that company any longer). 
    The strength of Pokemon is not just in the game concept, but in the careful and 
  consistent use of multiple media as gateways into a single, well-defined world. 
   Properties of Transmedia Worlds 
    Transmedia worlds have some interesting properties that make them so interesting. 
    Transmedia Worlds are Powerful 
    Successful transmedia worlds exert a powerful effect over fans. It is stronger than 
  just a fan’s love of an interesting story. It is almost as if the world becomes a sort 
  of personal utopia that they fantasize about visiting. Sometimes these fantasies are 
  short-term, but for many, they are long-term, lasting on through their lives. For 
  some, these long-term fantasies are something they turn to, now and then, for a 
  sort of mental break. An adult who keeps a Transformer toy around as a decoration 
  might be a good example of this. The toy gives him a convenient mental gateway to 
  the world of Transformers that he can visit occasionally. 
    But for others, the passion for this personal utopia becomes something they 
  actively engage in every day. Such was certainly the case with Scott Edward Nall, 
  who on his 30th birthday, legally changed his name to Optimus Prime, one of the 
  lead robots in the Transformers Universe. In fact, if you look at  “hardcore fans ”
  of any kind of fiction, you will find that in almost all cases, the properties with 
  the most devoted fans are the ones that are the strongest transmedia worlds. Star
  Trek, Star Wars, Transformers, Lord of the Rings, Marvel Comics, Harry Potter, and 
  many other properties that get hardcore fans have a world at their core. More than 
  the enjoyment of a good storyline, or the appreciation of interesting characters, 
  the desire to enter a fantasy world seems to be what propels these fans to such 
  extremes. 
  PROPERTIES OF TRANSMEDIA WORLDS
  
  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN • STORIES AND GAMES TAKE PLACE IN WORLDS
  304
    Transmedia Worlds are Long Lived 
   Solid transmedia worlds continue for a surprisingly long time. Superman appeared 
  over seventy years ago. James Bond has been around for fifty-five years. Star Trek
  still thrives after forty years. Walt Disney realized the power of transmedia as he 
  started developing comic books to help keep the worlds of his animation properties 
  alive, and created Disneyland to this same end. One of his strongest arguments for 
  investing in such an unusual venture was that it would help keep up the public’s 
  interest in Disney films by giving them another gateway into the world of the films. 
  The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 extended the length of corporate copy-
  rights from 75 years to 95 years. This was greatly spurred by the fact that some still 
  lucrative properties (such as early Mickey Mouse cartoons) were in danger of falling 
  into the public domain. Right or wrong, some have suggested that one of the rea-
  sons that this act passed seems to be that it just feels wrong to let a carefully man-
  aged, well-beloved world fall into the wrong hands. 
   One very good reason to cultivate a strong transmedia world is that if you do 
  it well, it can be profitable for a very long time. This seems particularly true for 
  worlds that appeal to children — when the children grow into adulthood, they often 
  want to share the worlds with their children, creating a cycle that might go on a 
  very long time. 
    Transmedia Worlds Evolve Over Time 
   But these worlds do not remain static over time — they evolve. Consider a trans-
  media world over a hundred years old (and still popular!): the world of Sherlock 
  Holmes. When we think of Sherlock Holmes today, we typically think of him in his 
  trademark deerstalker cap and oversized calabash pipe. But if you read the text of 
  the Sherlock Holmes stories, these items are not mentioned in the text. Nor do they 
  appear in the artwork of Sidney Paget, who did all of the original illustrations for the 
  stories. So where did they come from? Both pipe and cap seem to have been made 
  popular by William Gillette, an actor who portrayed Holmes in a series of plays 
  based on the stories. He chose the unusual hat and the oversized pipe because they 
  would be distinct, and visible even from the back row of a theater. The plays were 
  immensely popular, so much so that future illustrators of the Holmes stories used 
  photos of Gillette as a model for their illustrations. Weirdly, the pipe and cap have 
  become the icons for Sherlock Holmes — icons that his creator, Sir Arthur Conan 
  Doyle, never envisioned. But this is the way of transmedia worlds — as new media 
  provide new gateways to the world, the world itself (or people’s perception of it, 
  which amounts to the same thing for an imaginary world) changes to accommodate 
  the new gateways. 
   Another excellent example of this comes from an even older and more beloved 
  transmedia world — the world of Santa Claus. If ever there was a fantasy utopia 
  that people truly want to be real, it is Santa’s world — a world where once a year 
  
  305
  a benevolent figure carefully considers your heart’s desire, and gives it to you if 
  you are worthy. Consider the many paths of entry to this world: Not only are there 
  stories, poems, songs, and movies, but you can write him letters, and even visit 
  Santa himself! Just think of it — a fictional character comes to your house and eats 
  your cookies and then leaves behind a treasure trove of gifts! We so badly want this 
  world to exist that millions of people go to tremendous expense and feats of decep-
  tion to make children believe it to be an unquestionable reality. 
    But who is the author of this world? Like all long-lived transmedia worlds, it 
  was a great collaborative effort. Storytellers and artists continually try to augment 
  Santa’s world. Some succeed, like the introduction of Santa’s reindeer by Clement 
  Moore in 1823, or the introduction of Rudolph by Robert L. May in 1939. Many oth-
  ers fail. No less a storyteller than L. Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard of Oz
  stories, failed miserably with his 1902  Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, which 
  attempted to establish Santa’s origin as a mortal selected for immortality by a coun-
  cil of nymphs, gnomes, and demons. 
    Who decides which new features enter a transmedia world, and which ones 
  are rejected? It somehow happens as part of our collective consciousness. Through 
  some unspoken democratic process, everyone just decides whether a particular fea-
  ture seems appropriate or inappropriate, and the fictional world changes slightly to 
  accommodate. There is no formal decision — it just happens. If a story feature is 
  well-liked, it takes root. If not, it fades away. In the long run, the world is governed 
  by those who visit it.  
      What Successful Transmedia Worlds Have in Common 
    Successful transmedia worlds are powerful and valuable — so what do they have in 
  common? 
    ●  They tend to be rooted in a single medium. For all of their many gateways, the 
  most successful of the transmedia worlds started out by making a huge splash in 
  just one medium. Sherlock Holmes was serialized fiction. Superman was a comic 
  book. Star Wars was a movie. Star Trek was a TV show. Pokemon was a hand-
  held game. All of these have appeared in many other forms, but each is at its 
  very strongest when in its original medium. 
    ●  They are intuitive. When doing research for Toontown Online, I tried to learn 
  as much as I could about the fictional world of Toontown. As I studied the 
  film Who Framed Roger Rabbit , I realized that very little about Toontown was 
  really described there. The film didn’t need to describe Toontown in great detail 
  because everyone already knew it existed. Without anyone ever expressly saying 
  it, it was somehow common knowledge that all cartoon characters live together 
  in a cartoon universe that is very different than ours. The creators of Superman
  and Batman surely never had any intention that their characters shared the world 
  WHAT SUCCESSFUL TRANSMEDIA WORLDS HAVE IN COMMON
  
  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN • STORIES AND GAMES TAKE PLACE IN WORLDS
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  with other superheroes, but it was intuitive to comic readers that these characters 
  lived in the same world — and so now they do. 
   ●  They have a creative individual at their core. The majority of successful 
  transmedia worlds are rooted in the imagination and aesthetic styling of a 
  single individual. People like Walt Disney, Shigeru Miyamoto, L. Frank Baum, 
  Tajiri Satoshi, and George Lucas are all examples. Occasionally, small, tight teams 
  are able to create successful transmedia worlds, but it is very rare indeed for 
  successful worlds to be created by large teams. There is something about the holis-
  tic vision of a world that comes to a single individual that gives it the strength, 
  solidity, integrity, and beauty necessary to survive the pressure of many gateways. 
   ●  They facilitate the telling of many stories. Successful transmedia worlds are 
  never based around a single plotline. They have a solidity and an interconnected-
  ness that goes far beyond that. They leave room for future stories and for guests 
  to imagine their own stories. 
   ●  They make sense through any of their gateways. One kiss of death for almost 
  any movie is the phrase  “It makes more sense if you read the book. ” You never 
  know which gateway guests might enter first, so you must make all of them 
  equally inviting and welcoming. Pokemon certainly succeeded in this regard — 
  its TV show, comic, video, and card games were each understandable and enjoy-
  able in their own right. Any of these could be a first encounter with the world of 
  Pokemon that might lead to other ports of entry later on. 
   A counterexample would be some of the things that were attempted with the 
  world of the Matrix. Enter the Matrix, a critically panned videogame based on 
  the second film, Matrix: Reloaded, took the novel approach of not telling the 
  story of the movie, but rather a parallel story that intersected with the movie. 
  This was an interesting idea, but if you didn’t see the movie, it was confusing. 
  Similarly,  Animatrix, a series of animated shorts that happen in the Matrix uni-
  verse only make sense if the viewer is already intimate with the Matrix universe. 
  This “it only makes sense if you enter through all the gateways ” approach was 
  intriguing for a few, but alienating for most.  
   ●  They are about wish fulfillment. Imagining a fantasy world is a lot of work. 
  Players will not do it unless it is a world that they truly would like to visit — a 
  world that fulfills some deep and important wish.  
   Transmedia worlds are the future of entertainment. It is no longer sufficient to focus 
  just on creating a great experience in a single medium. Increasingly, designers are 
  asked to create new gateways to existing worlds — not an easy task. But those who 
  can create gateways that excite players by creatively giving them a new perspective 
  on and enjoyment of a known world are much sought after. But even more sought 
  after are those who can invent a successful transmedia world starting with noth-
  ing but an understanding of their audience’s secret wishes. If you want to create or 
  improve transmedia worlds, use this lens.   
  
  307
   Lens #74: The Lens of the World 
    The world of your game is a thing that exists apart. Your game is a doorway to 
  this magic place that exists only in the imagination of your players. To ensure 
  your world has power and integrity, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  How is my world better than the real world? 
    ●  Can there be multiple gateways to my world? How do they differ? How do 
  they support each other? 
    ●  Is my world centered on a single story, or could many stories happen here?  
  WHAT SUCCESSFUL TRANSMEDIA WORLDS HAVE IN COMMON
  
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  CHAPTER
  309
   Worlds Contain 
  Characters 
  309
  EIGHTEEN
  F I G U R E
  18.1
  
  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN • WORLDS CONTAIN CHARACTERS
  310
   The Nature of Game Characters 
   If we are to create games that have great stories in them, these stories must contain 
  memorable characters. It is an important question to ask: How are characters in 
  games different than characters in other media? If we examine fictional characters 
  in various media side by side, some differences become apparent. Here are some 
  samples I chose from lists of the best novels, films, and videogames of the twentieth 
  century. 
   Novel Characters 
    Holden Caulfield: The Catcher in the Rye. Holden is a teenager who wrestles with 
  the phoniness and ugliness of the adult world. 
   Humbert Humbert: Lolita. Humbert is an adult consumed by lust for an adolescent 
  girl. 
   Tom Joad: The Grapes of Wrath. Tom is an ex-convict who tries to help his family 
  after they lose their farm. 
   Ralph: Lord of the Flies. Ralph and many other children are stranded on an island 
  and try to survive the island and each other. 
   Sethe: Beloved. Sethe is a woman who tries to rebuild her life after she and her 
  daughter escape from slavery.  
   Movie Characters 
    Rick Blaine: Casablanca. Rick must choose between the love of his life and saving 
  the life of her husband. 
   Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark. An adventurous archaeologist must rescue 
  the Ark of the Covenant from the Nazis. 
   Rose DeWitt Bukater: Titanic. A young woman falls in love on the ill-fated Titanic.
   Norman Bates: Psycho. A man with an unusual case of schizophrenia commits 
  murders and tries to cover them up. 
   Don Lockwood. Singin’ in the Rain. A silent film actor struggles to make the transi-
  tion to talkies.  
   Game Characters 
    Mario: Super Mario Brothers. A cartoon plumber battles enemies to rescue a prin-
  cess from an evil king. 
  
  311
    Solid Snake: Metal Gear Solid. A retired soldier infiltrates a nuclear weapons dis-
  posal facility to neutralize a terrorist threat. 
    Cloud Strife: Final Fantasy VII. A band of rebels tries to defeat an evil mega-
  corporation run by an evil wizard. 
    Link: Legend of Zelda. A young man must recover a magic artifact to rescue a prin-
  cess from a villain. 
    Gordon Freeman: Half-Life 2. A physicist must battle aliens when an experiment 
  goes horribly wrong.  
    So, examining these lists, what patterns do we see? 
    ●  Mental → Physical. The characters in the novels are involved in deep psychic 
  struggles. This makes sense, since in a novel, we spend much of our time lis-
  tening to the characters ’ innermost thoughts. The characters in the movies are 
  involved in both emotional and physical struggles, which are resolved through 
  combinations of communication and action. Again, when you consider the 
  medium, this makes sense: We cannot hear the thoughts of film characters, but 
  we can see what they say and do. Finally, the game characters are involved in 
  conflicts that are almost entirely physical. Since these characters mostly have no 
  thoughts (the player does the thinking for them) and are only occasionally able 
  to speak, this again makes perfect sense. In all three cases, the characters are 
  defined by their media. 
    ●  Reality  → Fantasy. The novels tend to be very reality based; the films tend to 
  be rooted in reality, but often pushing towards fantasy, and the game worlds are 
  almost entirely fantasy situations. And the characters reflect this — they are prod-
  ucts of their environment. 
    ●  Complex  → Simple. For a variety of reasons, the complexity of the plots and 
  depth of the characters gradually diminishes as we move from novels to games.  
    From this, one might conclude that games are doomed to have simple fantasy 
  characters engaging mostly in physical actions. And that certainly is the easy path. 
  After all, you can get away with mere action in games when you usually can’t in 
  movies or novels. But it doesn’t mean it isn’t possible to add more depth, more 
  mental conflict, and more interesting character relationships into your games — it 
  just means that it is challenging. Some of the games on this list, Final Fantasy VII 
  for instance, have very involved sets of character relationships structured around 
  a simple gameplay structure — as involved as they are, players are crying out for 
  more — they want their games to have richer, more meaningful characters and sto-
  rylines. For much of this chapter we will be looking at methods that storytellers in 
  other media use to define their characters, and consider how we can adapt these 
  methods to the creation of strong game characters. 
  THE NATURE OF GAME CHARACTERS
  
  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN • WORLDS CONTAIN CHARACTERS
  312
   Let’s start with a very special character: the avatar.  
   Avatars 
   There is something magical about the character that a player controls in a game. So 
  magical that we give that character a special name: the avatar. The word is derived 
  from a Sanskrit word that refers to a god magically taking physical form on the earth. 
  And the name is well chosen for a game character, since a similarly magical transfor-
  mation takes place when a player uses their avatar to enter the world of the game. 
   The relationship between player and avatar is strange. There are times when the 
  player is distinctly apart from the avatar, but other times when the player’s mental 
  state is completely projected into the avatar, to the point that the player gasps if the 
  avatar is injured or threatened. This should not be completely surprising — after all, 
  we have the ability to project ourselves into just about anything we control. When 
  we drive a car, for example, we project our identity into the car, as if it is an exten-
  sion of ourselves. Examining a parking space, we will often say  “I don’t think I can 
  fit in there. ” And if another car collides with our car, we don’t say  “He hit my car! ”
  Instead we say  “He hit me!” So it should be no surprise that we can project our-
  selves into a videogame character that we have direct control over. 
   Designers often debate about which is more immersive: the first- or third-person 
  view. One argument is that greater projection can be achieved by providing a first-
  person perspective on a scene with no visible avatar. However, the power of empa-
  thy is strong, and when controlling a visible avatar, guests often wince in imagined 
  pain upon seeing their avatar suffer a blow, or sigh in relief upon seeing their avatar 
  escape physical harm. It is almost as if the avatar is a kind of kinesthetic voodoo 
  doll for the guest. Bowlers are another example of this phenomenon, as they try to 
  exert  “body English ” on a bowling ball as it rolls down the lane toward the pins. 
  These movements are largely subconscious, and are a result of a bowler projecting 
  himself onto the ball. In this sense, the bowling ball serves as the bowler’s avatar. 
   And it is one thing to project ourselves into our avatar as if our avatar is a tool, 
  but the experience of projection can be so much more powerful if we actually relate 
  to the character in some way. So, what kinds of characters are best suited for play-
  ers to project themselves into? 
    The Ideal Form 
   The first type of character that is a good choice as an avatar is the kind that the 
  player has always wanted to be. Characters like this — such as mighty warriors, 
  powerful wizards, attractive princesses, ultra suave secret agents, etc. — exert a pull 
  on the psyche, since the force inside us that pushes us toward being our best finds 
  the idea of projecting ourselves into an idealized form very appealing. Although 
  these characters are not much like our real selves at all, they are people we some-
  times dream about being. 
  
  313
    The Blank Slate 
    The second type of character that works well as an avatar is one that is, as Scott 
  McCloud puts it, iconic. In his excellent book,  Understanding Comics, McCloud 
  makes the interesting point that the less detail that goes into a character, the more 
  opportunity the reader has to project themselves into that character. 
   ©1993, 1994, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, pgs. 36 and 43.  Reprinted by permission 
  of HarperCollins Publishers
  F I G U R E
  18.2
     McCloud further points out that in comics, it is often the case that characters or 
  environments that are meant to seem alien, foreign, or scary are given a lot of 
  detail, because more detail makes them more  “ other. ” When you combine an iconic 
  character with a detailed world, you get a powerful combination, as McCloud shows 
  below: 
  AVATARS
  ©1993, 1994, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, pgs. 36 and 43, Reprinted by permission of 
  HarperCollins Publishers
  F I G U R E
  18.3
  
  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN • WORLDS CONTAIN CHARACTERS
  314
    This idea has bearing well beyond the domain of comics. In videogames we see 
  the same phenomenon. Some of the most popular and compelling avatars are ones 
  that are very iconic. Consider Mario: He isn’t much of an idealized form, but he is 
  simple, hardly speaks, and is completely non-threatening, so it is easy to project 
  yourself into him. 
   The idealized form and the blank slate are often mixed. Consider Spider Man, 
  for example. He is an ideal form: a powerful and brave superhero, but the mask 
  that covers his face makes him almost completely iconic — a blank slate that could 
  be almost anyone. 
   Periodically, gimmicky systems show up that let you take your own 
  photograph and put it on your avatar. I’ve heard people selling these systems 
  refer to this as  “the ultimate dream for any gamer. ” But these systems, while 
  interesting as a novelty, never take hold in the long-term because people don’t 
  play games to be themselves — they play games to be the people they wish they 
  could be. 
   In Chapter 14 we introduced Lens #64: The Lens of Projection as a tool to exam-
  ine how well a player was projecting themselves into the imaginary world of the 
  game. We should also add a more specific lens, which examines how well they 
  project themselves into their avatar.   
   Lens #75: The Lens of the Avatar 
   The avatar is a player’s gateway into the world of the game. To ensure the ava-
  tar brings out as much of the player’s identity as possible, ask yourself these 
  questions: 
   ●  Is my avatar an ideal form likely to appeal to my players? 
   ●  Does my avatar have iconic qualities that let a player project themselves 
  into the character?  
   Creating Compelling Game Characters 
   The avatar is important in a game, just as the protagonist is important in a tradi-
  tional story. But we must not forget the other characters. There are dozens of books 
  on scriptwriting and storytelling that can give you good advice on how to make 
  strong, compelling characters. Here I will summarize some of the methods I have 
  found most useful for developing characters in games. 
  
  315
   Character Tip #1: List Character Functions 
    In the process of creating a story, one frequently invents characters as the storyline 
  demands them. But how about when the game demands them? A very useful tech-
  nique when coming up with the cast of characters in your game is to list all the 
  functions that these characters need to fulfill. Then list the characters you had been 
  thinking of putting in the game, and see how they match up. For example, if you are 
  making an action platform game, your list might look like: 
   Character Functions: 
     1.   Hero: The character who plays the game 
    2.   Mentor: Gives advice and useful items 
    3.   Assistant: Gives occasional tips 
    4.   Tutor: Explains how to play the game 
    5.   Final Boss: Someone to have the last battle against 
    6.   Minions: Bad guys 
    7.   Three Bosses: Tough guys to battle against 
    8.   Hostage: Someone to rescue  
    Taking a peek into your imagination, you might have seen these characters: 
    a.   Princess Mouse — Beautiful, but tough and no nonsense 
    b.   Wise Old Owl — Full of wisdom, but forgetful 
    c.   Silver Hawk — Angry and vengeful 
    d.   Sammy Snake — Amoral, and full of wry humor 
    e.  Rat Army — Hundreds of rats with evil red eyes  
    So, now you have to match the characters to the functions. This is an opportu-
  nity to really get creative. The traditional thing would be to make Princess Mouse 
  the hostage. But why not do something different; make her the mentor? Or the 
  hero? Or even the final boss! The Rat Army seem like natural minions — but who 
  knows? Maybe they only have evil red eyes because they have been captured by the 
  evil princess mouse who has hypnotized them, and they are actually the hostages! 
  Hmm …  it also seems we don’t have enough characters to fill all eight roles — we 
  could make up more characters, or we could give some characters multiple roles. 
  What if your mentor, Wise Old Owl, turns out to be the final boss? It would be an 
  ironic twist, and save you on the cost of developing a new character. Maybe the 
  Assistant and Tutor are both Sammy Snake — or maybe the Silver Hawk, the hos-
  tage, mentors you by sending telepathic messages from where he is being held. 
  CREATING COMPELLING GAME CHARACTERS
  
  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN • WORLDS CONTAIN CHARACTERS
  316
   By separating the functions of the characters from your vision of the characters, 
  you can think clearly about making sure the game has characters doing all the nec-
  essary jobs, and sometimes make things more efficient by folding them together. 
  This method serves as a handy lens.   
      Lens #76: The Lens of Character Function 
   To make sure your characters are doing everything your game needs them to 
  do, ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What are the roles I need the characters to fill? 
   ●  What characters have I already imagined? 
   ●  Which characters map well to which roles? 
   ●  Can any characters fill more than one role? 
   ●  Do I need to change the characters to better fit the roles? 
   ●  Do I need any new characters?  
      Character Tip #2: Define and Use Character Traits 
   Let’s say we had some dialog between your heroine, Sabu, and her sidekick, Lester —
  simple expositional stuff, which helps set up the next level. Something like 
   LESTER: Sabu  ! 
   SABU: What is it? 
   LESTER: Someone has stolen the king’s crown! 
   SABU: Do you realize what this means? 
   LESTER: No. 
   SABU: It means the Dark Arrow has returned. We must stop him! 
   This dialog is pretty flat. While it tells us about the situation (missing crown) and 
  the villain (Dark Arrow), it tells us nothing about Sabu or Lester. Your characters 
  need to say and do things that define them as real people. To do this, you must 
  know their traits. 
   There are many ways to define traits for your characters. Some advise creat-
  ing a “character bible, ” where you list out every possible thing you can think of 
  that defines your character — their loves and hates, how they dress, what they eat, 
  where they grew up, etc. And this can be a useful exercise. But ultimately, you will 
  probably want to boil things down to a simpler essence: a small, distilled list of 
  traits that encapsulate the character. You want to choose traits that are going to stay 
  with your character through many situations that really define them as a person. 
  
  317
  Sometimes these can be a little contradictory, but real people have contradictory 
  traits, so why shouldn’t characters? Let’s say we gave Sabu and Lester these traits:
   Sabu: trustworthy, short-tempered, valiant, a fiery lover 
  Lester: arrogant, sarcastic, spiritual, impulsive  
    Now, let’s rewrite the dialog, trying to imbue it with these traits — preferably with 
  more than one at a time (remember Lens #43: The Lens of Elegance?) .
    LESTER (exploding into the room): By the Gods! Sabu, I have news!  (impulsive 
  and spiritual)  
    SABU: (covering herself) How dare you intrude on my privacy!  (short-tempered)  
    LESTER: Whatever. Maybe you don’t care that the king’s crown has been stolen? 
  (arrogant and sarcastic)  
    SABU (a faraway look in her eye): This means I must do what I promised... 
  (trustworthy and valiant)  
    LESTER: I pray to Vishnu this is not another story of an old flame...  (Lester: spir-
  itual and sarcastic; Sabu: fiery lover)  
    SABU: Silence! The Dark Arrow broke my heart, and the heart of my sister — I 
  promised her that if he ever returned, I would risk my life to destroy him. Prepare 
  the chariot! (short-tempered, fiery lover, trustworthy, valiant)  
    It isn’t simply dialog that benefits from this treatment. The actions you choose 
  for your character, and how they are carried out, should demonstrate the traits 
  as well. If your character is sneaky, does it show in his jump animation? If your 
  character is depressed, does it show when they run? Maybe a depressed character 
  shouldn’t run, but only walk. There is nothing magic about having lists of traits and 
  using them — it just means that you know your characters well.   
   Lens #77: The Lens of Character Traits 
    To ensure that the traits of a character show in what they say and do, ask 
  yourself these questions: 
    ●  What traits define my character? 
    ●  How do these traits manifest themselves in the words, actions, and 
  appearance of my character?  
      Character Tip #3: Use the Interpersonal Circumplex 
    Your characters won’t be alone, of course — they are going to interact with each 
  other. One tool that social psychologists sometimes use to visualize the relation-
  ships between characters is the interpersonal circumplex. It is a simple graph, with 
  CREATING COMPELLING GAME CHARACTERS
  
  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN • WORLDS CONTAIN CHARACTERS
  318
  two axes: friendliness and dominance. This complex diagram shows where many 
  traits lie on this graph: 
  Submissive
  Connected
  Docile
  Cooperative
  Nurturant
  Leading
  Self-enhancing
  Dominant
  Separated
  Hostile
  Introverted
  Self-effacing
  Helpless
  Deferring
  Submitting
  Obeying
  Clinging
  Influenced
  Naive
  Admiring
  Pleasant
  Cooperation
  Trusting
  Conciliatory
  Encouraging
  Reassuring
  Sympathizing
  Comforting
  Accepting
  Being
  Gullible
  Confiding
  Unguarded
  Cooperation
  Compulsive
  Indulgent
  Consoling
  Pardoning
  Patronizing
  Exhibitionistic
  Egotistical
  Arrogant
  Commanding
  Disdainful
  Sarcastic
  Belligerent
  Abusive
  Angry
  Punishing
  Rebelling
  Complaining
  Resentful
  Bitter
  Suspicious
  Unforgiving
  Brooding
  Caustic
  Detatched
  Dictating
  Being
  admirable and
  important
  Being
  successful
  Advising
  Boasting
  Dominating
  Autonomous
  Competing
  Condescending
  Irritable
  Stern   Strict
  Impatient
  Criticizing
  Distrustful
  Skeptical
  Being
  disappointed
  Hurt
  Preoccupied
  Self-doubting
  Disengaged
  Embarassed
  Passive
  Ambitionless
  54
  64
  53
  63
  52
  62
  51
  61
  21
  11
  22
  12
  23
  13
  24
  14
  81
  71
  31
  41
  32
  42
  33
  43
  34
  44
  82
  72
  83
  73
  84
  74
  Content
  Soliciting
  Help
  Respectful
  Gentle
  Agreeable
  Helping
  Being
  considerate
  composed
  Self-
  Receptive
  Modest
  Uncertain
  Timid
  Doubting
  Indifferent
  Self-assured
  Asserting
  Assured
  Being capable
  Self-
  respecting
  Shrewd
  Firm
  Acquiescing
  Apologetic
  Proud
  Outgoing
  Intrusively
  Sociable
  Over-
  protecting
  Pitying
  Forgiving
  Self-punishing
  Self-derogating
  Inhibited
  Critical
  Distrustful
  Friendly
  Extroverted
  F I G U R E
  18.4
    This looks kind of overwhelming, but it can be a simple tool to use. Let’s say we 
  wanted to show how other Star Wars characters related to Han Solo. Since friend-
  liness and dominance are relative characteristics, we always need to make them 
  relative to a particular character. So Figure 18.5 is how you might graph out the 
  characters relative to Han. 
    Laying the characters out on a graph like this gives a good way to visualize char-
  acter relationships. Notice how extreme Darth Vader, Chewbacca, and C3PO are on 
  the graph — these extremes are part of what make them interesting. Also notice 
  that the people he communicates with the most are the closest to him on the graph. 
  What does the fact that there are no characters in the lower left quadrant tell us 
  
  319
  about Han? Consider how different the graphs would be for Luke, or for Darth 
  Vader. 
    The circumplex is not a be-all or end-all tool, but it can be a useful for thinking 
  about character relationships because of the questions it can prompt. So, let’s put it 
  in our toolbox.   
  Submissive
  Dominant
  Hostile
  Friendly
  Chewbacca
  Darth Vader
  Luke Skywalker
  Princess Leia
  C3PO
  Ben Kenobi
  Han Solo 
  F I G U R E
  18.5
      Lens #78: The Lens of the Interpersonal Circumplex 
    Understanding the relationships between your characters is crucial. One way 
  to do this is to create a graph with one axis labeled hostile/friendly, and the 
  other labeled submissive/dominant. Pick a character to analyze, and put them 
  in the middle. Plot out where other characters lie relative to that character, and 
  ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  Are there any gaps in the chart? Why are they there? Would it be better if 
  the gaps were filled? 
    ●  Are there  “extreme characters ” on the graph? If not, would it be better if 
  there were? 
    ●  Are the character’s friends in the same quadrant, or different quadrants? 
  What if that were different?  
   Character Tip #4: Make a Character Web 
    The circumplex is a nice visual way to see some character relationships. But there 
  can be many other factors in the relationships between your characters. The character 
  CREATING COMPELLING GAME CHARACTERS
  
  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN • WORLDS CONTAIN CHARACTERS
  320
  web is a good way to explore how the characters feel about each other, and why. The 
  idea is simple: To analyze a character, write down what that character thinks of all 
  the other characters. Here’s an example from the world of Archie comics: 
   Archie 
    ●  Veronica: Archie is lured by her elegance and beauty. Though she is rich, Archie 
  doesn’t care much about that. 
   ●  Betty: Archie’s true love, but her insecurity constantly gives him mixed signals, 
  so he doesn’t pursue her as forcefully as he might. 
   ●  Reggie: Archie shouldn’t trust Reggie, but he often does, because Archie always 
  tries to be a nice guy, and Archie is kind of gullible. 
   ●  Jughead: Archie’s best friend. What they have in common is that they are both 
  underdogs.  
    Veronica 
    ●  Archie: Veronica finds Archie attractive, but sometimes she seeks to date him to 
  frustrate Betty, and because she can always feel superior around him. 
   ●  Betty: Veronica trusts Betty as a friend because they were friends as little girls. 
  Veronica likes how she can always feel superior to Betty in terms of wealth and 
  class, but it really frustrates Veronica that Betty is a better person. 
   ●  Reggie: Reggie is an attractive buffoon who appreciates wealth, but Veronica gets 
  frustrated that Reggie doesn’t really respect or love her. 
   ●  Jughead: A nauseating freak — Veronica can’t understand why Archie is friends 
  with him. Veronica often bribes him with food to get what she wants.  
   Betty 
    ●  Archie: Her true love. She is shy, though, about telling him how she really feels, 
  because Betty has low self-esteem. 
   ●  Veronica: Betty’s BFF. She can be mean sometimes, and she is too money crazy, 
  but friends are friends forever, so Betty stays with Veronica. 
   ●  Reggie: Betty is intimidated by his wealth and showy attempts at class. She feels 
  like she is supposed to like him, but secretly she is repelled by him. 
   ●  Jughead: Betty thinks he’s cute and funny, and glad that he’s such a good friend 
  to her true love.  
  
  321
   Reggie 
     ●  Archie: Reggie’s archrival. Reggie can’t imagine what anyone sees in such a 
  dopey nice guy. Occasionally, Reggie envies Archie’s popularity, but he always 
  thinks he can find a tricky way to outdo Archie. 
    ●  Veronica: Reggie finds her attractive and rich — he likes the power of her 
  wealth. 
    ●  Betty: Reggie finds her attractive, and though her low self-esteem is a turnoff, to 
  be able to win her would show his superiority over Archie. 
    ●  Jughead: Reggie sees him as a total loser who deserves to be bullied, especially 
  since he is friends with Archie.  
   Jughead 
     ●  Archie: Jughead’s best friend, and the only one who understands and appreci-
  ates Jughead’s love of food. 
    ●  Veronica: The mean girl that Archie likes. 
    ●  Betty: The nice girl that Archie likes. 
    ●  Reggie: A bully.  
    You can see that this takes a little time, but it can be well worth the effort 
  because of the questions it raises about character interactions you might not have 
  thought about. It’s a very handy lens for giving your characters more depth.   
      Lens #79: The Lens of the Character Web 
    To flesh out your characters ’ relationships better, make a list of all your char-
  acters, and ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  How, specifically, does each character feel about each of the others? 
    ●  Are there any connections unaccounted for? How can I use those? 
    ●  Are there too many similar connections? How can they be more different?  
   Character Tip #5: Use Status 
    Most of the character tips we’ve seen so far come from writers. But there is another 
  profession that knows just as much about creating compelling characters, if not 
  more — actors. Many people have drawn parallels between the unpredictable nature 
  of interactive storytelling, and the unpredictable nature of improvisational theater; 
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  indeed, the techniques of the improvisational actor can prove quite useful to game 
  designers. These techniques are many and are well-described in several books, but 
  there is one, for me, that stands out above all others. It is really not so much a tech-
  nique, but a lens described impeccably well by Keith Johnstone in his classic book 
  Impro — it is the Lens of Status. 
   Whenever people meet or interact, there is a hidden negotiation that constantly 
  takes place. We are mostly not conscious of it, since it predates our ability to speak. 
  It is our negotiation of status; that is, who is in charge of the current interaction? 
  Status is not a matter of who you are, status is something you do. Johnstone illus-
  trates this quite well with this bit of dialog: 
   TRAMP: ‘Ere! Where are you going? 
   DUCHESS: I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch... 
   TRAMP: Are you deaf as well as blind  ? 
   The tramp, who you might expect to be very low status, is taking on an attitude of 
  very high status. Any time two or more people interact in any setting — whether 
  friends or enemies, collaborators or competitors, masters or servants — a negotia-
  tion of status takes place. We do this almost entirely subconsciously with posture, 
  tone of voice, eye contact, and dozens of other detailed behaviors. What is surpris-
  ing is how consistent these behaviors are across all cultures. 
   ●  Typical low status behaviors include: fidgeting, avoiding eye contact, touching 
  one’s own face, and generally being tense. 
   ●  Typical high status behaviors include: being relaxed and in control, making 
  strong eye contact, and, weirdly, not moving your head while you speak.  
   A typical improv exercise is to split the group of actors into two groups, who 
  then intermingle — individuals in the first group (low status) make brief eye con-
  tact, then look away, while the second group (high status) makes and holds eye 
  contact with others. Most actors who try this exercise quickly realize that this isn’t 
  just playing pretend — the actors in the low-status group quickly find that they 
  feel inferior and start unconsciously taking on other low-status characteristics. The 
  actors in the high status group start to feel superior, and take on high-status char-
  acteristics. Even if you are by yourself, try talking without moving your head at all, 
  and see how it makes you feel — or try the opposite — talking while turning your 
  head frequently, and you will quickly get the idea. 
   Status is a relative thing, not absolute to an individual. Darth Vader takes on 
  high status behavior when he deals with Princess Leia, but he takes on low status 
  when he deals with the Emperor. 
   Status can be conveyed in surprising ways — slow motion, for example, gives 
  high status, as we’ve seen in  The Six Million Dollar Man, The Matrix, and count-
  less shampoo commercials. The way characters occupy space is also very tell-
  ing of status. Low-status characters go to places where they are less likely to 
  
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  encounter others, or be noticed. High status characters are in the most important 
  place in the room. 
    Status is like a secret language that we all know so well we don’t know we’re 
  speaking it. The problem with it being so subconscious is that when we create arti-
  ficial characters, it doesn’t occur to us to give them these behaviors, because gener-
  ally we aren’t aware that we do these things. But if you do give these behaviors to 
  your characters, you will quickly find that they seem aware of each other in a way 
  that most videogame characters are not. 
    The game Munch’s Oddysee has great examples of character status interactions. 
  In it, you control two different characters, one of whom is a slave, and the other is 
  bound to a wheelchair (low status). Throughout the game you face arrogant (high- 
  status) enemies and get help from slavish (low-status) followers. The interactions 
  between all these are quite interesting to see, and a great deal of comedy comes 
  from unexpected status reversals, such as the followers mouthing off at Munch or at 
  the enemies. The characters in this game show an awareness of each other’s pres-
  ence that, while crude, is a step above many other games. 
    Status is a largely unexplored area in interactive entertainment. Brenda Harger, 
  who first introduced me to the concept of status, is an excellent improv actress and 
  a researcher at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. 
  She and her students have done some fascinating work on creating artificially intel-
  ligent characters that are aware of their status and of the status of other characters, 
  and automatically adopt appropriate postures, actions, and personal space. Right 
  now, most videogame characters behave the same way no matter who is around. It 
  seems likely that the next generation of interactive game characters will seem more 
  alive because they are aware of status. 
    In Chapter 14, we talked about how important things that change dramatically 
  are inherently interesting. Status is one of those important things. During argu-
  ments, people are vying to have the highest status (either by raising their own or 
  lowering the status of their opponent), and this seesaw of status is what makes 
  arguments interesting. 
    Status isn’t just about dialog, though — it is also about movement, eye contact, 
  territory, and what characters do. It is a way of looking at the world, so let’s put it 
  in our toolbox.   
   Lens #80: The Lens of Status 
    When people interact, they take on different behaviors depending on their sta-
  tus levels. To make your characters more aware of each other, ask yourself 
  these questions: 
    ●  What are the relative status levels of the characters in my game? 
    ●  How can they show appropriate status behaviors? 
  CREATING COMPELLING GAME CHARACTERS
  
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   Of course, having an understanding of status does more than give you insights 
  into how to make realistic characters — it helps you understand and control real-life 
  situations, like design meetings and client negotiations, but we’ll discuss those in 
  later chapters. 
   Character Tip #6: Use the Power of the Voice 
   The human voice is an incredibly powerful thing, which can affect us at a deep 
  subconscious level. This is why talking pictures elevated the cinema from a novelty 
  to the dominant art form of the twentieth century. It is only in the past few years 
  that technology has permitted videogames to make serious use of voice acting. Even 
  now, the voice acting in games seems primitive compared to the powerful perform-
  ances in films. 
   Partly this is true because game developers are often inexperienced when work-
  ing with voice talent. Directing a voice actor is a delicate art that takes a certain 
  knack and years of practice to do well. But there is another reason for weak voice 
  acting in games — it is because we do the process backwards. In animated films, a 
  script is written first, then voice actors are brought in to record it. As they do, lines 
  are changed, improvisations are made, and the good ones are incorporated into the 
  script. Once the recordings are in place, the characters get designed (often incorpo-
  rating facial features of the actors), and animation commences. In videogames we 
  do this the other way — the characters are often designed and modeled first, then 
  the script is written, often basic animations are created, and then the voice acting is 
  added last. This diminishes the power of the voice actor, who is now just trying to 
  imitate what he sees, instead of rightly expressing how he truly feels his idea of the 
  character would act and behave. The voice actor becomes peripheral to the creative 
  process, not central, and the power of voice is weakened. 
   Why do we do this backwards? Because the process of game development is 
  so volatile, it is expensive to create characters around their voices, since the script 
  continues to change throughout the entire process. But perhaps, with time, we will 
  develop techniques that will allow voice actors to become more central to game 
  character design, and reclaim the power of voice. 
   Character Tip #7: Use the Power of the Face 
   It is often said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. A huge percentage of our 
  brains is taken up with custom hardware for processing facial expression. We have 
   ●  Conflicts of status are interesting — how are my characters vying for status? 
   ●  Changes of status are interesting — where do they happen in my game? 
   ●  How am I giving the player a chance to express status?  
  
  325
  the most complex and expressive faces in the entire animal kingdom. Notice, for 
  example, our eye whites — other animals do not have visible eye whites. It would 
  appear we evolved them as a method of communication. We are also the only ani-
  mal that blushes, and the only animal that cries  . 
    Despite all this, few videogames give facial animation the attention it deserves. 
  Game designers are so focused on the actions of the characters, they give little 
  thought to their emotions. When a game does have meaningful facial animation 
  (such as Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker), it often garners a lot of attention. The 
  designers of  OnLive Traveler, an early 3D chat room, had very strict polygon budg-
  ets for their characters. As they built and tested prototypes, they would ask their 
  users each time  “Do the characters need more details? ” and every time, the answer 
  would come back,  “Yes — in the face. ” After five or six rounds of this, the bodies 
  dwindled away to nothing, leaving the characters as eerie floating heads — but this 
  was what the users preferred, since this was an activity about self-expression, and 
  faces are the most expressive tool that exists. 
  F I G U R E
  18.6
     Facial animation doesn’t have to be expensive — you can get tremendous power out 
  of simple animated eyebrows or eye shapes. But you do have to have a character 
  face that will be visible to the player. Avatar faces generally are not visible to the 
  CREATING COMPELLING GAME CHARACTERS
  
  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN • WORLDS CONTAIN CHARACTERS
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  player. The designers of  Doom found a way to change that by putting a small picture 
  of the avatar’s face on the bottom of the screen. Since we can notice facial expres-
  sion in our peripheral vision more easily than we can discern numbers, they wisely 
  made the facial expression correspond to the health meter, so that players got a sense 
  of how injured they were without having to take their eyes off of their enemies. 
   Character Tip #8: Powerful Stories Transform Characters 
   One distinguishing feature of great stories is how their characters change. Video 
  game designers seldom consider this, to their detriment. There is a tendency to treat 
  game characters as fixed types — the villain is always the villain, the hero was born 
  a hero. This makes for very boring storytelling. A few games, such as  Fable and 
  Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic became famous because of the fact that they 
  do what nearly every successful movie or book does — let events change the main 
  character over time. 
   It is certainly true that meaningful character change is not possible for the main 
  character in every game. But perhaps character change can happen to other char-
  acters in the game such as the sidekick or the villain. A great way to visualize the 
  potential for character change in your game is to make a character transformation 
  chart, with characters on the left side, and the different sections of your story along 
  the top. Then, mark down the places where a character undergoes some kind of 
  change. For example, consider the changes in the story of Cinderella:
    
   SCENES 
  At home
   The 
  invitation 
   The night of 
  ball
   The next
  day
  At last
   C
  H
  A
  R
  A
  C
  T
  E
  R
  S
   Cinderella 
   A sad, 
  suffering 
  servant 
   Hopeful, then 
  disappointed 
   A beautiful 
  princess 
   Suffering 
  and sad 
  again
   Happily 
  ever after 
   Her step-
  sisters 
  and step-
  mother
   Superior 
  and mean 
   Ecstatic and 
  arrogant 
   Disappointed 
  at getting no 
  attention 
   Hopeful 
  that they 
  might fit the 
  slipper
   Disgraced 
  and
  incredulous 
   The Prince 
   Lonely 
   Still lonely 
   Fascinated 
  with a mystery 
  woman 
   Desperately 
  searching 
   Happily 
  ever after 
   By looking at each character over time, instead of just the story thread, we get a 
  unique perspective that helps us to better understand our characters. Some transfor-
  mations are temporary and small, others are great and permanent. By considering 
  
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  how your characters should change and making the most of that, your game will 
  tell a far more powerful story than if they pass through the story untouched by it. 
  This perspective of character transformation is our final character lens.   
   Lens #81: The Lens of Character Transformation 
    Powerful stories are able to change their characters. To ensure your characters 
  are transforming in interesting ways, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  How does each of my characters change throughout the game? 
    ●  How am I communicating those changes to the player? Can I communicate 
  them more clearly, or more strongly? 
    ●  Is there enough change? 
    ●  Are the changes surprising and interesting? 
    ●  Are the changes believable?  
   Character Tip #9: Avoid the Uncanny Valley 
    Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori noted something interesting about human 
  response to robots and other artificial characters. If you think about how people 
  empathize, you might notice that the closer something is to seeming human, the 
  more they can empathize with it. You might even lay this out on a graph like: 
  Human likeness
  Empathy
  Teddy bear
  Rock
  Real person
  Puppy
  F I G U R E
  18.7
     And this makes perfect sense. The more something is like a person, the more empa-
  thy we give it. But Mori noted an interesting exception, as he worked on robots that 
  tried to mimic humans — as soon as they started to get too human, perhaps moving 
  CREATING COMPELLING GAME CHARACTERS
  
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  328
  from a metal face (think C-3PO) to one with artificial skin, people suddenly found 
  them repulsive. It made the graph look like this: 
  Human likeness
  Empathy
  Teddy bear
  Rock
  Real person
  Puppy
  Robot with skin
  F I G U R E
  18.8
    Mori referred to this surprising dip in the curve as  “the uncanny valley. ” The cause 
  of this uneasy feeling may be that when we see things that almost look like peo-
  ple, our brains register them as  “diseased people ” who might be dangerous to be 
  around. Zombies are a canonical example of the creepy things that live at the bot-
  tom of the uncanny valley. 
   The uncanny valley shows up in videogames and animation all the time. Every 
  frame of films such as  Final Fantasy and Polar Express look gorgeous and natural —
  when you just look at one frame. But when the films are in motion, there is some-
  thing about the computer-generated humans that many people find creepy — some-
  how, they don’t move quite right — they got too close to the valley and fell in. 
  Contrast those characters to the cartoony characters (fish, toys, cars, robots) in Pixar 
  films that have no problem generating empathy, because they stay to the left side of 
  the valley, where that puppy dog is. 
   Videogame characters can easily have the same problems — especially in games 
  that try to mimic reality. The day may come where videogame characters are so 
  human-looking that they can safely exist on the right side of the valley, but until 
  then, use caution — it’s a long way down. 
   Characters definitely make a world more interesting, but for it to be a world at 
  all, it needs something else — a space to exist.  
  
  CHAPTER
  329
   Worlds Contain  Spaces 
    
  329
  NINETEEN
  F I G U R E
  19.1
  
  CHAPTER NINETEEN • WORLDS CONTAIN SPACES
  330
   Wait a minute — didn’t we cover the idea of space in Chapter 10? Yes and no. We 
  discussed the idea of functional space — but functional space is only the skeleton 
  of the game space. In this chapter, we will examine the fleshed-out space the player 
  actually experiences. 
   The Purpose of Architecture 
   Yes, build a Frank Lloyd house if you don’t mind camping in the front yard 
  when it rains. 
  – Aline Barnsdall  
   What do you think of when you hear the word  “architecture? ” Most people think of 
  grand buildings, particularly modern buildings with unusual shapes. People some-
  times seem to think that the primary job of the architect is to sculpt the outer shape 
  of a building, and that appreciation of good architecture means enjoying these 
  building shapes like one might enjoy sculptures in a museum. 
   And while the outer shape of a structure is one aspect of architecture, it has little 
  to do with the primary purpose of architecture. 
   The primary purpose of architecture is to control a person’s experience. 
   If all the experiences we wanted to have were to be found easily in nature, there 
  would be no point to architecture. But those experiences aren’t always there, so 
  architects design things to help us have the experiences we desire. We want to expe-
  rience shade and dryness, so we put up shelters. We want to experience safety and 
  security, so we build walls. We build houses, schools, malls, churches, offices, bowl-
  ing alleys, hotels, and museums not because we want to look at those buildings, but 
  because there are experiences we want to have that these buildings make possible. 
  And when we say one of these buildings is  “well-designed, ” we aren’t talking about 
  what it looks like on the outside. What we are talking about is how well it creates 
  the kind of experience we want to have when we are inside. 
   For this reason, architects and game designers are close cousins. Both cre-
  ate structures that people must enter in order to use. Neither architects nor game 
  designers can create experiences directly — instead, both must rely on the use of 
  indirect control to guide people into having the right kind of experience. And most 
  important, both create structures which have no point other than to engender expe-
  riences that make people happy. 
   Organizing your Game Space 
   There is a more obvious connection between game designers and architects as 
  well — both have to create spaces. And while game designers can learn a lot about 
  creating meaningful and powerful spaces from architects, by no means do game 
  
  331
  designers have to follow every rule of architecture, since the spaces they create are 
  not made of bricks and mortar, but are completely virtual structures. And while this 
  sounds like a wonderful freedom (it is), it can also be a burden. The lack of physical 
  constraints means almost anything is possible — and if anything is possible, where 
  do you begin? 
    One way to begin is to decide on an organizing principle for your game space. If 
  you already have a pretty good idea how your game will be played, this should be 
  pretty easy. Just look at your game through Lens #21: The Lens of Functional Space 
  (from Chapter 10), and use that as the skeleton for the space you will build. 
    But maybe you are still figuring out your functional space — perhaps your game 
  design is still very early, and you are hoping that by creating a map, you might get a 
  better sense of how your game works. In that case, here are five common ways that 
  designers organize their game spaces. 
    1.   Linear. A surprising number of games are arranged on a linear game space 
  where a player can only move forward and (maybe) back along a line. 
  Sometimes the line has two ends, other times it loops back on itself. Some well-
  known linear game spaces  : 
   ●  Candyland 
   ●  Monopoly 
   ●  Super Mario Brothers  
   ●  Crash Bandicoot  
   ●  Guitar Hero  
   
    
    2.   Grid. Arranging your gamespace on a grid has a lot of advantages. It can be 
  easy for players to understand, it makes it easier to ensure that things line up, 
  it keeps things in proper proportion, and of course, grids are very easy for com-
  puters to understand. Your grid need not be a grid of squares — it can also be 
  of rectangles, hexagons (popular in war games), or even triangles. Some well-
  known grid-based games: 
   ●  Chess 
   ●  Advance Wars  
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  CHAPTER NINETEEN • WORLDS CONTAIN SPACES
  332
   ●  Settlers of Catan 
   ●  Legend of Zelda (NES) 
   ●  Quake 
   
    
   3.   Web. A web arrangement is achieved by marking several points on a map and 
  connecting them with paths. This is useful when you have several places you 
  want players to visit, but you want to give them a number of different ways to 
  get to them. Sometimes there is meaningful travel along the paths, but other 
  times travel is instantaneous. Some examples of web-based gamespaces: 
   ●  Fox and Geese 
   ●  Trivial Pursuit 
   ●  Zork 
   ●  Club Penguin 
   ●  Toontown Online  
   
    
   4.   Points in Space. This somewhat uncommon type of gamespace is usually for 
  games that want to evoke something like wandering a desert and occasionally 
  returning to an oasis, like one does in an RPG. It also is common for games 
  where players get to define the gamespace themselves. Some examples of this 
  kind of spatial organization: 
   ●  Bocce 
   ●  Thin Ice (a board game involving wet marbles and a napkin) 
  
  333
   ●  Polarity (magnetic board game) 
   ●  Final Fantasy  
   
    
    5.   Divided Space. This kind of space is most like a real map and is common in 
  games that are trying to replicate a real map. It is achieved by carving the space 
  up into sections in an irregular way. Some examples of games that have divided 
  space: 
   ●  Risk 
   ●  Axis and Allies 
   ●  Dark Tower  
   ●  Zelda: Ocarina of Time  
   ●  Spore  
   
    
    These different organizing principles are often combined to make interesting new 
  types of gamespaces. The game of Clue is a combination of the grid and divided 
  space patterns. Baseball is a combination of a linear structure and points in space. 
   A Word About Landmarks 
    One very important thing to consider whenever you organize a space: What are 
  the landmarks? The very first text adventure game,  Colossal Cave, had two different 
  mazes. In one, every area was described as  “You are in a maze of twisty passages, 
  all alike. ” Just as confusing though, was the opposite maze, in which every area 
  was described as  “You are in a maze of twisty passages, all different. ” For it is cer-
  tainly true that too much chaos is just as monotonous as too much order. Players of 
  Colossal Cave learned to drop items in the mazes, forming landmarks that helped 
  ORGANIZING YOUR GAME SPACE
  
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  334
  them find their way. Any good gamespace has built-in landmarks, which help the 
  players find where they are going, and also make the space interesting to look at. 
  Landmarks are what players remember and what they talk about, for they are what 
  make a space memorable.  
   Christopher Alexander is a Genius 
   Christopher Alexander is an architect who has devoted his life to studying how 
  places make us feel. His first book,  The Timeless Way of Building (1979), tries to 
  describe how there is a unique quality shared by spaces and objects that are truly 
  well-designed. As he puts it:
   Imagine yourself on a winter afternoon with a pot of tea, a reading light, and 
  two or three huge pillows to lean back against. Now make yourself comfortable. 
  Not in some way which you can show to other people, and say how much you 
  like it. I mean so that you really  like it, for yourself .
  You put the tea where you can reach it: but in a place where you can’t pos-
  sibly knock it over. You pull the light down, to shine on the book, but not too 
  brightly, and so that you can’t see the naked bulb. You put the cushions behind 
  you, and place them, carefully, one by one, just where you want them, to sup-
  port your back, your neck, your arm: so that you are supported just comfort-
  ably, just as you want to sip your tea, and read, and dream. 
  When you take the trouble to do all that, and you do it carefully, with much 
  attention, then it may begin to have the quality which has no name.  
   It is hard to put a finger on exactly what this quality is, but most people know it 
  when they experience it. Alexander notes that things that have the nameless quality 
  usually have these aspects: 
   ●  They feel  alive, as if they hold energy. 
   ●  They feel  whole, like nothing is missing. 
   ●  They feel  comfortable, it is pleasing to be around them. 
   ●  They feel  free, not constrained unnaturally. 
   ●  They feel  exact, as if they are just how they are supposed to be. 
   ●  They feel  egoless, connected to the universe. 
   ●  They feel  eternal, as if they have always been, and always will be. 
   ●  They are  free from inner contradictions .  
   The last of those,  “free from inner contradictions, ” is tremendously important to 
  any designer, because inner contradictions are at the heart of any bad design. If a 
  
  335
  device is supposed to make my life easier, and it is hard to use, that is a contradic-
  tion. If something is supposed to be fun, and it is boring or frustrating, that is a 
  contradiction. A good designer must carefully remove inner contradictions, and not 
  get used to them, or make excuses for them — so let’s add a tool for removing them 
  in our toolbox.   
   Lens #82: The Lens of Inner Contradiction 
    A good game cannot contain properties that defeat the game’s very purpose. 
  To remove those contradictory qualities, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  What is the purpose of my game? 
    ●  What are the purposes of each subsystem in my game? 
    ●  Is there anything at all in my game that contradicts these purposes? 
    ●  If so, how can I change that?  
    Alexander also explains that only through iteration and observation about how 
  something is used can one arrive at a truly excellent design. In other words, the 
  Rule of the Loop holds in architecture as well as game design. A concrete example 
  of this is the system he describes for laying paths between buildings in a complex: 
  Lay no paths at all. Merely plant grass. Then come back a year later, see where 
  people have worn paths in the grass, and only then begin to pave  . 
    Alexander’s next book,  A Pattern Language, is his most famous and influential 
  work. In it, he describes 253 different architectural patterns that seem to have the 
  nameless quality. They range from large-scale patterns like  “DISTRIBUTION OF 
  TOWNS ” and “AGRICULTURAL VALLEYS ” to small-scale patterns such as “ CANVAS 
  ROOFS ” and “WINDOWS WHICH OPEN WIDE .” The scope and striking detail of 
  A Pattern Language changes the reader’s viewpoint about how they interact with 
  the everyday world. Many game designers have stories to tell about how the book 
  inspired them. Personally, I was baffled about how to structure the world of Toontown 
  Online until I read this text, and suddenly much of it seemed obvious. Will Wright is 
  said to have designed Sim City based on a desire to experiment with the patterns 
  listed in the book. The entire  “Design Patterns ” movement in computer science stems 
  from the power of this text as well. What will you create when you read it? 
    Alexander was not content to leave the nameless quality nameless. In his later 
  books, he makes a deeper study of what truly gives something that special feeling. 
  He did this by cataloging thousands of different things that did, or did not, have 
  that feeling, and then looked for similarities between them. In doing so, he gradu-
  ally distilled out fifteen fundamental qualities that these things shared, as detailed 
  in The Phenomenon of Life. The book gets its title from an insight he had about the 
  nameless quality: The reason some things seem special to us is that they have some 
  CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER IS A GENIUS
  
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  336
  of the same qualities that living things have. As living beings ourselves, we feel con-
  nected to things and places that have qualities special to living things  . 
   Delving into detail about these properties is well beyond the scope of this book, 
  but it can be fascinating and useful to reflect on whether your game contains them. 
  It is excellent mental exercise just to think about how these patterns, which mostly 
  are about spatial and textural qualities, apply to games at all. 
      Alexander’s Fifteen Properties of Living Structures 
    1.   Levels of Scale. We see levels of scale in  “telescoping goals, ” where a player has 
  to satisfy short-term goals to reach mid-term ones and to eventually reach long- 
  term goals. We see it in fractal interest curves. We also see it in nested game 
  world structures.  Spore is a symphony of levels of scale. 
   2.   Strong Centers. We see this in visual layout, certainly, but also in our story 
  structure. The avatar is at the center of our game universe — and generally we 
  prefer strong avatars over weak ones. Also, we prefer strong centers when it 
  comes to our purpose in the game — our goal. 
   3.   Boundaries. Many games are primarily about boundaries! Certainly any game 
  about territory is an exploration of boundaries. But rules are another kind of 
  boundary, and a game with no rules is no game at all. 
   4.   Alternating Repetition. We see this on the pleasing shape of the chessboard, and 
  we see it too in the cycle of level/boss/level/boss that comes up in so many games. 
  Even tense/release/tense/release is an example of pleasing alternating repetition. 
   5.   Positive Space. What Alexander means here is that the foreground and back-
  ground elements both have beautiful, complementary shapes, like Yin and Yang. 
  In a sense a well-balanced game has this quality — allowing multiple alternate 
  strategies to have an interlocked beauty. 
   6.   Good Shape. This is as simple as it sounds — a shape that is pleasing. We cer-
  tainly look for this in the visual elements of our games. But we can see and feel 
  it, too, in level design. A good level feels  “solid” and has a “good curve. ” 
   7.   Local Symmetries. This is different from an overall symmetry, like a mir-
  ror image; instead referring to multiple small, internal symmetries in a design. 
  Zelda: The Wind Waker has this feeling throughout its architecture — when you 
  are within a room or area, it seems to have a symmetry, but it is connected to 
  other places in a way that feels organic. Rule systems and game balance can 
  have this property as well. 
   8.   Deep Interlock and Ambiguity. This is when two things are so tightly inter-
  twined that they define each other — if you took one away, the other wouldn’t 
  be itself any longer. We see this in many board games, such as Go. The position 
  of the pieces on the board is only meaningful relative to the opponent’s pieces. 
  
  337
    9.   Contrast. In games we have many kinds of contrast. The contrast between 
  opponents, between what is controllable and what is not, and between reward 
  and punishment. When opposites in our game are strongly contrasted, the game 
  feels more meaningful and more powerful. 
    10.  Gradients. This refers to qualities that change gradually. The gradually increas-
  ing challenge curve is an example of this, but so are appropriately designed 
  probability curves. 
    11.   Roughness. When a game is too perfect, it has no character. The handmade 
  feeling of  “ house rules ” often makes a game seem more alive. 
    12.   Echoes. Echoes are a kind of pleasing, unifying repetition. When the boss mon-
  ster has something in common with his minions, we are experiencing echoes. 
  Good interest curves have this property, especially fractal ones. 
    13.   The Void. As Alexander says,  “In the most profound centers which have perfect 
  wholeness, there is at the heart a void which is like water, infinite in depth, sur-
  rounded by and contrasted with the clutter of the stuff and fabric all around it. ” 
  Think of a church, or the human heart. When boss monsters tend to be in large, 
  hollow spaces, we are experiencing the void. 
    14.   Simplicity and Inner Calm. Designers talk endlessly about how important it is 
  for a game to be simple — usually with a small number of rules that have emer-
  gent properties. Of course, these rules must be well-balanced, which gives them 
  the inner calm that Alexander describes. 
    15.  Not-Separateness. This refers to something being well-connected to its surround-
  ings — as if it was part of them. Each rule of our game should have this prop-
  erty, but so should every element of our game. If everything in our game has this 
  quality, a certain wholeness results that makes the game feel very alive indeed.  
    Alexander’s approach to architecture can be quite useful when designing a game-
  space. But as you see, the qualities he describes for a good space apply to many 
  other aspects of game design as well. I have only been able to scratch the surface of 
  Alexander’s approach to design here. Reading his many delightful books will surely 
  give you new insights into game design. As a reminder of his thoughtful perspec-
  tive, take this lens.   
      Lens #83: The Lens of The Nameless Quality 
    Certain things feel special and wonderful because of their natural, organic 
  design. To ensure your game has these properties, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  Does my design have a special feeling of life, or do parts of my design feel 
  dead? What would make my design feel more alive? 
  CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER IS A GENIUS
  
  CHAPTER NINETEEN • WORLDS CONTAIN SPACES
  338
    Real vs. Virtual Architecture 
   Alexander’s  “deep fundamentals ” perspective on architecture is useful, but it is also 
  useful to look in detail at some of the peculiarities special to virtual architecture. 
  When we study some of the spaces that have been made for popular videogames, 
  they are often very strange. They have huge amounts of wasted space, weird and 
  dangerous architectural features, no real relationship with their outside environment, 
  and sometimes areas even overlap with themselves in physically impossible ways.   
   ●  Which of Alexander’s fifteen qualities does my design have? 
   ●  Could it have more of them, somehow? 
   ●  Where does my design feel like my self ?  
   No one would build this in the real world    
  F I G U R E
  19.2
   These sorts of bizarre building constructs would be considered madness by real-
  world architects. Look at those weird hollow spaces, and all that water. So why is it 
  that when we play videogames, we don’t notice how strange the building layouts are? 
   It is because the human mind is very weak when it comes to translating 3D 
  spaces into 2D maps. If you don’t believe me, think of a familiar place, somewhere 
  
  339
  you go all the time like your home, school, or workplace, and try to draw a map of 
  it. Most people find this quite difficult — this simply isn’t how we store spaces in 
  our minds — we think of them relatively, not absolutely. We know which doors go 
  to which rooms, but as for what is behind a wall with no doors, we aren’t always 
  quite sure. For that reason, it is not important that 3D spaces have realistic 2D blue-
  prints. All that matters is how the space feels when the player is in it. 
    Know How Big 
    When we are in real spaces, a sense of scale comes naturally to us, because we 
  have so many cues — lighting, shadows, textures, stereo vision, and most impor-
  tant, the presence of our own bodies. But in virtual spaces, scale is not always so 
  clear. Because so many real-world cues are missing, it is very easy to create a virtual 
  space that is really much bigger or smaller than it looks. This can be very confusing 
  and disorienting for players. I frequently have conversation with students and other 
  novice world builders that go something like this:
   Virtual Architect: My world looks funny... but I don’t know why... 
  Me: Well, things seem out of scale — that car is too big for the street, and those 
  windows are too small for that building. How big is that car, anyway? 
  Virtual Architect: I don’t know... Maybe five units? 
  Me: So how big is a unit? 
  Virtual Architect: I don’t know. It’s all virtual... why does it matter?  
    And in one sense, he’s right — as long as everything in your world is in proper 
  proportion, your virtual units could be feet, meters, cubits, or smurf hats, and it 
  doesn’t matter. But the moment that anything is out of scale, or you suspect it might 
  be out of scale, it becomes a very important question, because then you have to relate 
  things back to the real world. For this reason, it is wise to make your game units 
  something that you are intimately familiar with in the real world — for most people, 
  feet or meters. This will save a lot of time and confusion, because if your units are 
  feet, and your car is 30 units long, you will quickly know what the problem is. 
    But sometimes the elements of your world are properly proportioned, but to the 
  players things look out of scale. The typical culprits in this case include: 
    ●  Eye height: If you have a first-person game with the virtual camera very high 
  (more than seven feet off the ground) or very low (less than five feet off the 
  ground), it will distort the view of the world, since people tend to assume an eye 
  height similar to their own. 
    ●  People and doorways: Two of the strongest cues for scale are people and door-
  ways (which of course, are designed to accommodate people). If you have a 
  REAL VS. VIRTUAL ARCHITECTURE
  
  CHAPTER NINETEEN • WORLDS CONTAIN SPACES
  340
  world of giants or little people, it can confuse the player about scale; similarly, if 
  you have decided that doorways are very large or very small in your game, that 
  can be similarly confusing. If you have no people, doorways, or other commonly 
  sized man-made objects, players often can get a little confused about scale. 
   ●  Texture scaling: An easy error to make when designing a world is to have tex-
  tures that are not at the proper scale, such as a brick texture on the wall that is 
  too large, or a floor tile texture that is too small. Be sure that the textures you use 
  match the scale of textures in the real world.  
    Third-Person Distortion 
   There is another special peculiarity of designing virtual spaces. Each of us has devel-
  oped a natural sense of the relationship of how our bodies fit into the world that we 
  see. When we play a third-person videogame, where we can see our body, our brain 
  does an amazing thing; it somehow lets us be in two places at once — in the body 
  of our character, but also floating eight feet behind our body — all the while letting 
  this strange perspective feel very natural. And while we get tremendous benefits 
  from being able to see our virtual body in a game, something very odd happens to 
  our sense of proportion. In wide open, outdoor scenes we mostly don’t notice this. 
  But when we try to control a character who is in a normal-sized interior space, the 
  space feels frustratingly crowded, like we are driving around a house in a car.   
  The Problem: A room that is too
  crowded for a 3rd person viewpoint
  F I G U R E
  19.3
   Weirdly, most players do not identify this as a problem with the third-person ava-
  tar system, but they think the room too small. Is there a way to distort the room so 
  that when it is experienced in this peculiar perspective, it looks normal?   
  
  341
    Solution 1: Scale up the room and the furniture. If you scale up all the walls and 
  furniture, it does make more room to move around, but gives a weird feeling of 
  your avatar being tiny like a small child, as normal sized objects like chairs and 
  sofas become too big to sit on.   
    Solution 2: Scale up the room, but leave the furniture normal size. Now you have 
  a cavernous room with furniture huddled together in lonely looking clusters.  
  REAL VS. VIRTUAL ARCHITECTURE
  F I G U R E
  19.4
  Solution 1: Bigger room and furniture
  F I G U R E
  19.5
  Solution 2: Bigger room, normal furniture
  
  CHAPTER NINETEEN • WORLDS CONTAIN SPACES
  342
    Solution 3: Scale up the room, leave the furniture normal size, but spread the 
  furniture out. This works a little better — the room no longer seems such a 
  cavern, but it leaves the room looking strangely sparse, with unnaturally large 
  spaces between objects in the room.   
  Solution 3: Bigger room, normal furniture spread out
  F I G U R E
  19.6
  Solution 4: Bigger room, slightly bigger
  furniture spread out.
  F I G U R E
  19.7
   Solution 4: Scale up the room, scale up the furniture a little bit, and spread the 
  furniture out. This solution, pioneered by the designers of  Max Payne, works 
  very well. In a first-person view, this looks kind of strange, but in a third-person 
  view, it does a very good job of counteracting the distortion caused by the eye-
  point being far from the body.  
  
  343
   Level Design 
    We’re nearly at the end of this chapter, and we haven’t yet talked about level 
  design. Or have we? In truth, we have been covering it all along! Not just in this 
  chapter, but through the entire book. All a level designer does is arrange the archi-
  tecture, props, and challenges in a game in ways that are fun and interesting — that 
  is, making sure there is the right level of challenge, the right amount of reward, the 
  right amount of meaningful choice, and all the other things that make a good game. 
  Level design is just game design exercised in detail — and it isn’t easy, for the devil 
  is in the details. Level design is different for every game, because every game is dif-
  ferent. But if you use everything you know about game design when you design 
  your level, examining it carefully through many lenses, the best level design choices 
  will start to become clear.  
  LEVEL DESIGN
  
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  CHAPTER
  345
   The Look and Feel of 
  a World Is Defined by 
  Its Aesthetics 
  345
  TWENTY
  F I G U R E
  20.1
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY • THE LOOK AND FEEL OF A WORLD IS DEFINED BY ITS AESTHETICS
  346
   Monet Refuses the Operation 
   Doctor, you say that there are no haloes 
  around the streetlights in Paris 
  and what I see is an aberration 
  caused by old age, an affliction. 
  I tell you it has taken me all my life 
  to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, 
  to soften and blur and finally banish 
  the edges you regret I don’t see, 
  to learn that the line I called the horizon 
  does not exist and sky and water, 
  so long apart, are the same state of being. 
  Fifty-four years before I could see 
  Rouen cathedral is built 
  of parallel shafts of sun, 
  and now you want to restore 
  my youthful errors: fixed 
  notions of top and bottom, 
  the illusion of three-dimensional space, 
  wisteria separate 
  from the bridge it covers. 
  What can I say to convince you 
  the Houses of Parliament dissolve 
  night after night to become 
  the fluid dream of the Thames? 
  I will not return to a universe
   of objects that don’t know each other, 
  as if islands were not the lost children 
  of one great continent. The world 
  is flux, and light becomes what it touches, 
  becomes water, lilies on water, 
  above and below water, 
  becomes lilac and mauve and yellow 
  and white and cerulean lamps, 
  small fists passing sunlight 
  so quickly to one another 
  that it would take long, streaming hair 
  inside my brush to catch it. 
  To paint the speed of light! 
  Our weighted shapes, these verticals, 
  burn to mix with air 
  and changes our bones, skin, clothes 
  to gases. Doctor, 
  
  347
  if only you could see 
  how heaven pulls earth into its arms 
  and how infinitely the heart expands
   to claim this world, blue vapor without end. 
  – Lisel Mueller  
   The Value of Aesthetics 
    Aesthetics is the third quadrant of the elemental tetrad. Some game designers have 
  disdain for aesthetic considerations in a game, calling them mere  “surface details ”
  that have nothing to do with what they consider important — the game mechanics. 
  But we must always remember that we are not designing just game mechanics, but 
  an entire experience. And aesthetic considerations are part of making any experi-
  ence more enjoyable. Good artwork can do wondrous things for a game: 
    ●  It can draw the player into a game they might have passed over. 
    ●  It can make the game world feel solid, real, and magnificent, which makes the 
  player take the game more seriously and increases endogenous value. Consider 
  the Axis and Allies story in the  “ pleasure of sensation ” section in Chapter 8. 
    ●  Aesthetic pleasure is no small thing. If your game is full of beautiful artwork, 
  then every new thing that the player gets to see is a reward in itself. 
    ●  Just as the world often ignores character flaws in a beautiful woman or a hand-
  some man, players are more likely to tolerate imperfections in your design if your 
  game has a beautiful surface.  
    You already have many of the tools you need to evaluate aesthetics in your 
  game. Obviously Lens #63: The Lens of Beauty is useful, but you can also improve 
  and integrate your aesthetics by using these other lenses in a new way. Stop for a 
  moment, and consider how you might use each of these lenses not to observe the 
  mechanics of your game, but the artwork in your game. 
    ●  Lens #1: Essential Experience 
    ●  Lens #2: Surprise 
    ●  Lens #4: Curiosity 
    ●  Lens #9: Unification 
    ●  Lens #10: Resonance 
    ●  Lens #11: Infinite Inspiration 
    ●  Lens #15: The Toy 
  THE VALUE OF AESTHETICS
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY • THE LOOK AND FEEL OF A WORLD IS DEFINED BY ITS AESTHETICS
  348
   ●  Lens #16: The Player 
   ●  Lens #17: Pleasure 
   ●  Lens #40: Reward 
   ●  Lens #42: Simplicity/Complexity 
   ●  Lens #43: Elegance 
   ●  Lens #45: Imagination 
   ●  Lens #48: Accessibility 
   ●  Lens #49: Visible Progress 
   ●  Lens #54: Physical Interface 
   ●  Lens #55: Virtual Interface 
   ●  Lens #59: Channels and Dimensions 
   ●  Lens #64: Projection 
   ●  Lens #67: Simplicity and Transcendence 
   ●  Lens #72: Indirect Control 
   ●  Lens #74: The World 
   ●  Lens #75: The Avatar 
   ●  Lens #80: Status 
   ●  Lens #82: Inner Contradiction 
   ●  Lens #83: The Nameless Quality  
   Learning to See 
    It makes sense to view your game artwork through many lenses, because the key to 
  creating great artwork is in your ability to see. Not just to see a salt shaker and say 
  “that’s a salt shaker, ” but to really see it — see its shapes, colors, proportions, shad-
  ows, reflections, and textures — to see its relationship to its environment and to the 
  people who use it, and to see its function, and to see its meaning (see Figure 20.2). 
  This kind of deep seeing is a visual equivalent of the deep listening we discussed at 
  the beginning of the book. 
   It is amazing how difficult it can be to actually see things as they really are. The 
  reason for this is efficiency — if we just stared in awe at everything we saw, taking 
  in every little visual and audible detail, our minds would be so absorbed we would 
  never get anything done. So, for efficiency, our brains, at a low level, categorize 
  things before they enter our consciousness. We see a salt shaker or a dog, and our left 
  brain just slaps a label on it, because it is easier to think about a label than to actu-
  ally deeply see the thing itself in all its detail and uniqueness. When you are looking 
  at and thinking about artwork in your game, you must learn to get your left brain to 
  
  349
  take a little break, and let your right brain come out and play, for the right brain is 
  able to see details that the left brain cannot. Betty Edwards ’ excellent book,  Drawing 
  on the Right Side of the Brain, is a marvelous text on this subject that is designed to 
  teach anyone to draw by teaching them how to see. This is a fascinating virtuous 
  circle — really seeing helps you draw properly, and drawing helps you see properly. 
   How to Let Aesthetics Guide your Design 
    Some people mistakenly believe that it doesn’t make sense to get artists involved 
  in a game project until the game design is near completion. But our minds are very 
  visual, and it is often the case that an illustration or pencil sketch can completely 
  change the course of a design, because the way a game looks in your mind’s eye 
  is often very different from the way it looks when it is drawn on paper. Sometimes, 
  an inspiring piece of concept art can provide the uniting vision of the experience 
  a game is trying to achieve. Other times an illustration can make clear whether an 
  interface idea is possible or not. And occasionally, a little doodle done as a joke to 
  poke fun at a design suddenly proves to become the central theme of a game. Game 
  designs are abstract — illustrations are concrete. In the painful process of convert-
  ing your abstract design into a concrete game, illustrations can serve as a simple, 
  effective way to ground your design in reality at the very start of a project. 
    If you have some artistic skill, it can be a great boon to you as a game 
  designer — because you can sketch, people will think your creative vision is as 
  clear in your mind as it is on the paper. More than that, it might make you famous. 
  F I G U R E
  20.2
  HOW TO LET AESTHETICS GUIDE YOUR DESIGN
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY • THE LOOK AND FEEL OF A WORLD IS DEFINED BY ITS AESTHETICS
  350
  There are only two categories of famous game designers: first, ones who design 
  “god games, ” such as Will Wright, Peter Molyneux, and Sid Meier, presumably 
  because it is easy to imagine a designer of a world as its god; and second, ones who 
  have a very distinct visual style, such as Shigeru Miyamoto and American McGee. 
  So, if you have a distinct and appealing art style, you should seriously consider bas-
  ing your games around it. 
   But what if (like me) artistic talents do not come naturally to you? What if you 
  have neither the major nor minor gift when it comes to drawing? In this case, the 
  best thing you can do is to find an artistic partner. For if you can find a talented art-
  ist with whom you communicate well, your nebulous idea can become a concrete 
  vision very quickly. Partnerships like this can be golden, for a pretty picture is nice 
  for a moment, and a good idea is nice in theory, but a well-rendered image of a 
  good idea is compelling in a way that few people can resist. Strong game designs 
  that have good concept art will: 
   ●  Make your idea clear to everyone (you didn’t think anyone would actually  read 
  your design document, did you?) 
   ●  Let people see, and imagine entering, your game world 
   ●  Make people excited about playing your game 
   ●  Make people excited about working on your game 
   ●  Allow you to secure funding and other resources to develop your game  
   Now, you might think that the idea of having some detailed art at the beginning 
  of a project goes against the idea of rapid prototyping, where often the game ele-
  ments are completely abstract. But it isn’t so — an illustration is just another kind 
  of prototype. It is almost like riding a seesaw — the abstract prototype gives you 
  ideas for how the game should look, which drives you to make more concept art, 
  and the concept art can give you ideas for how the game should play, which drives 
  you to make new abstract prototypes. If you keep cycling this way, eventually you 
  will arrive at a beautiful game that is fun to play, and in which the artwork and 
  gameplay complement each other perfectly, because they grew up together. 
   How Much Is Enough? 
   But this raises an important question — what is the right amount of detail for 
  your concept art? Most artists want to make everything they do look absolutely 
  gorgeous — but beautiful art takes time, and sometimes rough sketches or rough 
  models are enough to do the job. Young artists, especially, are afraid of doing rough 
  sketches and showing them, for they fear that the rough quality will make people 
  misjudge their talent. Creating sketches that are simple, rough, and useful is a valu-
  able skill that must be practiced. 
  
  351
    But of course, there are other times when only gorgeous full-color renderings 
  will do to show the true feel of the game. One artist I used to work with had a great 
  trick — he would create rough pencil sketches that were large and elaborate, and 
  then pick one corner of the picture, and render some elements there with full color, 
  clean lines, and nice shading. This was a marvelous balance — the viewer could 
  see the scope and complexity of what he was presenting, but also the quality of fin-
  ished detail. The viewer could easily imagine what the whole image would look like 
  if it were finished to the level of detail of that one little corner. 
    Even in your finished product, you need to be judicious about where to put 
  detail, for a few details in the right places can make your game world seem far 
  larger and richer than it is. John Hench, one of the great Disney Imagineers, would 
  often say that anyone can make things look good from far away — it’s making them 
  also look good close up that is hard. An example is Cinderella’s castle at Disney 
  World. People see it from a distance and are drawn to it because it is so beautiful. 
  If when they got close they found it was crudely painted fiberglass, they would be 
  filled with disappointment. Instead, they find that close up it has gorgeous mosaics 
  and beautiful stone crafting, which exceeds their expectations, making it seem deep, 
  beautiful, and real. 
    J.R.R Tolkien’s worlds are famous for being deep and rich — one way he 
  achieves this is through a trick he referred to as  “distant mountains. ” Throughout 
  his books, he gives names to distant places, people, and events that are never actu-
  ally encountered in the book. The names and brief descriptions make it seem like 
  the world is larger and richer than it is. When fans would ask him why he didn’t 
  add more detail about these things, he would reply that he could tell them all about 
  the distant mountains, but if he did that he’d need to create more distant mountains 
  for those distant mountains. 
   Use Audio 
    It is very easy to fall into the trap of only thinking of visual art when you think 
  about the aesthetics of your game. But audio can be incredibly powerful. Audio 
  feedback is much more visceral than visual feedback, and more easily simulates 
  touch. A study was once performed where two groups of players were asked to rate 
  the graphics of a game, and only the graphics. Both players played the same game, 
  but for one difference: The first group had low-quality audio, and the second group 
  had high-quality audio. Surprisingly, though the graphics were identical for both 
  games, the  “high-quality audio ” group rated the graphics of the game more highly 
  than the  “ low-quality audio ”  group. 
    One serious error that game developers often fall into is to not add music or 
  sound to their game until the very end. A technique I learned from Kyle Gabler is 
  to choose music for your game at the very beginning of your process, as early as 
  possible — possibly before you even know what the game is! If you are able to choose 
  a piece of music that feels the way you want your game to play, you have already 
  USE AUDIO
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY • THE LOOK AND FEEL OF A WORLD IS DEFINED BY ITS AESTHETICS
  352
  efficiently made a great many subconscious decisions about what you want your 
  game to feel like. Like a theme, the music can channel the design of your game —
  if you ever find that part of your game is conflicting with the music that you feel is 
  so right, it is a good indication that part of the game should change. 
    Balancing Art and Technology 
   The tight integration of art and technology in modern videogames makes for some 
  very challenging design problems. The artists are simultaneously empowered by and 
  restrained by technology, and the engineers are similarly empowered and restrained 
  by art. So much of the art in games seems hi-tech that it is tempting to just let the 
  engineers loose to create the artistic vision of the game — something they are often 
  all too ready to do. Don’t let this happen! Talented artists have trained for a lifetime 
  to imagine and define glorious, integrated artistic visions. They see the world differ-
  ently from the rest of us, as Lisel Mueller’s poem illustrated so vividly at the start of 
  this chapter. Whenever possible, let them drive the aesthetic bus. Am I saying you 
  should ignore the engineers ’ aesthetic participation? By no means! Make the engi-
  neers the navigators and mechanics — let them recommend new routes and short-
  cuts, and let them soup up the bus, but let the artists decide the destination, and let 
  their talented hands steer the way to a beautiful game. Don’t just let the engineers 
  include whatever shadow algorithm is the flavor of the month — instead, let the 
  artists draw and paint the kind of shadows and textures they would want to see, 
  and then challenge the engineers to match that vision. 
   One thing you should consider carefully is finding a technical artist for your team. 
  This unusual individual has the eye of an artist and the mind of a computer program-
  mer. A talented technical artist can build bridges between the art team and the engi-
  neering team by being able to fluently speak both of their languages and by helping to 
  build tools that make the artists feel in command of the technology and the engineers 
  feel in command of the art. This balance is not something to be taken lightly — when 
  it is not right, it feels like your game is cracked down the middle — but when you 
  achieve it, your game is gorgeous and powerful in ways your players will have never 
  seen before.  
  
  CHAPTER
  353
   Some Games are 
  Played with  Other
  Players 
  353
  TWENTY-ONE
  F I G U R E
  21.1
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE • SOME GAMES ARE PLAYED WITH OTHER PLAYERS
  354
    We Are Not Alone 
   No one ever said on their deathbed, “Gee, I wish I had spent more time alone 
  with my computer. ” 
  – Dani Bunten Berry  
   Man is a social animal. Humans generally avoid being alone whenever possible. 
  In most cases, we don’t like to eat alone, sleep alone, work alone, or play alone. 
  Prisoners who behave badly are put in solitary confinement, because although 
  being trapped in a cage with a dangerous criminal is bad, being alone is worse. 
   And, if you look back over the centuries, the history of game design reflects this. 
  The majority of all games created are designed to be played with other players, or 
  against other players. Before the advent of computers, solo games, such as solitaire, 
  were rare. 
   So what happened with videogames? Why is it that the majority of the ones cre-
  ated thus far are single-player experiences? Is there something about the technology 
  that makes us want to give up our natural human tendency to socialize? Of course 
  not. In fact, the trends are clear — each year, more videogames have a multiplayer 
  or community component of some kind. The single-player phenomenon appears 
  to have been a temporary abnormality, born partly because of the novelty of 
  single-player interactive worlds, and partly because of the technological limitations 
  of game software and hardware. Now that more and more game platforms are going 
  online and becoming connected, it is becoming the case that games featuring a mul-
  tiplayer component are once again becoming the rare case. The more technology 
  advances and technological novelty wears off, the more electronic games start to fit 
  the ancient social molds humans have had for thousands of years. 
   Does this mean that a day will come when there are no single-player games? 
  Certainly not. There are plenty of times that humans do want to be alone for a 
  time — reading books, exercising, meditating, and doing crossword puzzles are all 
  delightful solitary pleasures, and videogames have elements in common with all 
  of these. But humans tend to spend more time social than solitary, and in the long 
  run, games will do the same. 
    Why We Play With Others 
   Clearly, playing with other people is natural, and in fact, the preferred way for us 
  to play games. But why? In this book so far, we have discussed dozens of reasons 
  people play games: for pleasure, for challenge, for judgment, for rewards, for flow, 
  for transcendence, and many more. Although some of those are enhanced by the 
  presence of other players, none of them require that presence. What is it that we 
  
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  specifically seek when playing games with other people? There seem to be five main 
  reasons: 
    1.   Competition. When we think of multiplayer games, competition is usually the 
  first thing that comes to mind — and for good reason. It simultaneously fills sev-
  eral kinds of needs and desires for us. All at once, it: 
   ●  Allows for a balanced game on a level playing field (Lens #30: The Lens of 
  Fairness). 
   ●  Provides us with a worthy opponent (Lens #31: The Lens of Challenge and 
  Lens #36: The Lens of Competition). 
   ●  Gives us an interesting problem to solve (Lens #6: The Lens of Problem 
  Solving). 
   ●  Fulfills a deep inner need to determine our skill level relative to someone else 
  in our social circle (Lens #20: The Lens of Judgment and Lens #80: The Lens 
  of Status). 
   ●  Allows for games involving complex strategy, choices, and psychology, all 
  possible because of the intelligence and skill of our human opponent (Lens 
  #32: The Lens of Meaningful Choice, Lens #27: The Lens of Skill, and Lens 
  #71: The Lens of Freedom).  
    2.   Collaboration. The opposite of cooperation, this is the  “other way ” we like to 
  play together. Collaborative games are enjoyable to us because they: 
   ●  Allow us to partake in game actions and employ game strategies that are 
  impossible with just one person. One-on-one baseball makes almost no sense, 
  for example. 
   ●  Let us enjoy the (presumably evolved) deep pleasures that come from group 
  problem solving and being part of a successful team. 
    And while some people think of collaborative games as experimental, that is 
  only the case when players are collaborating against an automated opponent. 
  Most collaborative games follow the mold of team sports, which allow all the 
  pleasures of collaboration and the pleasures of competition at the same time.  
    3.   Meeting Up. We like to get together with our friends, but it can be socially awk-
  ward to just show up and be forced to make conversation on a regular basis. 
  Games, like food, give us a convenient reason to be together, give us some-
  thing to share, and give us something to focus on that won’t make anyone in 
  the room uncomfortable. Many are the friendships held together by a weekly 
  game of chess, golf, tennis, bridge, bingo, basketball, or more recently,  Warcraft , 
  Battlefield, or Guitar Hero .  
    4.   Exploring our Friends. And while it is great to have an excuse to meet up with 
  our friends, games let us do something else that we can’t do so easily with just 
  WHY WE PLAY WITH OTHERS
  
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  conversation — explore the minds and souls of our friends. In a conversation, 
  we hear a friend’s opinions about likes and dislikes, and their stories about 
  the way they and other people have behaved. But these things are all filtered 
  through the friend’s conception of what they think we want to hear. When we 
  play a game with them, however, we get a glimpse of something more like the 
  unvarnished truth. We get to see them solving problems. We get to see them 
  making tough decisions under stress. We get to see them make decisions about 
  when to cut someone a break, and when to stab them in the back. We learn 
  who we can trust, and who we can’t. As Plato said,  “You can learn more about 
  a man in an hour of play than a year of conversation. ”  
   5.   Exploring Ourselves. Alone, games let us test the limits of our abilities, finding 
  out what we enjoy, and learning what we want to improve at. But when we are 
  with others, we get to explore how we will behave in complex social situations, 
  under stress. Do we have a tendency to let our friends win when they have a 
  bad day, or to crush them unconditionally? Who do we prefer to team with, and 
  why? How do we feel when publicly defeated, and how do we cope with that? 
  How do our strategies differ from others, and why? Who do we choose to imitate, 
  or find ourselves imitating? All these questions, and many others, are explored 
  when we play games with other people. These are not trivial things — they are 
  important things, close to the heart of how we see ourselves, and how we relate 
  to other people.  
   Although multiplayer gameplay is important, you must employ it carefully and 
  wisely, because it can be a lot of work, and hard to control. Generally, it is safe to 
  assume that a multiplayer online game will take four times the effort and expense to 
  create compared to a similar single-player game. This is because multiplayer games 
  are much more difficult to debug and to balance. The payoffs can be worth it, 
  though — if the reasons for having the multiplayer gameplay are clear and certain. 
  If the reason to add it is  “because multiplay is cool, ” you should probably think it 
  through a little more. 
   There are many different, powerful reasons that we like to play games with other 
  people. One additional reason, more powerful than the ones listed here, is the topic 
  of Chapter 22.  
  
  CHAPTER
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   Other Players 
  Sometimes Form 
  Communities 
  357
  TWENTY-TWO
  F I G U R E
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   More than just Other Players 
   Games are something that inspire real passion in players, so it is not surprising that 
  frequently, communities arise around games. These can be communities of  fans, as 
  in professional sports, or communities of  players, as in World of Warcraft, or com-
  munities of designers, as in The Sims. These communities can be very powerful 
  forces, extending the life of a game by many years by constantly drawing in new 
  players. 
   But what is a community, really? The answer is not so simple. It is not merely a 
  group of people who know each other, or who do the same thing. You might ride 
  the train with the same people every day, but never feel a sense of community in 
  doing so. But you might feel a sense of community with total strangers who are fans 
  of the same esoteric TV series that you love. There is a special feeling that goes with 
  being part of a community. It is hard to describe, but we know it when we feel it. 
  Two psychologists who set out to better understand this sense of community found 
  that it has four primary elements: 
   1.   Membership. Something distinct makes it clear you are part of this group. 
   2.   Influence. Being part of this group gives you power over something. 
   3.   Integration and Fulfillment of Needs. Being part of this group does something 
  for you. 
   4.   Shared Emotional Connection. You have some guarantee of sharing emotions 
  about certain events with others in the group.  
   And while these four are unquestionably important aspects of community, I 
  find I sometimes prefer designer Amy Jo Kim’s succinct definition of community: a 
  group of people with a shared interest, purpose, or goal who get to know each other 
  better over time. 
   But why, as a game designer, do you want communities to form around your 
  game? There are three main reasons: 
   1.   Being part of a community fills a social need. People need to feel a part of 
  something, and as Lens #19: The Lens of Needs shows us, social needs are very 
  powerful. 
   2.   Longer “period of contagion. ” The personal recommendation of a friend is the 
  most influential factor when purchasing a game. Game designer Will Wright 
  once pointed out that if we truly believe that interest in a game spreads like 
  a virus, it makes sense to study epidemiology. And one thing that we know 
  from epidemiology is that when the period of contagion doubles, the number of 
  people who catch the disease can increase by ten times.  “Catching the disease ”
  in our case means buying the game. But what does  “period of contagion ” for a 
  game mean? It is the time when a player is so excited about a game that they 
  
  359
  are talking about it constantly with everyone they know. Players who become 
  part of a game community are likely to  “stay contagious ” for a long time, as the 
  game will become a deeper part of their lives, giving them a lot to talk about. 
    3.   More hours of play. It is often the case that players start to play a game for the 
  game’s pleasures, but stay with it over a long period for the community’s pleas-
  ures. I took a mountain vacation with a friend and his extended family once, and 
  on the way there he told me about a card game that his family loved playing. That 
  evening, after dinner, the whole clan gathered around a big table to play, and I 
  was quite eager to learn what it was about this unfamiliar game that they liked so 
  well. They explained the rules, which were mind bogglingly simple — they basi-
  cally consisted of passing cards to the right until all the cards were sorted in order. 
  There were few decisions to make, and almost no skill whatever was required. 
  Sometimes, it was hard even to say who won. I was incredibly disappointed, but 
  as I looked around the table, I was the only one. Everyone else was talking, jok-
  ing, and laughing as they played — and suddenly I realized that it didn’t matter 
  that the game wasn’t perfect — what mattered was that it held them at the table 
  and let them enjoy each other’s company, keeping their hands busy, but their 
  minds free. A game that has the ability to engender community will get played for 
  a long, long time, no matter how lacking its other qualities might be. If the finan-
  cial success of your game relies on subscription renewals or selling sequels, the 
  fact that community makes people want to play it longer becomes very important.  
   Ten Tips for Strong Communities 
    Community is complex, and involves many different interrelated psychological phe-
  nomena, but there are some basic things you can do to help foster a community 
  around your game. 
   Community Tip #1: Foster Friendships 
    The idea of online friendships seems simple. Just like real friendships, but online, 
  right? But what do we really understand about the nature of friendship? And how 
  can we translate it to a game environment? To have a meaningful online relation-
  ship with another person requires three things: 
    1.   The ability to talk. This sounds obvious. But a surprising number of online 
  games have been created that offer players no ability to talk to each other — the 
  designers hoping that some kind of nonverbal communication would happen 
  through play, and that would be enough. It is not enough. For a community to 
  form, players must be able to speak to each other freely. 
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   2.   Someone worth talking to. You cannot assume that all your players will 
  want to talk to each other, any more than you can assume that strangers on 
  a bus will mingle. You must have a clear understanding of who your players 
  want to talk to, and why. This varies a great deal depending on your demo-
  graphics. Adults often want to talk to others who can relate to their problems. 
  Teenagers often seek members of the opposite sex, or other people more inter-
  esting than their regular friends. And children generally have little interest in 
  strangers — they would prefer to socialize with friends from real life. But under-
  standing these age-based generalizations is not enough — you must understand 
  the types of socialization that are specific to your game. Do your players seek 
  competitors? Collaborators? Assistants? Quick chats, or long-term relationships? If 
  players can’t find the people they are interested in talking to, they will quickly 
  drift away. 
   3.   Something worth talking about. The first two items could be satisfied by a 
  good chat room. Games that foster community give the players a steady stream 
  of things to talk about. This can come from the depth of strategy inherent in the 
  game (strategy discussion is a prime topic for chess communities, for example), 
  or from events, or rule changes that are introduced over time (typical topics of 
  conversation in MMOs and CCGs). It is common to hear people say that  “good 
  online games are more community than game, ” but this isn’t really true. Good 
  online games must have a solid balance of community and game. If the game 
  isn’t interesting enough, the community doesn’t have anything to talk about. 
  On the other hand, if the community support for your game isn’t good enough, 
  players will enjoy the game, but eventually wander off.  
   If you have all of these things, does it guarantee that friendships will form? Not 
  necessarily. Friendships have three distinct phases, and your game must also have 
  good support for each of them if you want friendships to blossom and survive. 
   ●  Friendship phase 1: Breaking the Ice. Before two people can become friends, 
  they first must meet. Meeting people for the first time is awkward. Ideally, your 
  game will have a way that people can easily find the kind of people they might 
  like to be friends with, and then have some way to engage with them that is low 
  in social pressure, but allows them to express themselves a little, so others can 
  see what they are like. 
   ●  Friendship phase 2: Becoming Friends. The moment when two people  “become 
  friends” is mysterious and subtle — but it almost always involves conversation 
  about something both of them care about. And in games, that conversation is 
  often about a gameplay experience the two friends just shared. Giving players 
  opportunities to chat with each other after an intense play experience is one of 
  the best ways to encourage the formation of friendships. It can be a good idea to 
  create a friend-making ritual in your game, such as inviting another player to be 
  on your  “friends list. ”  
  
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    ●  Friendship phase 3: Staying Friends. Meeting people and making friends is 
  one thing — staying friends is another. To stay friends with someone, you must 
  be able to find them again to continue your friendship. In the real world this is 
  mostly up to the friends, but in online games, you need to give people some way 
  they can find each other again. This might be through friends’ lists, or guilds, or 
  even through memorable nicknames. Whatever works! But you have to do some-
  thing, or your game misses out on the power of friendship, which is the glue that 
  holds communities together.  
    Do keep in mind that different people are interested in different kinds of friend-
  ships. Adults are often most interested in making friends with similar interests, while 
  kids are more interested in playing games with their real-life friends. Friendship is so 
  crucial to community, and to game playing in general, that it deserves its own lens.   
   Lens #84: The Lens of Friendship 
    People love to play games with friends. To make sure your game has the 
  right qualities to let people make and keep friendships, ask yourself these 
  questions: 
    ●  What kind of friendships are my players looking for? 
    ●  How do my players break the ice? 
    ●  Do my players have enough chance to talk to each other? Do they have 
  enough to talk about? 
    ●  When is the moment they become friends? 
    ●  What tools do I give the players to maintain their friendships?  
      Community Tip #2: Put Conflict at the Heart 
    Online game pioneer Jonathan Baron makes the point that conflict is at the heart 
  of all communities. A sports team becomes a strong community because they have 
  conflict with other teams. A Parent/Teacher Association becomes a community 
  when they are fighting for better schools. A group of vintage car fanatics become 
  a community in their shared battle against entropy. Fortunately for us, conflict is a 
  natural part of games. But not all game conflict results in community. The conflict 
  in solitaire, for example, doesn’t do much to create a community. The conflict in 
  your game must either spur players to demonstrate that they are better than eve-
  ryone else (conflict against other players), or it must be the kind of conflict that is 
  more likely to be resolved when people work together (conflict against the game). 
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  Many games build community on both of these kinds of conflict: Collectible card 
  games, for example, are all about being the very best player in your community, but 
  their strategies are so complex, that players spend a lot of time sharing and discuss-
  ing strategies. 
      Community Tip #3: Use Architecture to Shape 
  your Community 
   In some neighborhoods, people don’t really know their neighbors. In others, every-
  one knows everyone else, and the whole neighborhood has a sense of community. 
  Is this because the people are different? No. It is usually a side effect of how the 
  neighborhoods are designed. Neighborhoods that are designed to be walkable (and 
  with meaningful destinations to walk to) give neighbors a chance to communicate. 
  And neighborhoods with a lot of dead-end streets tend not to have a lot of through 
  traffic, so that when you see someone passing by, there is a good chance you will 
  know them. In other words, there are frequent opportunities to see and talk with 
  the same people over and over again. Online worlds can support these same design 
  features, partly through buddy lists and guilds, but partly by creating places where 
  people are likely to see each other again and again, and still have time to talk. Many 
  MMOs have areas where people tend to casually congregate and chat — these areas 
  are often at a place where many players pass by regularly on their way to some 
  important game business. 
   Community Tip #4: Create Community Property 
   When you can create things in your game that are not just owned by an individual 
  player, but are owned by several, it can really encourage players to band together. 
  Perhaps, for example, no individual player can afford to buy a ship in your game, 
  but a group could team up and own it together. This group practically becomes an 
  instant community, since they have to communicate frequently and be friendly to 
  each other. The property you create doesn’t need to be so tangible — a guild’s sta-
  tus, for example, is a type of community property. 
   Community Tip #5: Let Players Express Themselves 
   Self-expression is very important in any multiplayer game. And while it is certainly 
  true that players can express themselves through their gameplay strategies and 
  styles of play, why stop there? You are, after all, creating a fantasy world where 
  players can be whatever they would like to: Why not let them express that? Rich, 
  expressive avatar creation systems are much beloved by players of online games. 
  
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  So are systems of conversation that allow players to convey emotion or choose 
  colors and styles for their text to display. 
    Player expression is not limited to online games — consider the expressive power 
  in Charades or Pictionary. Game designer Shawn Patton once created a board game 
  all about being a kid trying to have fun without getting dirty. Whenever you got 
  dirty, you had to color your dirt onto your character card. Players had great fun 
  making up stories about how they got dirty, and coloring their characters to match 
  the story. Even Monopoly allows the players expression — although it is for only 
  2–8 players, the game has 12 different playing pieces, because it is an easy way to 
  make sure players get a chance to express themselves. 
    Self-expression is extremely important, but easily overlooked. Keep this lens so 
  you remember to let players express themselves.   
   Lens #85: The Lens of Expression 
    When players get a chance to express themselves, it makes them feel 
  alive, proud, important, and connected. To use this lens, ask yourself these 
  questions: 
    ●  How am I letting players express themselves? 
    ●  What ways am I forgetting? 
    ●  Are players proud of their identity? Why or why not? 
    ●  This lens is important and overdue. It works very well in combination with 
  other lenses, such as Lens #63: The Lens of Beauty and Lens #80: The Lens 
  of Status.  
   Community Tip #6: Support Three Levels 
    It is important to realize that when designing a game community, you are really 
  designing three separate games for players at different levels of experience. Some 
  might argue there are even more, but there are at the minimum these three: 
    1.   Level 1: The Newbie. Players who are new to game communities are often over-
  whelmed. They aren’t yet challenged by the game itself — they are challenged 
  just by learning to play the game. In a sense, learning to play the game  is the 
  game for them — and so you are obligated to design that learning process so 
  that it is as rewarding as possible. If you don’t, newbies will give up on the 
  game before they really get into it, and you will significantly limit your audi-
  ence. One of the best ways to make newbies feel rewarded and connected to the 
  game is to create situations where they get to interact meaningfully with more 
  experienced players. Some experienced players like greeting and teaching new-
  bies for their own enjoyment, but if not enough of your players tend to do this, 
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  then why not give in-game rewards for helping newbies? An online version of 
  Battletech did this indirectly in an interesting way — experienced players took 
  the role of generals, and had to recruit their own armies. Newbies were honored 
  to be asked, and further honored to be placed right where the action is — on the 
  front line, a place more experienced players learned to avoid. Even though the 
  newbies would generally get slaughtered, it was win-win, in a way — the gen-
  erals got lots of  “cannon fodder, ” and the new players got a taste of the action 
  right away. 
   2.   Level 2: The Player. The player is past the newbie stage. They completely 
  understand the game and are immersed in the game activities and in figuring 
  out how to master them. Most of the design that goes into the game is aimed at 
  this group. 
   3.   Level 3: The Elder. For many games, particularly for any online game involv-
  ing some kind of “leveling ” system, there comes a point where the game itself 
  is no longer interesting. Most of the secrets have been discovered, and many 
  of the game pleasures have been squeezed dry. When players reach this state, 
  they tend to leave, seeking a new game with new secrets. Some games, how-
  ever, manage to retain these elder players by giving them an entirely different 
  game to play — one that befits their level of skill, expertise, and devotion to the 
  game. There is tremendous benefit to keeping elders around, since they are often 
  some of the most vocal advertisers of your game, and further, they are experts 
  about your game, often able to teach you how to improve it. Some typical  “elder 
  games” include: 
   ●  A More Difficult Game. Often, particularly in MMOs, the middle game is about 
  gradual, clear progression toward a goal. When the goal is reached, then what? 
  Sometimes a different kind of game is presented to the higher level players that 
  is much more difficult — so difficult, in fact, that no one can ever consistently 
  master it. In Toontown Online,  “Cog Headquarters ” areas that featured a new, 
  platform-based gameplay and new battle system served this purpose. Some 
  games let you rise in the ranks from soldier to general. Other games change 
  from pitting you against the computer to pitting you against the other players. 
  There are many ways to add a more difficult game — but you are always left 
  with the question: What to do when elders get tired of it? 
   ●  Governance Privileges. Some games give the elder players special levels of 
  responsibility, such as deciding the rules of the game. Many MUDs gave elder 
  players these kind of powers. It is a great way to keep the elders involved, 
  and make them feel special, although you run some risk if you hand them 
  too much control. Collectible card communities often have formal systems 
  where experienced players can take tests to become official judges at game 
  tournaments. 
   ●  The Joy of Creation. Players who truly love a game often fantasize about 
  extending it in new ways, particularly when they have grown tired of it. So, 
  
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  why not let them? Games like  The Sims and Unreal Tournament have built 
  strong communities by letting players create and share their own content. 
  Many elders get to the point where they play the games only occasionally, 
  but spend most of their time creating new content. For them, the new game 
  becomes one of status: Can they become the most popular and respected 
  designer? 
   ●  Guild Management. When players form groups, these groups often benefit 
  from having organizers. Elders will often do this on their own, but if you give 
  them a strong set of tools to help run their guild, the activity will be all the 
  more appealing to them. 
   ●  A Chance to Teach. Just as many experts in  “ real-world ”  activities enjoy a 
  chance to teach, so do game experts. If you can give them both permission and 
  encouragement to do so, some of them will enjoy serving as ambassadors to 
  the newbies, and guides to the regular players. Some online games give elders 
  who would like to teach special outfits noting them as experts and teachers, 
  which gives them a special status they are generally very proud of.  
    These three levels might sound like a lot of work, but really, they can often be 
  implemented quite simply. Every year at Easter, for example, my neighborhood 
  hosts an egg hunt for all the kids who live there. Quite naturally, they have found 
  that it works best to have three levels of play: 
    ●  Level 1 — Ages 2–5 (newbies): These kids hunt for eggs in a separate area from 
  the older kids, so there is no concern about having to compete with them. All 
  the eggs are placed in plain sight — not really hidden at all. For these preschool-
  ers, though, just navigating the space, spotting the eggs, and picking them up 
  is plenty of challenge. There are plenty of eggs, and no pushy big kids to spoil 
  the fun. 
    ●  Level 2 — Ages 6–9 (players): These kids enjoy a standard egg hunt over a large 
  area, with eggs hidden in places that are sometimes tricky. There are enough 
  eggs for everyone, but kids still need to move fast and look carefully. 
    ●  Level 3 — Ages 10–13 (elders): These older children are given the task of hiding 
  the eggs. They are very proud of this job — they find it challenging and fun, feel 
  honored with the responsibility, and enjoy the status it gives them, compared to 
  the younger kids. They also often enjoy giving hints to the kids who are having 
  trouble.  
      Community Tip #7: Force Players to Depend on Each Other 
    Conflict alone cannot create community. The conflict situation must be one where 
  getting aid from other players will help resolve the conflict. Most videogame design-
  ers have been conditioned to create games that are playable by a single player 
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  alone, even in a multiplayer game. The logic is something like  “We don’t want to 
  exclude players who would prefer to play alone. ” And this is a valid concern. But 
  when you create a game that can be mastered when playing solo, you diminish the 
  value of community. If, on the other hand, you create situations where players must 
  communicate and interact to succeed, you give community real value. This often 
  involves the counter-intuitive step of taking something away from the players. For 
  example, in Toontown Online, our team decided on an unusual rule: players cannot 
  heal themselves during a battle — they can only heal other players. There was a 
  great deal of concern that some players would find the rule frustrating, but after we 
  implemented it, this did not seem to be the case. Instead, it achieved its objectives 
  well. It forced people to communicate ( “I need a Toon-up! ”), and encouraged them 
  to help each other. And really, people want to help each other — helping another 
  person is a deeply satisfying feeling, even when it is just helping them win a vid-
  eogame. But we are often shy about helping others, for fear we might insult them 
  with our offer of help. But if you can create situations where players need each oth-
  ers help, and can easily ask for it, others will quickly come to their aid, and your 
  community will be the stronger for it. 
   Community Tip #8: Manage Your Community 
   If you believe that community is important to your game experience, you need to 
  do more than just cross your fingers and hope it will happen. You need to create 
  appropriate tools and systems to let your players communicate and organize, and 
  you may need to have professional community managers who build and maintain a 
  strong feedback loop between designers and players. Think of these managers like 
  gardeners. They don’t create the communities directly, but they plant the seeds for 
  them and encourage them to grow by observing and catering to their specific needs. 
  This is a role of nurturing, listening, and encouraging, so not surprisingly, many 
  of the best community managers are female. Amy Jo Kim’s aforementioned book, 
  Community Building on the Web, has some excellent advice about how to carefully 
  manage online communities by striking the right balance between a  “hands-on”
  and “hands-off” approach. 
      Community Tip #9: Obligation to Others is Powerful 
   In parts of aboriginal Australia, it is considered rude to give a gift unexpectedly, 
  because doing so creates a burden to give a return gift. This may be a cultural 
  extreme, but obligation to others is something deeply felt in all cultures. If you can 
  create situations where players can make promises to each other ( “Let’s meet up at 
  10 p.m. Wednesday to fight some trolls ”), or owe each other favors ( “That healing 
  spell saved my life! I owe you one! ”) players will take them seriously. Many  World 
  of Warcraft players report that obligation to their guild is one of the strongest forces 
  
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  in getting them to play on a regular basis. This is partly because they want to enjoy 
  high status in the guild, but often there is another reason — avoiding low status. As 
  we’ve seen with Lens #20: The Lens of Judgment, no one wants to be negatively 
  judged by other players, and failing to live up to commitments is one of the quick-
  est ways to make people think less of you. Carefully designed systems of player-
  to-player commitment are an excellent way to get players to play your game on a 
  regular basis, and to help build strong community. 
   Community Tip #10: Create Community Events 
    Almost all successful communities are anchored by regular events. In the real world, 
  these can be meetings, parties, competitions, practice sessions, or awards ceremo-
  nies. And in the virtual world, it’s pretty much the same. Events serve many pur-
  poses for a community: 
    ●  They give players something to look forward to. 
    ●  They create a shared experience, which makes players feel more connected to 
  their community. 
    ●  They punctuate time, giving players something to remember. 
    ●  They are a guarantee of an opportunity to connect with others. 
    ●  The knowledge that events are frequent makes players want to keep checking 
  back to find out about which events are coming up.  
    Players will often create their own events, but why not create some of your own? 
  With an online game, it can be as simple as creating a simple goal for players, and 
  sending a mass email.   
   Lens #86: The Lens of Community 
    To make sure your game fosters strong community, ask yourself these 
  questions: 
    ●  What conflict is at the heart of my community? 
    ●  How does architecture shape my community? 
    ●  Does my game support three levels of experience? 
    ●  Are there community events? 
    ●  Why do players need each other?  
  TEN TIPS FOR STRONG COMMUNITIES
  
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   The Challenge of Griefing 
   Griefing is one issue that any community-based game, particularly an online game, 
  has to deal with eventually. For some players, the game itself isn’t as enjoyable 
  as teasing, tricking, and torturing the other players. If you remember Bartle’s four 
  player types matched to hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs (Chapter 8), the griefer 
  would be the Joker. 
   Recalling Lens #80: The Lens of Status, the griefer sees himself as higher status 
  than the other players because of the power he can wield over them by spoiling a 
  game that they care about and he doesn’t. 
   What can a game designer do about griefing? Some games have created  “anti-
  griefing policies ” that ban griefers from the game — this is one way to handle the 
  problem, but it creates the ugly situation of having to police griefing, and then hav-
  ing to maintain a “court of law ” to decide which griefing was intentional abuse, and 
  which was just  “fooling around. ” A better idea is to avoid game systems that make 
  griefing easy. These are the systems that are easiest for griefers to exploit: 
   ●  Player vs. Player Combat — Some games, such as first-person shooters, make 
  player vs. player (PvP) combat the heart of the game. But if you are making 
  a game where PvP combat is not the core activity, you should think carefully 
  about why you are supporting it. While it can be exciting, it can also make play-
  ers feel constantly threatened and never safe. A typical griefer trick in a game 
  with no limits on PvP is to befriend a player, spending just enough time with 
  them to build up some trust, and then unexpectedly kill the player and steal their 
  inventory. You could argue that this is  “just part of the game, ” but generally the 
  griefers aren’t doing it for advantage in the game — they are doing it just for the 
  enjoyment of torturing another human being. Ultimately, this creates an environ-
  ment where players are afraid to talk to strangers — and what kind of commu-
  nity does that leave you with? If you really feel that PvP combat is an important 
  part of your game, you should consider ways to confine it to special areas or cir-
  cumstances, which makes it difficult to use it as a griefing opportunity. 
   ●  Stealing — In many games, items give players a great deal of power. Any oppor-
  tunity to rob others of this power is very attractive to griefers. This could be 
  through pickpocketing or by  “looting” a player after battling them. Being stolen 
  from really makes a player feel violated, and as a result, griefers love doing it. 
  Unless you are planning to make a game that is fun for griefers and frustrating 
  for everyone else, you probably don’t want to support features that let players 
  steal from each other. Of course, there are other kinds of stealing than just steal-
  ing items. Some games have a problem with  “kill stealing. ” In the initial version 
  of Everquest, for example, only the player who dealt the final blow against an 
  enemy would get any experience points for it. Griefers would make a habit of 
  standing nearby a battle, waiting for a powerful monster to be nearly defeated, 
  and then sneak in a killing blow,  “stealing” all the experience. Again, few players 
  
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  did this as a valid strategy, but many did it for the joy of griefing. Creating sys-
  tems that make it difficult for players to seize things that are not rightfully theirs 
  is one way to make griefing difficult. 
    ●  Trading — If you give players the opportunity to trade items, you set up the pos-
  sibility of unfair trades. If players have total information about the items they 
  will receive, it is difficult to use the system for griefing. But if there is any way to 
  misrepresent items that you are trying to trade, griefers will pounce and use it as 
  an opportunity to make unfair trades. 
    ●  Obscenities — One thing griefers enjoy is using shocking and disturbing lan-
  guage in front of other players. If you set up filters for this kind of language, it 
  will become a game for griefers to find ways around your filtering system, and 
  they almost always can, if you are using a  “black list ” (certain words are for-
  bidden) or “white list ” (only certain words are allowed), or any other kind of 
  automated chat filter, because the human mind is so much better at detecting 
  patterns than any machine. The most successful systems for stopping this kind 
  of griefing are ones that use an automated filter combined with a system that lets 
  players report rude behavior. Another good technique to limit obscene griefing 
  comes from using Lens #57: The Lens of Feedback. Keeping in mind that obscen-
  ities are a game to the griefer, you can take the fun out of the game by giving 
  them no feedback about whether the obscenity filter worked or not. Simply let 
  them see the obscenity on their side, and filter the message appropriately to the 
  other players. They can still find ways to beat this system, but it is much more 
  work, and much less fun. 
    ●  Blocking the Way — One of the simplest and most annoying griefing moves is to 
  bar the way so that players can’t get where they are trying to go. Solutions to this 
  problem range from making sure the collision system lets players slip past each 
  other, to creating doorways wide enough that they cannot be blocked by a single 
  player, to allowing players to push other players out of the way. In Toontown 
  Online, we chose this last solution. But, even then, the griefers took advantage! 
  Since players could push each other around, it became a popular prank to find 
  an “abandoned avatar, ” whose player had stepped away from the keyboard, and 
  push them slowly down the street and into a battle! 
    ●  Loopholes — Possibly the griefer’s greatest joy is to find a loophole in a game 
  system that lets them do something that they shouldn’t be able to do. If griefers 
  can disconnect during a battle to deny another player a valuable treasure, they 
  will do it. If they can occasionally crash the server by jumping up and down in 
  a corner for two hours, they will do it. If they can arrange furniture in a public 
  place to spell obscene words, they will do it. Anything they can do to vandalize 
  or annoy will make them feel powerful and important, particularly if other play-
  ers don’t know how to do it. You must be ever mindful of these loopholes and 
  careful to remove them whenever they turn up. Dealing with problems like this 
  is part of why making online multiplayer games is such an arduous process.  
  THE CHALLENGE OF GRIEFING
  
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   The Future of Game Communities 
   Game communities have been an important part of life on earth for centuries, 
  mostly via sports teams, both professional and amateur. As we transition into the 
  age of the Internet, new kinds of game communities are becoming important as 
  well. In this new age, a person’s online identity becomes something important and 
  intensely personal. Choosing an online handle and identity has become an impor-
  tant rite of passage for children and young teenagers. Most people who create these 
  identities will retain them their entire lives. Most people who created a handle 
  twenty years ago still use the same one today, and have no intention of changing it. 
  Combine this with the fact that the most expressive online experience one can have 
  is through multiplayer game worlds, and one can easily imagine a future where 
  players will create avatars for games as young children that become part of their 
  personal and professional lives as they grow older. Just as people today often have 
  lifelong allegiance to a particular sports team, perhaps the guilds players join as 
  children will influence their personal social networks for the rest of their lives. And 
  what will happen to these online identities and social networks when players die? 
  Perhaps they will be memorialized in some kind of online mausoleum, or perhaps 
  our avatars will outlive us, and be passed on to children and grandchildren, giv-
  ing our future descendants a strange connection to their ancestors. It is an exciting 
  time to be creating online games, for the new kinds of communities we invent may 
  become permanent elements of human culture for centuries to come.  
   Lens #87: The Lens of Griefing 
   To make sure griefing in your game is minimized, ask yourself these 
  questions: 
   ●  What systems in my game are easy to grief? 
   ●  How can I make my game boring to grief? 
   ●  Am I ignoring any loopholes?  
  
  CHAPTER
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   The Designer Usually 
  Works with a  Team 
  371
  TWENTY-THREE
  F I G U R E
  23.1
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE • THE DESIGNER USUALLY WORKS WITH A TEAM
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   The Secret of Successful Teamwork 
   To create a modern videogame, a team of tremendous diversity is required. You 
  need a team of people with a wide variety of artistic, technical, design, and busi-
  ness skills. They generally have very different backgrounds, and value very different 
  things. But if your game is going to be a great one, they will all have to pull together 
  and set aside differences and disagreements to make the game as great as it can be. 
   And there is a simple secret shared by all teams that have ever successfully collab-
  orated to make something great. It is so simple, that when you hear it, you will likely 
  think I’m not being serious. But this is the most serious thing I will say in this book.
   The secret to successful teamwork is love . 
    No, really. 
   Now, by this, I don’t mean that if the team hold hands, and sings  “Kumbaya, ”
  that you are going to make a great game. I don’t even mean that you have to like 
  the other people on the team, although it wouldn’t hurt. 
   What I mean is that you have to love the game you are making. For if everyone 
  on the team has a deep and true love for the game they are making together, and 
  for the audience they are making it for, all differences and disagreements will be set 
  aside in service of bringing the game into existence and making it be as wonderful 
  as it can possibly be. 
   Developers lucky enough to have been on a team that truly loves the game they 
  are making will know just what I mean. Everyone on the team feels like children 
  anticipating Christmas when they think about the game getting finished, and they 
  think about that constantly. 
   Similarly, developers who have been on a team that had some kind of  “love defi-
  cit” will also know what I mean. There are three main kinds of problems when it 
  comes to team love for their game: 
   ●  Love Problem #1: Team members incapable of loving any game. Though it is 
  difficult to understand, some people get into the games business even though 
  they have no particular love for games or the people who play them. When 
  someone like this is on your team, it is like carrying deadweight. They often con-
  tribute little of use, and constantly waste time arguing with team members who 
  actually love the work. Unfortunately, the team members in charge of manage-
  ment or budget are most likely to have this affliction. Regardless, there is only 
  one cure for a team member with this problem: get them off the team. 
   ●  Love Problem #2: Team members in love with a different game than the one 
  they are making. This problem comes in many shapes and sizes: A level designer 
  who only loves first-person shooters, forced to work on a role-playing game; an 
  engineer who only loves games with cutting-edge graphics, forced to work on a 
  simple Web-based game; and an artist who loves the work of H. R. Giger, forced 
  to develop a new game featuring the Care Bears. When you find members of your 
  team have this problem, the key is to work with them, to see if there is something 
  
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  about the current game that they can fall in love with — or perhaps they have 
  some idea for a new feature or element that will take the current game some-
  where new and different. On the Pirates game I mentioned in an earlier chapter  ,
  we ran into a love problem early on. The animators on the team were eagerly 
  looking forward to animating exciting pirate characters for the game. But as the 
  design proceeded, it became clear that this would be a game about ships — the 
  only people in it would be far away, and so tiny as to be incapable of any mean-
  ingful action or emotion. The animators tried to fight this for a while, but gradu-
  ally realized it was a losing battle, and they clearly began losing their love for the 
  game discussing it in tones of quiet detachment. Several of us on the team saw 
  this as a major problem — we needed the animators to put their heart and souls 
  into making beautiful effects animations, but they seemed so disappointed they 
  wouldn’t be able to animate characters, that didn’t seem possible. Then, in one 
  meeting, everything changed. One of the animators had a big sheaf of papers. 
  “Look, I’ve been thinking about this game, and at first I was really bummed that 
  we cut all the characters, but then I started thinking, the stars of this show are the 
  ships — what could I do to make them cool? ” He then proceeded to show pages 
  and pages of sketches of how the ships would explode into pieces, how their 
  masts would crack and break and crash into the sea, how their sails would rip 
  and tear and flap when hit with cannonballs — it was truly inspiring to everyone. 
  Immediately, the animators were excitedly competing to see who could come up 
  with the coolest effects. This shift in perspective turned a project they hated into 
  one they loved, and it made a huge difference in game quality. 
    ●  Love Problem #3: Team members in love with different visions of the same 
  game. This is the most common, and the most challenging, love problem. In this 
  situation, a team is full of people passionate about building a game, but everyone 
  has very different ideas about what the game will be like. The key to avoiding 
  this problem is to get everyone on the same page about what the design is as 
  soon as possible. There will be arguments, and disagreements, but if everyone 
  hears them out, and respectfully considers the ideas that others present, the team 
  can work toward that all important thing — a shared vision of something that all 
  the team members love. But it can only happen with thorough communication 
  and respect. The moment you sense that someone in a meeting doesn’t buy into 
  an idea (even if they verbally claim they agree with it), you must stop everything, 
  find out why, and try to find a way to get them on board. If you don’t, they may 
  secretly disagree with the direction, and lose their love for the game. And when 
  that happens, the valuable contributions they would have made are lost. No deci-
  sion should be final until the team agrees that it is final.  
      If You Can’t Love the Game, Love the Audience 
    Getting others to love the game is part of your responsibility as a designer. But what 
  about that terrible situation when, horror of horrors, you realize that you yourself 
  THE SECRET OF SUCCESSFUL TEAMWORK
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE • THE DESIGNER USUALLY WORKS WITH A TEAM
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  do not love the game you are working on? Again, this is not something you can 
  ignore, or hope will remedy itself. Unless you find a way to love your game, the 
  game you create will be mediocre at best, because the insincerity of your contribu-
  tion will show through. So when your love for your game lapses, you must find a 
  way to restore it. But how? 
   One way, as mentioned earlier, is to search long and hard, for something in the 
  game that you do love — perhaps it is a moment, or a clever mechanic, or a slick 
  interface. If you can find just one thing that you are excited about, and can be proud 
  of, it can sometimes be enough to make the whole project worthwhile for you — 
  enough to make you love the game and work hard to make the game succeed. 
   But perhaps you can’t find that one thing to love, perhaps because you are not the 
  target audience for the game. In that case, don’t think of it as a game for you — think 
  of it as what it really is, a game for the intended audience. Think of a time when you 
  went through a great deal of preparation to give someone you love a special gift. 
  Think how excited you were about seeing the expression on their face when they 
  opened it up and saw it. The anticipation of this moment made you put so much 
  thoughtful energy into the gift choice, the wrapping, and the presentation of it. You 
  carefully designed that moment, because you loved that person, and you wanted to 
  see that moment when they were so happy. And what was it that made them happy? 
  Just the gift? Surely not. What made them so happy was that you loved them so 
  much that you created that special moment just for them. The love you put into that 
  moment shone through, and into their hearts. If you can take that kind of love and 
  put it into the game you are creating for your audience, the love will shine through 
  the game and into the hearts of your audience. The game will feel special to them, 
  as they realize that someone really cared how they would feel when they played 
  the game, and knowing that someone cares about you is a very special feeling. A 
  designer cannot fake this — you must really feel it. As the great magician Henry 
  Thurston once said:
   Long experience has taught me that the crux of my fortunes is whether I can 
  radiate good will toward my audience. There is only one way to do it and that 
  is to feel it. You can fool the eyes and minds of the audience, but you cannot 
  fool their hearts.  
   If even this does not work for you, if you find that not only do you not love your 
  game, but you have no particular love for your audience, only one thing remains: 
  To pretend. This sounds like an insincere thing to do. Didn’t we just say that love 
  cannot be faked? But something strange happens when we pretend to love things — 
  sometimes real love starts to emerge. Have you ever been part of a group that has to 
  do some dreary task together? Perhaps a day of spring cleaning. Everyone is dreading 
  it and moping about it. Then one person says, half-jokingly,  “Come on, everybody, 
  this is gonna be awesome! We’re going to have so much fun! ” Everyone chuckles at 
  the sarcasm, and, just for fun, starts approaching the activity with a pretend  “this is 
  going to be awesome ” attitude. And just by pretending this, soon the activity does 
  start to become fun — and ironically, everyone starts to love it. If you don’t know 
  
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  how to love something, just ask yourself what kinds of things someone who really 
  loved the game would say and do, and start doing those things. You may be sur-
  prised at the transformation that starts to take place within yourself.   
   Lens #88: The Lens of Love 
    To use this lens, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  Do I love my project? If not, how can I change that? 
    ●  Does everyone on the team love the project? If not, how can that be changed?  
    Again, I am completely sincere when I say that team love for the game is the most 
  important factor determining whether the team will succeed. Love is not a luxury —
  it is a necessity if you are to have any hope at all of producing a great game.  
   Designing Together 
    If everyone on the team loves the project, that’s great! But it gives you a new prob-
  lem — everyone is going to have opinions about the design! For some designers, 
  this is terrifying — the idea that other members of the team want to contribute 
  design ideas threatens their status as designer, and puts them in a position where 
  they have to argue with others about the  “ right ”  design for the game. These design-
  ers often choose to withdraw from the team, ignore these opinions, and produce a 
  design completely independent from the rest of the team. The effect is predictable: 
  All the beautiful ideas that each team member had for the game have been crushed, 
  and the love they had for the game dries up and blows away. The designer becomes 
  frustrated with the team because they seem unwilling and unable to realize his glo-
  rious vision, and the game, as you might expect, pleases no one. 
    A much more successful approach is to include the team whenever possible in the 
  design process. If you can set your ego aside, you will quickly realize that most of the 
  people on the team with design ideas don’t want to hijack the game design — they 
  just want their ideas to be heard, because they, too, want the game to be great! If 
  you include everyone in the design process, taking every idea and suggestion seri-
  ously, you will: 
    ●  Have more ideas to choose from 
    ●  Weed out flawed ideas quickly 
    ●  Be forced to view the game from many perspectives 
    ●  Make everyone on the team feel like they own the design  
  DESIGNING TOGETHER
  
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   When the whole team participates in the design, your game will be stronger, and 
  everyone will embark on implementation with confidence that they understand the 
  design. This is very important, because not all design decisions get made ahead of 
  time. Hundreds of tiny decisions get made all the time — not by the designer, but by 
  the programmers, artists, and executives working on the game. If all of these people 
  have a solid, shared understanding of the game design, these little decisions will 
  all reinforce the design of the game, and the project will have a unified robustness 
  and solidity that it can’t get any other way. It is not uncommon for many different 
  people on a project to feel that their contribution was the most important part of the 
  game — and not unhealthy, either! This just means that many different team mem-
  bers feel personal ownership and responsibility for that game. One great way to 
  amplify this feeling is to avoid  “over-fleshing ” your designs. If you leave some ambi-
  guity in the detailed design of your game, particularly for parts you aren’t sure about, 
  it forces the developers working on that section of the game to think about what that 
  section of the game should be like, and to come up with ideas for how to implement 
  those fine details. Since they are often closest to that part of the game, their instincts 
  about detailed design are often quite good — and if their ideas are good ones, and 
  go into the game, they will feel real pride of ownership of those parts of the game. 
   Does this mean you have to have everyone involved in the design all the time? 
  Not everyone has the stamina to spend three hours debating the right way to lay out 
  the inventory interface, so for detailed discussions, you will probably want to estab-
  lish a core design team based on who on the team is both interested and productive 
  at these kinds of sessions. But after this core team has come to consensus about 
  how a design should work, you should inform the rest of the team about these deci-
  sions as soon as possible. A typical process looks something like: 
   1.   Initial Brainstorming: Involves as much of the team as possible. 
   2.   Independent Design: Core design team members think about ideas 
  independently. 
   3.   Design Discussion: Core design members bring their independent ideas together 
  to discuss and try to come to consensus on ideas. 
   4.   Design Presentation: The core design team presents their progress to the whole 
  team, allowing time for comments and criticism. This often turns into brain-
  storming, kicking off the next round of the iterative cycle.  
   It takes both time and energy to involve the whole team in the design, but you 
  will find that it makes the game stronger in the long run, provided your team is able 
  to communicate. 
   Team Communication 
   Hundreds of books have been written about how to facilitate good team commu-
  nication. I’m going to boil it down here to nine key issues that are particularly 
  
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  pertinent for game design. You might think these things sound basic, and they 
  are — but mastery of the basics is essential for excellence in any field, especially 
  something as complicated as game design by a team. Without further ado, the nine 
  keys to team communication are: 
    1.   Objectivity. This one is listed first because it is the most likely to go wrong. 
  In the passionate throes of design ecstasy, it is easy to become attached to an 
  idea that struck you like white lightning from heaven. But if other team mem-
  bers don’t like your idea, where are you then? Nowhere, if you are going to fight 
  a war of opinions and gut feelings. The tool that will rescue you is Lens #12: 
  The Lens of the Problem Statement. It can give you the objectivity you need. 
  All team discussion must focus on how well design ideas solve the problems at 
  hand. Personal preferences about these ideas don’t matter — all that matters is 
  whether the ideas solve the problem. Don’t even talk about the idea as  “my idea ” 
  or “Sue’s idea ” — speak objectively:  “The spaceship idea. ” Not only will this 
  separate the ideas from the individuals (giving them over to the team), but it will 
  be clearer, as well. Another nice trick is to phrase alternatives as questions. For 
  example, instead of saying  “A is no good. I like B better, ” simply saying,  “ What 
  if we did B instead of A? ” lets the group collectively discuss the relative merits of 
  B and A. It’s a subtle difference, but much about mastering team communication 
  is subtle. If you can develop good habits of objectivity as a designer, everyone 
  will bring you design questions to answer without hesitation, because they know 
  there is no danger of an awkward situation when you  “pass judgment ” on the 
  design — they will just get honest, objective, useful feedback. Further, people 
  will want to include you in every design session, because by bringing a tone of 
  objectivity to the room, your presence can help defuse tense struggles between 
  people taking a less objective attitude. And best of all, when a team design ses-
  sion has a tone of objectivity, every idea is taken seriously, which means that 
  even shy team members will feel they can speak freely, and many ideas that 
  might have hidden, trembling in the shadows, will confidently come to light. 
    2.   Clarity. This one is simple. If communication is not clear, there is going to be 
  confusion. When you explain something, check to see if people understand what 
  you mean. Illustrate your ideas when possible. And if someone else says some-
  thing that isn’t clear, don’t  ever pretend you understand what they are saying. 
  No matter how embarrassed you are, keep asking questions until you under-
  stand what they mean. Because if everyone on the design team isn’t on the 
  same page, how can there be any meaningful communication? But understand-
  ing each other is only half of clarity — the other half is getting concrete and spe-
  cific. There is a big difference between saying to your producer  “I’ll design the 
  combat system by Thursday ” and “I’ll e-mail you a 3–5 page description of the 
  interface for the turn-based combat system by this Thursday at 5 p.m. ” The first 
  throws wide the door for miscommunication, but the second gives important 
  details about a specific deliverable, leaving little room for misunderstanding. 
  TEAM COMMUNICATION
  
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   3.   Persistence. WRITE THINGS DOWN! There, I said it! Verbal communication is 
  momentary — easily misunderstood and forgotten. Things that are recorded can 
  be checked later by everyone on the team. And you should use every persistent 
  medium that might be useful to you — notebooks, e-mail, forums, mailing lists, 
  fileshares, wikis, printed documents, etc. Make sure someone in every design 
  meeting is taking notes that can be shared with the team. When you do send an 
  e-mail about a design topic, make sure to include everyone on the team. This 
  avoids the danger of people being left out, or even just feeling left out. 
   4.   Comfort. I know this one sounds a little silly. What does comfort have to do 
  with communication? Simply this: When people are comfortable, they are less 
  distracted and communicate more freely. Make sure your team has a place to 
  communicate that is quiet, the right temperature, has enough chairs, and has 
  a large writing surface; in short, a place that is physically comfortable. Also, 
  you need to make sure team members aren’t hungry, thirsty, or overtired. People 
  who are physically uncomfortable will be terrible communicators. And physical 
  comfort isn’t enough — they must also be emotionally comfortable, which leads 
  us to our next item. 
   5.   Respect. We have discussed how the secret to being a good designer is to be a 
  good listener. Well, the secret to good listening is to respect the person you are 
  listening to. People who do not feel respected tend to speak little, and when 
  they do speak, they often are not honest about their feelings, for fear they will 
  be judged harshly. People who feel respected speak freely, openly, and honestly. 
  Respecting people is easy, if you can remember to do it. Simply treat them, at 
  every moment, how you would like to be treated. Don’t cut them off, or roll 
  your eyes, even if you think what they are saying is foolish. Be polite and patient 
  at all times. Find nice things to say, even if you have to stretch a little. Keep 
  in mind that others are more like you than unlike you — look for things you 
  have in common, for it is easiest to respect people like ourselves. When all else 
  fails, repeat this mantra to yourself:  “What if I’m wrong? ” If you somehow insult 
  or offend someone, do not rush to defend what you have said. Rush instead 
  to apologize, and do so sincerely. For if you can manage to respect your team-
  mates at all times, they cannot help but respect you. And when everyone feels 
  respected, they will communicate at their best. 
   6.   Trust. Respect is impossible without trust — if I can’t trust what you say and do, 
  how can I know whether you respect me? Trust is not something that works on 
  faith alone — relationships of trust gradually build up over time. For this reason, 
  quality of communication matters much less than quantity of communication. 
  People who see each other day in and day out, constantly talking, constantly 
  solving problems together, gradually learn how much they can trust each other, 
  and when. A group of people who barely know each other and only meet once 
  a month have no idea who can be trusted with what. This is one area where 
  digital communication isn’t good enough — there is something in the nuance 
  of face-to-face communication that allows us to make subconscious decisions 
  
  379
  about how and when to trust people. The easiest way to figure out who trusts 
  who on a team is to observe who eats lunch together. Most animals are very 
  selective about who they eat with, and humans are no exception. If the artists 
  eat separately from the programmers, there is a good chance the team has pipe-
  line problems. If the Xbox team eats separately from the Playstation team, there 
  are often porting problems. Give your team every opportunity to be together, and 
  to communicate together, even if it is not about things to do with your project, 
  for the more high-bandwidth communication (about anything!) that your team 
  can have, the more they will learn how to trust each other — this is the rea-
  son so few game studios have individual offices, preferring instead to seat teams 
  together in open offices where they can’t help but have constant face-to-face 
  communication with one another all day long. 
    7.   Honesty. Just as comfort depends on respect, and respect depends on trust, 
  trust depends on honesty. If you have somehow developed a reputation for dis-
  honesty in some area, even if it has nothing to do with game design or devel-
  opment, others will be afraid to be honest with you, which will inhibit team 
  communication. Game development can sometimes get very political, and you 
  will surely have to stretch the truth about some things from time to time — but 
  your team must always feel certain they are getting the truth from you, or team 
  communication will be strained. 
    8.   Privacy. Being honest isn’t always easy, because sometimes the truth can be 
  painful. And even though we all hope to stay objective in our design work, there 
  are times when personal pride and ego are necessarily tangled up in our work. 
  Talking about these things honestly in a public forum can be difficult or impos-
  sible. People will tell you their true feelings in a one-on-one conversation much 
  more easily than in public. Take the time to speak privately with each member 
  of the design team when you can — they will often present ideas, and discuss 
  problems they simply did not feel comfortable discussing publicly. These one-
  on-one conversations also go a long way to help build trust, as well, creating a 
  virtuous circle: more trust leads to more honest communication, which leads to 
  still more trust, and so on. 
    9.   Unity. During the design process, there will be many conflicting opinions 
  and arguments about what is right for the game. This is healthy and natural. 
  Ultimately, though, the team must arrive at a decision everyone agrees upon. 
  Keep in mind that it takes two people to have a disagreement. If one member of 
  the team is stubborn on a particular point, you must treat them with the respect 
  they deserve and work with them until a meaningful compromise can be found. 
  Asking them to explain why this point is so important to them can often make 
  the rest of the team understand why the point is important. When this fails, an 
  excellent question to ask is  “What would it take to bring you in? ” You may not 
  be able to settle this difference in opinion immediately, but the one thing you 
  cannot do is ignore it. Just as a single cylinder not firing in a car engine cuts 
  performance in half, and ultimately ruins the engine, one team member who 
  TEAM COMMUNICATION
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE • THE DESIGNER USUALLY WORKS WITH A TEAM
  380
  does not buy into the design slows the efforts of everyone on the team, and can, 
  in the end, tear the team apart. The final goal of communication is unity.   
   Lens #89: The Lens of the Team 
   To make sure your team is operating like a well-oiled machine, ask yourself 
  these questions: 
   ●  Is this the right team for this project? Why? 
   ●  Is the team communicating objectively? 
   ●  Is the team communicating clearly? 
   ●  Is the team comfortable with each other? 
   ●  Is there an air of trust and respect among the team? 
   ●  Is the team ultimately able to unify around decisions?  
   Game design and development are hard. Unless you are multitalented and your 
  project is tiny, you can’t do it alone. People are more important than ideas, because, 
  in the words of Pixar’s Ed Catmull,  “If you give a good idea to a mediocre group, 
  they’ll screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a good group, they’ll fix it. ”
   You might think that all this team talk has nothing to do with design — that if 
  other people on the team don’t do their jobs, it has nothing to do with you as a 
  designer. And that may be true, but it has everything to do with the game that gets 
  created. Since everyone who touches a game exerts some influence on its design, 
  you need everyone on the team to pull together, if the glorious vision you share is 
  ever to come to light. 
   Now, with all this team communication going on, someone is going to write 
  some documents — and that is the subject of our next chapter.  
  
  CHAPTER
  381
   The Team Sometimes 
  Communicates
  Through Documents 
  381
  TWENTY-FOUR
  F I G U R E
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     The Myth of the Game Design Document 
   Many novice game designers, and other dreamers, have an interesting vision of how 
  the process of game design works. Not being acquainted with the Rule of the Loop, 
  they believe that the process of game design involves a genius game designer sit-
  ting down alone at a keyboard and typing out a glorious and perfect Game Design 
  Document. When this masterpiece is complete, all that needs to be done is to hand 
  it to a competent team of programmers and artists and wait for them to turn this 
  shining vision into a reality.  “If only, ” the frustrated would-be designer thinks,  “I
  could find out the proper format for a Game Design Document, I could become a 
  professional game designer too! I’m full of ideas — but without this magic template, 
  there is no way for me to design games. ”
   It is very important for me to be clear about this next point, so I am going to use 
  a very large font. Please listen closely:
   The magic template does not exist!  
   It never has existed, and it never will exist. Does this mean that documents are 
  not a part of game design? No — documents are a very important part of game 
  design. But documents are different for every game, and different for every team. 
  To understand the correct structure of the documents for your game, you must first 
  understand their purpose. 
   The Purpose of Documents 
   Game documents have exactly two purposes:  memory and communication . 
   Memory 
   Humans have terrible memories. A game design will be full of thousands of impor-
  tant decisions that define how the game works and why. There is a good chance 
  you will not be able to remember them all. When these brilliant ideas are fresh in 
  your mind, you will likely feel that they are impossible to forget. But two weeks, 
  and two hundred design decisions later, it is very easy to forget even the most 
  ingenious of solutions. If you get in the habit of recording your design decisions, it 
  will save you the trouble of having to solve the same problems all over again. 
   Communication 
   Even if you are blessed with a perfect memory, though, decisions about the design 
  of your game must be communicated to many other people on the team. Documents 
  are a very effective way to do that. And this communication, as we discussed in 
  
  383
  Chapter 23, will not be one-way. It will be a dialog, for as soon as a decision is put 
  on paper, someone will find a problem with it, or come up with a way to make it 
  better. Documents can get more minds on the design faster to more quickly find and 
  fix weaknesses in the game design.  
   Types of Game Documents 
    Since the purpose of documents is for memory and communication, the types of 
  documents you will need are defined by what needs to be remembered and what 
  needs to be communicated. It is the rare game where one document serves all nec-
  essary purposes — usually it makes sense to create several different kinds of docu-
  ments. There are six main groups that need to remember and communicate different 
  things, and each generates its own special kind of documents.   
  Design
  Management
  Players
  Art
  Engineering
  1
  2
  3
  2
  4
  5
  6
  7
  8
  9
  10
  11
  12 
  13 
  14
  Writing
  F I G U R E
  24.2
    The figure above shows some possible paths of memory and communication on 
  a game design team. Each arrow could be a document, or more than one document. 
  Let’s look at each of the six groups and what documents they might create. 
   Design 
     1. Game Design Overview. This high-level document might only be a few pages. 
  It is often written primarily for management so that they can understand enough 
  about what this game is, and who it is for, without getting into too much detail. 
  The overview document can be useful for the whole team to get a sense of the 
  big picture of the game. 
    2. Detailed Design Document. This document is the one that describes all the 
  game mechanics and interfaces in great detail. This document usually serves two 
  TYPES OF GAME DOCUMENTS
  
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  384
  purposes: so the designers remember all the little detailed ideas they came up 
  with, and to help communicate those ideas to the engineers who have to code 
  them and the artists who need to make them look nice. Since this document is 
  seldom seen by  “outsiders, ” it is usually a terrible mess with just enough detail 
  to spark discussion and keep important ideas from being forgotten. It is often the 
  thickest of the documents, and is seldom kept up to date. Halfway through the 
  project, it is often abandoned entirely — by that point, the game itself contains 
  most of the important details, and the ones not in there are often exchanged 
  through informal means, such as e-mails or short pages of notes. 
   3. Story Overview. Many games call for professional writers who will create dialog 
  and narration for the game. These writers are often contracted, and often far 
  away from the rest of the team. The game designers often find it necessary to 
  create a short document that describes the important settings, characters, and 
  actions that will take place in the game. Frequently, the writers respond to this 
  with interesting new ideas that change the whole game design.  
   Engineering 
    4. Technical Design Document. Often, a videogame has many complex systems 
  that have nothing to do with game mechanics and everything to do with getting 
  things to appear on the screen, sending data over networks, and other crunchy 
  technical tasks. Usually, no one outside the engineering team cares much about 
  these details, but if the engineering team is more than one person, it often 
  makes sense to record these details in a document so that when others join the 
  team they can understand how the whole thing is supposed to work. Like the 
  Detailed Design Document, it is rare for this to stay up to date more than half-
  way through a project, but writing this document is often essential to getting the 
  necessary systems architected and the coding underway. 
   5. Pipeline Overview. Much of the challenging work of engineering a videogame 
  comes from properly integrating art assets into the game . There are often special 
  “do’s and don’ts ” the artists must adhere to, if the art is to appear properly in 
  the game. This brief document is usually generated by the engineers explicitly 
  for the art team, and the simpler it is, the better. 
   6. System Limitations. Designers and artists are often completely unaware of what 
  is and is not possible on the system they are designing for (or so they pretend). 
  For some games, the engineers find it useful to create documents that make clear 
  certain limits that should not be crossed — number of polygons on the screen 
  at once, number of update messages sent per second, number of simultaneous 
  explosions on screen at once, etc. Often this information is not so cut and dried, 
  but trying to establish it (and get it in writing) can save a lot of time later — and 
  it can help foster discussions about creative solutions to get past these limits. 
  
  385
    7. Art Bible. If several artists are going to work together on a title to create a sin-
  gle, consistent look and feel, they must have some guidelines to help maintain 
  this consistency. An  “art bible ” is simply a document that provides these guide-
  lines. These might be character sheets, examples of environments, examples of 
  color usage, examples of interface, or anything else that defines the look of any 
  element in the game. 
    8. Concept Art Overview. There are many people on the team that need to under-
  stand what the game is going to look like before it is built. This is the job of con-
  cept art. The art alone doesn’t usually tell the story, though — it often makes the 
  most sense in a design document, so often the art team works with the design 
  team to come up with a set of images that show how they will look and feel in 
  the context of the game design. These early images end up everywhere — in 
  the Game Design Overview, in the Detailed Design Document, and sometimes 
  even in technical documents, to illustrate the type of look that the technology is 
  striving to achieve.  
   Management 
     9. Game Budget. While we would all like to just  “work on the game until it is 
  done, ” the economic realities of the game business seldom allow this. Usually, 
  the team is required to come up with a cost to develop the game before they com-
  pletely understand what they are building. This cost is usually arrived at through 
  a document, usually a spreadsheet, that attempts to list all the work that needs 
  to be done to complete the game, complete with time estimates which translate 
  into dollars. It is impossible for the producer or project manager to come up with 
  these numbers on their own, so they generally work closely with every part of the 
  team to make the estimates as accurate as possible. Often this document is one of 
  the first created, since it is used to help secure the funding for the project. A good 
  project manager will continue to evolve this document throughout the project to 
  ensure that the project does not go over the budget it has been allocated. 
    10.  Project Schedule. On a well-run project, this document will be the one most fre-
  quently updated. We know the process of game design and development is rife 
  with surprises and unexpected changes. Nevertheless, some kind of planning is 
  necessary, ideally planning that can change on a weekly basis at the least. A 
  good project schedule document lists all the tasks that need to be accomplished, 
  how long each will take, when each task must be completed, and who will do 
  them. Hopefully, this document will take into account the fact that a single per-
  son shouldn’t do more than 40 hours in a week, and the fact that some tasks 
  can’t be started until others are completed. Sometimes this schedule is kept on 
  a spreadsheet, and other times on more formal project management software. 
  Keeping this document up to date can easily be a full-time job on a medium-
  sized or larger game.  
  TYPES OF GAME DOCUMENTS
  
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    Writing 
    11.  Story Bible. While one might think that the story of the game might be deter-
  mined entirely by the writers (if any) on the project, it is often the case that 
  everyone on the project contributes meaningful changes to the story. The engine 
  programmers might realize that a certain story element is going to be too much 
  of a technical challenge, and they might propose a story change. The artists 
  might have a visual idea for a whole new part of the story that the writers never 
  imagined. The game designers might have some ideas for gameplay concepts 
  that require story changes. A story bible that lays down the law about what is 
  and is not possible in this story world makes it much easier for everyone on the 
  team to contribute story ideas, and ultimately this makes for a stronger story 
  world that is well-integrated with art, technology, and gameplay. 
   12. Script. If the NPCs in the game are going to talk, their dialog has to come from 
  somewhere! This dialog is often written in a script document that is either sepa-
  rate from, or an appendix to, the detailed design document. It is crucial that the 
  game designers review all of the dialog, since it is all too easy for a line of dialog 
  to be inconsistent with a rule of gameplay. 
   13. Game Tutorial and Manual. Videogames are complex, and the players have to 
  learn how to play them somehow. In-game tutorials, Web pages, and printed man-
  uals are how this usually happens. The text that goes into these is important — if 
  players can’t understand your game, how can they enjoy it? The details of your 
  game design will likely continue to change up until the last minute of develop-
  ment, so it is important to be sure someone is continually checking this text to 
  make sure it is still accurate with the game implementation.  
   Players 
    14. Game Walkthrough. The developers aren’t the only ones who make documents 
  about the game! If players like a game, they are going to write their own docu-
  ments about it and post them online. Studying what your players write about 
  your game can be a great way to find out, in detail, what players like and dislike 
  about your game, which parts are too hard, and which are too easy. By the time 
  a player walkthrough is written, of course, it is often too late to change your 
  game — but at least you’ll know for next time!  
   Again, these documents are not a magic template — there is no magic template! 
  Each game is different, and will have different needs in terms of both memory and 
  communication that you will have to discover for yourself.  
  
  387
    So, Where Do I Start? 
    You start simply, just like you did when you started designing your game. Start with 
  a document that is a rough bullet list of the ideas you want to include in your game. 
  As the list grows, questions will arise in your mind about the design — these ques-
  tions are crucial! Write them down so you don’t forget them!  “Working on your 
  design ”  will mostly mean answering these questions, so you don’t want to lose the 
  questions. Each time you answer a question to your satisfaction, make a note of the 
  decision, and why you made it. Gradually, your list of ideas, plans, questions, and 
  answers will grow and start to fall naturally into sections. Keep writing down the 
  things you need to remember, and the things you need to communicate. Before you 
  know it, you will have a design document — not one based on a magic template, 
  but one that grew organically around the unique design of your unique game.
   Lens #90: The Lens of Documentation 
    To ensure you are writing the documents you need, and skipping the ones you 
  don’t, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  What do we need to remember while making this game? 
    ●  What needs to be communicated while making this game?  
  SO, WHERE DO I START?
  
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  CHAPTER
  389
   Good Games Are 
  Created Through 
  Playtesting 
  389
  TWENTY-FIVE
  F I G U R E
  25.1
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE • GOOD GAMES ARE CREATED THROUGH PLAYTESTING
  390
   Playtesting 
  F I G U R E
  25.2
    It is easy, when developing a game, to fantasize about the player experience and to 
  imagine how great it will be. Playtesting is necessary to serve as a wakeup call and 
  force you to solve the ugly problems you’ve been putting off. Before we get too deep 
  into this discussion, I want to draw the distinction between four different types of 
  testing: focus groups, QA testing, usability testing, and playtesting. 
   ●  Focus Groups: This is a term that often causes professional designers to wince. 
  It refers to sessions where potential players are interviewed about their likes and 
  dislikes, often in an attempt to determine whether they like a game idea that 
  a company is considering. Focus groups can be quite useful in the right con-
  text (particularly when deciding the relative priority of well-defined features), but 
  they have a bad name because they are so often poorly run and manipulated to 
  kill ideas that management is afraid of. 
   ●  QA Testing: QA is  “Quality Assurance. ” This testing has nothing to do with how 
  enjoyable the game is, and everything to do with looking for bugs. 
   ●  Usability Testing: This is all about determining whether your interface and sys-
  tems are intuitive and easy to use. Both of these are necessary for an enjoyable 
  game, but they are not enough. Keep this in mind when someone suggests bring-
  ing in a usability expert to make your game more fun. 
   ●  Playtesting: Separate from the previous three, playtesting is all about getting peo-
  ple to come play your game to see if it engenders the experience for which it was 
  designed. And while the other three types of testing are useful and important, 
  
  391
  in this chapter we will focus only on the type of testing designers care about the 
  most, playtesting.  
   My Terrible Secret 
    I’m going to admit something now that is profoundly embarrassing. For years I have 
  tried to pretend that it isn’t the case, but there is no getting around it. I don’t like 
  talking about it, because it makes me a hypocrite, and calls my qualifications as a 
  game designer into serious question. 
    However, my goal with this book is to help lay out how game design really is, 
  not some idyllic dream version of how it should be. So, here goes. Please try not to 
  judge me too harshly.
   I hate playtesting.  
    Does playtesting find problems early, while there is still time to fix them? Yes. 
  Does playtesting build the team’s confidence that they are making the right game 
  for the right audience? Yes. Is playtesting essential to making a good game? Yes. 
  Does playtesting fill me with a terror so intense that I can’t even think straight? 
  Yes, yes, yes! 
    It’s completely humiliating. I  know that playtesting is good for my game. Not just 
  good, necessary. But when it comes to actually doing the playtesting, I find every 
  excuse possible to avoid it. First I delay getting the playtesting organized. When it 
  eventually gets organized, I make excuses why I can’t be there. When I actually am 
  there, I find reasons not to observe it directly, getting distracted with anything else 
  that might be nearby. I’m well aware of these tendencies, and I fight them tooth and 
  nail, but still, my fear of playtesting remains. 
    Why? What am I so afraid of? It’s simple. I’m afraid that people won’t like my 
  game. I should be above that, I know. But I’m not. When you make a game, you 
  try to put everything you can into it: heart, soul, dreams, blood, sweat, and tears. 
  A game you work hard on becomes a little piece of yourself. To have people engage 
  with that, and then reject it, well, it hurts. A lot. And don’t kid yourself —  it is 
  going to happen . 
    Having people hate your work is probably one of the most painful parts of being 
  a game designer. And playtesting is like an engraved invitation that reads:
    You are cordially invited  
  to tell me why I suck  
  Bring a friend —Refreshments Served  
    Does playtesting have to be so uncomfortable? It does. The whole point of play-
  testing is to make clear to you that some of the decisions you were completely com-
  fortable with are completely wrong. You need to find these things out as soon as 
  possible, while there is still time to do something about them. 
  MY TERRIBLE SECRET
  
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   Maybe playtesting comes naturally to you. Maybe you have no fear of people ridi-
  culing your work. If so, congratulations! Your objective viewpoint will be a great 
  boon to you during playtesting sessions. But if you fear and loathe these sessions, 
  like I do, there is only one thing to do: Get over it. People are either going to like your 
  game, or they aren’t. If they do, great. If they don’t, also great! You have a chance to 
  ask them why they don’t like it, so you can fix it. Let go of your fears, and embrace 
  playtesting for what it is: a wonderful opportunity to make your game better. 
   Every playtest is defined by five key questions: Why, Who, Where, What, 
  and How? 
   Playtest Question the First:  Why? 
   Do you remember how, in Chapter 7, we discussed how every prototype is designed 
  to answer a question? A playtest is a kind of prototype — not a prototype of the 
  game, but a prototype of the  game experience (which is what we care about the 
  most!). If you don’t enter into your playtest with specific goals in mind, you stand a 
  good chance of wasting your time. The more specific the questions you have when 
  you organize the playtest, the more you will get out of it. 
   There are millions of questions you might want your playtest to answer. The most 
  obvious one — “Is my game fun? ” — is not enough. Generally, you want your ques-
  tions to be as specific as possible. Examples follow — some general, some specific. 
   ●  Do men and women play my game differently? 
   ●  Do kids like my game better than adults? 
   ●  Do players understand how to play? 
   ●  Do players want to play a second time? A third time? A twentieth time? Why? 
   ●  Do players feel the game is fair? 
   ●  Are players ever bored? 
   ●  Are players ever confused? 
   ●  Are players ever frustrated? 
   ●  Are there any dominant strategies or loopholes? 
   ●  Does the game have hidden bugs? 
   ●  What strategies do players find on their own? 
   ●  Which parts of the game are the most fun? 
   ●  Which parts of the game are the least fun? 
   ●  Should the “A” button or “B” button be used for jumping? 
   ●  Is level three too long? 
   ●  Is the asparagus puzzle too hard?  
  
  393
    And many others. These are just a few ideas to get you thinking. I often find that 
  using the lenses throughout this book is a great way to come up with good playtest-
  ing questions. 
    Preparing a list of the questions you would like the playtest to answer is a great 
  first step to planning a playtest, because until you have determined the  “ why, ” as 
  in “why are we having this playtest? ” there is no way to answer the who, where, 
  what, and how. 
   Playtest Question the Second:  Who? 
    Once you know why you are having a playtest, you can decide who you should be 
  testing. And who you pick is entirely determined by what you would like to learn. 
  Most likely, you want to pick people who are in your target demographic. But even 
  then, there are choices. Here are some common ones: 
    1.   Developers. The first people who will get a chance to try your game are the 
  developers, so I’m listing them first. 
   ●  Pros: The developers are right there! They can play the game a lot, and for a 
  long time, and give lots of meaningful, thoughtful feedback. Also, you don’t 
  need to worry about them filling out non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), since 
  they already know all the confidential information about the game. 
   ●  Cons: The developers are too close to the game — closer than any real player 
  ever will be, and this will distort their opinions about the game. Some  “ design 
  experts ”  will tell you that it is dangerous to playtest with people who work on 
  the game, and that you shouldn’t do it. This extreme position means, though, 
  that you could miss out on some valuable insights. Better to playtest the 
  developers but take what they say with a grain of salt.  
    2.   Friends. The next people to try the game will most likely be friends and families 
  of the developers. 
   ●  Pros: Friends and families are highly available and comfortable talking to you. 
  If they think of a good idea after the playtest is over, you’ll probably still get 
  to hear it. 
   ●  Cons: Your friends and family don’t want to hurt your feelings — after all, 
  they have to deal with you on a regular basis. This might cause them to bend 
  the truth when they don’t like something. Also, since they like you already, 
  they are going to be predisposed to like the game — they will be  trying to like 
  it, which isn’t what will happen in the real world.  
    2.   Expert Gamers. Every genre has its  “experts ”  — hardcore players who have 
  played every variety of the type of game you are making. These guys love com-
  ing to playtest games still in progress, because it gives their  “expert ” credentials 
  a boost! 
  PLAYTEST QUESTION THE SECOND: WHO?
  
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   ●  Pros: Having played many, if not all, of the games that are similar to the one 
  you are making, these expert gamers can give you a detailed account, using 
  technical terminology and specific examples, of how your game compares to 
  games that are like it. 
   ●  Cons: Just as only a small percentage of the eating public are gourmands, 
  only a small percentage of the gaming public are, uh,  “ludophiles. ” Expert 
  gamers are often more jaded and demand more complex and difficult game-
  play challenges than the average gamer. Many a game has been spoiled by 
  overtuning it for the elite tastes of a niche audience of hardcore enthusiasts.  
   3.   Tissue Testers. Ideal testing conditions often include people who have never 
  seen your game before. The industry likes to call them  “fresh meat, ” or “tissue 
  testers ” (a reference to the fact that, like a Kleenex tissue, they can only be used 
  once). 
   ●  Pros: People who have never seen your game before see it with fresh eyes and 
  will notice the things that you have gotten used to. For testing that tries to 
  determine usability questions, communication questions, or questions of  “ini-
  tial appeal, ” these testers can be very valuable. 
   ●  Cons: Games are generally played multiple times, over many sessions. If you 
  only test your game with  “tissue testers, ” you run the risk of making a game 
  that has strong first-time appeal, but gets boring after multiple plays.  
   Again, who you test with will depend entirely on what you are trying to learn. 
  Matching the testers to the questions you are trying to answer is the only way to get 
  meaningful results. Nearly every game will test with some combination of the above 
  testers sometime during the design process — the key is having the right testers at 
  the right times to answer the most questions as thoroughly as possible. 
   Playtest Question the Third:  Where? 
   This question might seem innocuous, but a lot rests on exactly where you have your 
  playtest. Some different options: 
   1.   In your studio: (or whatever you call the place you actually make the games). 
   ●  Pros: The developers are all there. You are there. The game is there! So, testing 
  in your studio can be super convenient for you. Also, it gives everyone on the 
  team a chance to observe the game being played by real people. 
   ●  Cons: The playtesters you bring in might not feel completely comfortable. 
  They will be in strange surroundings, and unless they have some kind of pri-
  vate room, they are likely to be afraid to have fun while others are working. 
  
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  If you host a playtest in your studio, you should go out of your way to make 
  it as comfortable as possible. The last thing you want is playtesters who are 
  afraid to make noise, have fun, and speak their minds. Asking the testers to 
  bring friends helps.  
    2.   In a playtesting lab: Some (though, actually, surprisingly few) large game com-
  panies have special labs set aside for playtesting. Also, some third-party compa-
  nies will playtest your game for you in special labs designed for the purpose. 
   ●  Pros: The lab is designed for playtesting! It probably has all the things you 
  could wish for: one-way mirrors, cameras on the playtesters, playtesting 
  experts to ask the right questions and take detailed notes, and maybe even a 
  carefully selected group of the right testers! 
   ●  Cons: This kind of thing is usually very expensive. But if you can afford it, it 
  may well be worth the investment.  
    3.   At some public venue: Could be a shopping mall, an event on a college cam-
  pus, some kind of fair, or a table on a street corner. 
   ●  Pros: It usually doesn’t cost much, and you will get a chance to get many test-
  ers, if you find the right venue. 
   ●  Cons: You may have a hard time finding the  “ right ”  testers; that is, ones in 
  your demographic. Also, if there are other things going on in this venue, test-
  ers may be distracted, not giving you their full attention.  
    4.   At the playtester’s home: After people buy your game, they are going to play it 
  in their homes — why not let them play it there now? 
   ●  Pros: You have a good chance of seeing your game played in its natural habi-
  tat, under real conditions. Your testers are likely to have their friends over, 
  and you stand a chance of seeing real social interaction through your game. 
   ●  Cons: Your playtest might be kind of limited. Probably only one or two 
  designers can be there to observe, and you may only be able to test with a 
  small number of people during a given session. You may also need to lug spe-
  cial hardware with you, or at least spend time configuring machines to run 
  your prototype software.  
    5.   On the Internet: Why restrict your playtesting to the confines of metaspace? 
   ●  Pros: Lots of people will be able to test your game on machines with many 
  different configurations. If the questions you need to answer involve stress 
  testing your game or learning about massively multiplayer play, this may be 
  your best option. 
   ●  Cons: Quantity of playtesting comes at the price of quality of playtesting. Though 
  many people may be playing, you won’t get the same level of insight when you 
  aren’t in the same room with the testers. Also, if you are trying to keep your 
  game a secret, this may be hard to do when you make it available for download.  
  PLAYTEST QUESTION THE THIRD: WHERE?
  
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   Where exactly you choose to test depends completely on the questions your test 
  is trying to answer. Choose your test location with your important  “why? ” questions 
  in mind. 
   Playtest Question the Fourth:  What? 
   By “What?” I mean “What will you look for in your playtest? ” There are two types 
  of things to look for. 
    The First What: Things You Know You Are Looking For 
   These come from the questions in your  “why? ” list. Hopefully, you are going to design 
  your playtest so that you can look for answers to these questions (that’s why you 
  listed them!). As you plan your test, make sure that you have a way to get some kind 
  of answer to every question on your list. If there are parts of your game that aren’t 
  relevant to these questions, consider making a special version of the game that skips 
  these parts to save time. If the questions can’t all be answered by a single test, con-
  sider making several mini-tests that will cover the span of things you need to find out. 
    The Second What: Things You Don’t Know You Are Looking For 
   Anyone can find things they know they are looking for — but only a truly observ-
  ant designer, who has learned to listen deeply to players, can find the things they 
  don’t know they are looking for. The key is to keep your eyes open for  surprises . 
  To be surprised at a playtest, you must already have ideas about what will happen: 
  players will attack level two a certain way, they will get excited at the start of level 
  three, etc. Whenever anything out of the ordinary happens, good or bad, be ready 
  to jump on it, and find a way to understand it. Do girls like your game more than 
  boys, when you expected the opposite? Does your villain make people laugh when 
  you thought he would be scary? Are players intrigued by something you thought 
  was unimportant? Are they debating strategies you never considered? Find out why! 
  Even if you weren’t testing for these things, take advantage of this opportunity to 
  learn the truth about everything you thought you already understood. The insight 
  that comes from understanding these surprises is the sweetest fruit that grows on 
  the playtesting tree.  
      Playtest Question the Fifth:  How? 
   So — you’ve figured out why you want to have a playtest, who you will observe, 
  where you will hold it, and even what you are going to look for. Those are great 
  
  397
  preliminaries, but the rubber doesn’t meet the road until you decide  how you are 
  going to go about it. 
   Should You Even Be There? 
    There is a school of thought that believes it is dangerous to have the developers of a 
  game present when it is tested. The danger is that their emotional investment in the 
  game will cause them to encourage the players to overlook flaws and  “ infect ”  the 
  players with an insider’s viewpoint. And this danger is very real. If you cannot stay 
  objective during the playtest, and properly police your behavior so that playtest-
  ers can remain  “ pure, ”  you definitely should not be there. If that is the case, it is a 
  shame, because there is so much more you will learn by being present in person at 
  a playtest than you can get from just reading survey data or watching recorded vid-
  eos. So, though some design theorists might disagree, my advice is to find ways to 
  restrain these corrupting impulses so you can be there in person. 
    What Do You Tell Them Up Front? 
    For some tests, you won’t tell the players anything at all — you’ll let the game speak 
  for itself, particularly if you want to see if they can figure it out by themselves. But for 
  the majority of playtests, you will need to tell players something to get them started. 
  Use extreme caution when you do so — a few misplaced words right before play 
  begins can spoil the entire test. If for example, you tell players that their goal is to 
  defeat the evil Chronos, some players might start looking for him right away, and in 
  doing so, miss out on important details they would have found if you hadn’t said that. 
  For this reason, you should take careful note of what you say to testers at the begin-
  ning, in case it has unexpected consequences. It can be a good idea to write it down 
  ahead of time, so you can be sure you have prepped all the testers the same way. 
    Of course, you may find, over the course of several tests, a need to change your 
  introductory speech to clarify certain things. And here is one of the great side ben-
  efits of playtesting. When you run multiple playtest sessions in sequence, you will 
  find yourself gradually tuning the instructions you give to the players, trimming a 
  word here, adding a phrase there, until you have a speech that is very clear and very 
  efficient. Write this down! This speech can become the foundation of your in-game 
  tutorial. Many game tutorials are terrible — ones created by this method are likely to 
  have an aura of excellence about them. Having an in-game tutorial that really makes 
  players feel welcome and cared for is a great first impression for your game to make. 
    Where Do You Look? 
    Most people who attend a playtest tend to look where the player looks. If it is a vid-
  eogame, this means at the screen. This makes sense, because this way you see what 
  PLAYTEST QUESTION THE FIFTH: HOW?
  
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  398
  the player sees. But it isn’t where I look. I spend most of my time during a playtest 
  looking at the players ’ faces. Sure, I steal quick glances at the screen for context, but 
  mostly, I watch faces, because I don’t just want to see what the players are doing, but 
  how they feel when they are doing it. Their facial expressions give a wealth of data 
  about the game that will never come out in post-game interviews or survey questions. 
   I learned to do this when I was a street performer. When you do street shows, 
  the only money you get is what you collect by passing the hat at the end. So, if 
  you want to have dinner that night, it becomes crucial to ensure the crowd you’ve 
  scared up stays entertained. With practice, I soon found I could  “read ” the emotions 
  of a crowd quickly, and would tune my performance appropriately — stretching 
  out parts they enjoyed, and moving quickly through parts that bored them. I was 
  quite surprised, when I started making videogames, to find myself reading the emo-
  tions of the players as they played and determining how the game should change 
  to improve the quality of the players ’ emotional experiences. This is something that 
  we are all equipped to do — it just has to be practiced. 
   Of course, it would be best if our eyes could be everywhere at once: on the game, 
  on the players’ faces, and even on their hands, to see if they are using the controls 
  as we would expect. And with modern video technology, you can see it all! Getting 
  a few different cameras set up to feed to a single split-screen image can be a great 
  way to record the game, face, and hands at the same time, so you can go back later 
  and see how all three of these things interrelate. 
      What Other Data Should You Collect During Play? 
   Watching with your own eyes and recording video of a play session can give you 
  a lot of useful information, but there is other information you can gather as well. 
  With a little planning, you can find ways to keep logs of important game events 
  during each play session. If your game is digital, you can log all this automatically, 
  but if your game is not, you can just make careful notes when these important 
  events occur. What constitutes an  “important event ” will vary from game to game 
  of course. Some examples of data you might want to collect: 
   ●  How long did players spend in the character creator? 
   ●  How many hits did it take to defeat the villain? 
   ●  What was the average player score? 
   ●  Which weapons were used the most?  
   The more your game can collect this data automatically, the more useful the data 
  will be to you. Some designers of massively multiplayer games are constantly  “data 
  mining” the event logs to look for problems and interesting patterns of gameplay. 
  This new kind of  “digital listening ” is a subtle art that gives you new opportunities 
  to understand player behavior. 
  
  399
    Will I Disturb the Players Mid-Game? 
    This is a delicate question. When you disturb players mid-game, perhaps to ask 
  them a question about what they are doing, you run the risk of interfering with 
  their natural play patterns. On the other hand, asking the right question at the right 
  moment may give you an insight you would not have had any other way. You might 
  argue that it is best to just make a note of the question you have in mind, and ask 
  the player about it when the play session is over. But by that time, the player is in a 
  different state of mind, and may have no recollection of what you are talking about. 
  It is a difficult trade-off. Most designers seem to favor only interrupting when the 
  player is doing something truly surprising that the designer does not understand. 
    Experts in human computer interaction often recommend the  “think-aloud proto-
  col ”  to learn the decision-making process of people interacting with software prod-
  ucts. The idea is that you encourage the person using the software to verbalize all 
  their internal thoughts into a kind of stream-of-consciousness ramble. With a game, 
  this might sound something like:  “Let’s see… I’m supposed to find bananas, but 
  I don’t see any… I wonder what’s behind that log… Yow! Bad guys! Ouch! Take 
  that! Okay… Hey, is that a banana up on that hill? ” etc. With games, this can be 
  tricky. For some people, the act of speaking their thoughts changes the way they 
  behave — often their behavior becomes more thoughtful and careful, so the think-
  aloud protocol can taint play patterns. Other people become paralyzed trying to play 
  and talk at the same time, and when the gameplay gets stressful, they often stop 
  talking altogether, which is frustrating, because these stressful moments are often 
  when a designer needs the most insight into what a player is thinking. However, 
  for some players, thinking aloud comes very naturally, and can provide very useful 
  information — the trick is identifying these players. I have seen well-meaning inter-
  action experts completely ruin playtests by constantly peppering players with ques-
  tions during play in an attempt to elicit think-aloud. When and whether to use this 
  technique is something you will need to decide for yourself. 
      What Data Will I Collect After the Play Session? 
    You will gain a tremendous amount of information just by observing players inter-
  acting with your game. But you can gain even more with meaningful follow-up 
  questions with interviews and surveys. But which should you choose? 
   Surveys 
    Surveys are a great way to have players answer straightforward questions about 
  your game that are easily quantified. Some tips for getting the most out of surveys: 
    ●  Use pictures whenever possible, when asking about game elements or scenes, 
  to help ensure the player knows what you mean. 
  PLAYTEST QUESTION THE FIFTH: HOW?
  
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  400
   ●  Online surveys can save you (and your playtesters) a lot of time. Systems like 
  “Surveymonkey ” are easy to set up and very inexpensive. 
   ●  Don’t ask people to rate things on a scale from 1 to 10. You will get more con-
  sistent results if you use a five-point scale, where each of the points is clearly 
  labeled such as: 
   1.   Terrible 
   2.   Pretty bad 
   3.   So-so 
   4.   Good 
   5.   Excellent  
   ●  Don’t put too many questions on your survey, or people will start to tune out 
  near the end, and your results won’t be worth much. 
   ●  Give them the survey right after they have played, while things are fresh in 
  their mind. 
   ●  Have someone on hand to answer clarifying questions that the testers might 
  have about the survey. 
   ●  Note the age and gender of each playtester surveyed, so you can see if these 
  have a connection to player opinions. 
   ●  Don’t take survey data as gospel. It is unlikely that your survey is truly scien-
  tific, and playtesters tend to make things up when they aren’t sure.  
   Interviews 
   A post-game interview is a great way to ask players questions too complex for a 
  simple survey sheet. It’s also a way to get a sense of how they really felt about the 
  game, since you can see emotion in their faces and hear it in their voices. Here are 
  some interview tips: 
   ●  Have a script of questions ready when you interview people. Leave space so 
  you can write down their responses. Also leave space for general notes when the 
  conversation takes unexpected turns (in other words, be ready for surprises!). 
   ●  Interview people privately, when possible. People will speak more honestly in a 
  one-on-one situation than in a case where others (particularly people they know) 
  are listening in. If the tester has other friends who are testing, consider doing a 
  group interview  only after the private interview is done, to see if new information 
  comes out when the close friends are talking to each other. 
   ●  Playtesters will avoid hurting your feelings, particularly if they know (or 
  think) you helped make the game. Sometimes, staying objective is not enough. 
  
  401
  I sometimes make a big show of saying  “I need your help. This game has some 
  real problems, but we’re not sure what they are. Please, if there is anything at all 
  you don’t like about this game, it will be a great help to me if you let me know. ” 
  This gives a tester permission to speak honestly about their likes and dislikes. 
    ●  Avoid memory tests. Asking players questions like  “On level three, when you 
  got to the yellow butterflies, you flew left instead of right. Why? ” will generally 
  get you blank stares. Players are so busy playing the game, they don’t always 
  form memories about things that are not immediately relevant to the goal of the 
  game. If you need answers to questions like that, you should ask them while the 
  game is being played. 
    ●  Don’t expect playtesters to be game designers. Questions like  “Would the game 
  have been better if level three was harder? ” may not get the results you want. In 
  general, players always think they want the game to be easier, so they are likely 
  to say  “ no ”  to that question. Most playtesters are not skilled at thinking about 
  and discussing game mechanics. A better way to ask the same thing would be 
  “were any parts of level three boring?, ” which will probably get you an honest 
  answer and the information you are looking for. 
    ●  Ask for more than you need. Instead of asking “what was your least favorite 
  part? ”  why not ask  “what were your three least favorite parts? ” You’ll get more 
  data, and it will be sorted by priority… the thing that stands out most in a play-
  er’s mind will come first. 
    ●  Set your ego aside. It can be very hard to sit and listen to someone tell you how 
  bad your game is. You will be sorely tempted to step in and defend your game 
  and tell them how it is supposed to be. Resist this urge. No one cares how the 
  game was supposed to be during this interview. Right now, all that matters is 
  how this playtester feels about the game, and why. When you feel the temptation 
  rise within you, steel yourself, and ask objective questions like  “what don’t you 
  like about it? ” and  “ Can you tell me more about that? ”  
   Lens #91: The Lens of Playtesting 
    Playtesting is your chance to see your game in action. To ensure your playtests 
  are as good as they can be, ask yourself these questions: 
    ●  Why are we doing a playtest? 
    ●  Who should be there? 
    ●  Where should we hold it? 
    ●  What will we look for? 
    ●  How will we get the information we need?  
  PLAYTEST QUESTION THE FIFTH: HOW?
  
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  CHAPTER
  403
   The Team Builds a 
  Game with Technology 
  403
  TWENTY-SIX
  F I G U R E
  26.1
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX • THE TEAM BUILDS A GAME WITH TECHNOLOGY
  404
   Tom was making a drawing when Samuel came in. Samuel looked at the 
  drawing.  “What is that? ” 
  “I’m trying to work out a gate opener, so a man won’t have to get out of his rig. 
  Here’s the pull rod to open the latch. ”  
  “What’s going to open it? ” 
  “I figured a strong spring. ” 
  Samuel studied the drawing.  “Then, what’s going to close it? ”
   “This bar here. It would slip to this spring, and give tension the other way. ”  
  “I see. It might work, too, if the gate was truly hung. And it would only take 
  twice as much time to make and keep up as twenty years of getting out of the 
  rig to open the gate. ”
   Tom protested,  “Sometimes with a skittish horse… ”  
  “I know, ” said his father.  “but the main reason is that it’s fun. ”  
  Tom grinned.  “Caught me, ” he said.
  – John Steinbeck, East of Eden 
    Technology, At Last 
   It may seem strange, in a book that is ostensibly meant to instruct about the design 
  of videogames, to wait until so near the end to talk about technology. But there is a 
  reason. Technology looms large in the lives of game designers. And just as it is hard 
  to study the stars when the sun is out, it is hard to study game design when tech-
  nology is in the room. Technology is ever novel, ever surprising, and ever presents 
  new puzzles to solve. Of the four elements in the tetrad (technology, story, aes-
  thetics, and mechanics), technology is the most dynamic, most volatile, and most 
  unpredictable. It’s like having a drunken billionaire show up at your party — all 
  eyes are on him because no one knows what he might do. Well, at long last it 
  is time for us to plunge into the sun, to introduce ourselves to this drunken 
  billionaire. 
   So, what is technology, anyway? Do we just mean computers and electronics? 
  No… we mean something much broader. For a game designer,  “technology” means 
  the very medium of our game — the physical objects that make it possible. For 
  Monopoly, the technology is a board, slips of paper, tokens, and dice. For hopscotch, 
  it is a piece of chalk and a sidewalk. For Tetris, it is a computer, a screen, and a 
  simple input device. Saying that technology is just the physical things our game is 
  made of might seem obvious, but this idea has deep implications, because of how 
  technology advances at such a rapid rate. Consider how many physical things have 
  been invented since you were born. Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? A mil-
  lion? There are so many, it is hard to say for sure. But many of these new inventions 
  can be used to make new kinds of games. And this is important because the quest 
  of the game designer is forever a quest for the new. As we’ve said before, people 
  buy new games because they are new. Because of this pressure for novelty, and the 
  
  405
  sexiness of new technology, it can be easy to get swept away in the possibilities of 
  what technology can do and forget that our purpose is to create a great game. 
    Keeping your head about this, and not getting drunk along with the billionaire, 
  can be a challenge for some people. Engineers, in particular, have a natural love of 
  technology and are especially prone to its siren song. Walt Disney had very strong 
  feelings about this, and in the landmark book,  The Illusion of Life, animators Frank 
  Thomas and Ollie Johnson relate that:
   For some reason, [Walt] had a distrust of engineers as men who designed pri-
  marily for themselves without regard to the intended use of the product, and he 
  refused to have anyone on the staff with the title,  “ Engineer. ”  
    This is an extreme position, of course, but it underlines the importance of 
  keeping a level head about the place of technology in the experience on you are 
  creating. 
   Foundational vs. Decorational 
    One of the most concrete ways to keep a sane perspective about technology is to 
  understand the difference between  foundational and decorational technologies. 
  Foundational technologies are the ones that make a new kind of experience possi-
  ble. Decorational technologies just make existing experiences better. I find that this 
  illustration helps to make it clear:   
   www.webweaver.nu/clipart. Used with permission. 
  F I G U R E
  26.2
    The cake part of the cupcake is foundational technology. Without it, there couldn’t 
  be a cupcake. The cherry and the icing are decorational technology. Adding them 
  doesn’t make something fundamentally new, it just makes something old a little 
  nicer. Perhaps some examples from entertainment and games will help make this 
  even clearer. 
  FOUNDATIONAL VS. DECORATIONAL
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX • THE TEAM BUILDS A GAME WITH TECHNOLOGY
  406
   Mickey’s First Cartoon 
   A common trivia question often pops up on quiz shows:  “What was Mickey 
  Mouse’s first cartoon? ” And most of us know the answer:  Steamboat Willie. And 
  most of us, it turns out, are wrong.  Steamboat Willie was predated by  Plane Crazy , 
  another Mickey cartoon that was released six months earlier. What was so remark-
  able about Steamboat Willie that it is universally remembered as Mickey’s pre-
  miere? Technology. Specifically,  Steamboat Willie was the first cartoon to feature 
  synchronized sound. And the sound was not decorational — the entire cartoon was 
  designed around having a synchronized soundtrack. The storyline in  Steamboat 
  Willie primarily features Mickey and Minnie playing various farm animals as if they 
  were musical instruments. It was cute, clever, and catchy, and without synchronized 
  sound, would have made no sense whatever. The technology was foundational to 
  the experience the cartoon created. Later, synchronized sound was added to  Plane 
  Crazy, but it was decorational: the sounds of growling airplane engines did little to 
  change the fundamental experience of the cartoon. 
   Abalone 
  F I G U R E
  26.3
  
  407
     A low-tech example of an interesting foundational technology can be seen in 
  Abalone, a board game invented in 1987 by Laurent Levi and Michel Lalet. The 
  game board looks like the familiar game of Chinese Checkers, but it has an impor-
  tant difference: grooves between the holes make it possible to grab one marble, 
  and push it so that it pushes a whole row of other marbles along the grooves, so 
  they  “clunk ” into the next holes. Most head-to-head games like this feature game 
  mechanics based on capturing an opponent’s piece by landing on it, or by jumping 
  over it. Levi and Lalet realized that a board that allowed for pushing could feature 
  a brand new mechanic, and so they designed a game where you capture a piece by 
  shoving it off the board. The grooves were not a complicated technology, but they 
  served as the foundation for a game experience that was completely new. 
    Sonic the Hedgehog 
    The Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 games for the Sega Genesis were 
  powerful examples of foundational technology. Sega knew that one of the key differ-
  entiators between the Sega Genesis console, and the competition, Super Nintendo, 
  was that Sega’s system had an architecture that supported incredibly fast scrolling. 
  The Sonic games (especially Sonic 2 with its lightning fast spin-dash) were designed 
  expressly to exploit this ability. Players had never before played a game that fea-
  tured such incredibly fast movement, and this is part of what made the games feel 
  exciting and new. 
   Myst 
    It is hard today to comprehend how successful  Myst was in the marketplace. It was 
  the top selling PC game every month for five consecutive years. Yow. Anyway, this 
  success came because of a mix of foundational and decorational technologies. The 
  first technology was decorational: gorgeous 3D artwork. At the time (1993) com-
  puter-generated 3D artwork was something of a novelty. It had a look that was 
  otherworldly and new. But to deliver these pretty pictures in a game required a 
  more foundational technology: the CD-ROM drive. Before the CD-ROM, the detail 
  of imagery in games was mostly limited to pixel art. The CD-ROM made possible 
  games full of glorious images of photographic quality. And Cyan (the makers of 
  Myst) took this very seriously. When CD-ROM drives first came out, they could 
  be very flaky. There were many different manufacturers, many different drivers, 
  and many ways for the software to fail. Cyan made a conscious choice to spend 
  development time making sure their game ran on every possible CD-ROM/PC 
  combination — time that some on the team would rather have spent giving the 
  game a more elaborate ending. But it would seem they made the right decision — 
  for years, nearly everyone who bought a CD-ROM drive for their home bought a 
  copy of  Myst, because they heard it was beautiful, and unlike many other CD-ROM 
  games, this one was guaranteed to work. 
  FOUNDATIONAL VS. DECORATIONAL
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX • THE TEAM BUILDS A GAME WITH TECHNOLOGY
  408
    Journey 
   In the early 1980s, engineers at Bally Midway had a great idea for a new videogame 
  technology: why not put a digital camera onto an arcade machine, so that players 
  who got a high score could do more than just enter their initials, they could pose for 
  a picture! They built a prototype that would take black and white digital photos of 
  winners, and tried it out in a Chicago arcade. They were shocked to visit it the next 
  day to find that several of the winners had  “flashed” the camera, making their high 
  score list an exhibit of low-res pornography. No one could think of a way to solve 
  this problem, so management put a halt to further development on the project. But 
  the team didn’t give up so easily. They had put a lot of work into the technology 
  and wanted to see something come from it. The result was  Journey: The Arcade 
  Game, a basic platform game that featured members of the rock band Journey as 
  avatars. These avatars were very strange looking, having tiny cartoon bodies, and 
  grossly large heads that were black and white photos of the band members. The 
  technology, which started as something more foundational, ended up as something 
  purely decorational, and a pretty ugly decoration at that. The fancy technology 
  could not save a boring game, and it flopped. 
   Ragdoll Physics 
   A more modern example can be seen when considering the technology of  “ragdoll 
  physics. ” Ragdoll physics is a method of manipulating real-time animated characters 
  so that their bodies can realistically interact with other elements in the game world 
  in a way that is not pre-scripted. Put another way, if you pick up a game character 
  by the arm, and shake him around, his limbs will flop around realistically, with the 
  movements completely calculated by the computer — no animator required. This 
  has been used in countless first-person shooter games as a purely decorational tech-
  nology: an NPC gets hit with a grenade, and his body flops through the air and 
  onto the ground, using the mathematics of real-time physics to compute the motion. 
  Even though sometimes it doesn’t look right (the bodies have bad interaction with 
  some types of terrain), it is a minor novelty and the engineers love it. 
   Contrast that use with how the same algorithms are used in the game  Ico. Ico 
  was a landmark in storytelling games, partly because of the novelty of the interac-
  tion between the main character Ico and the princess he is trying to rescue. For most 
  of the game, Ico must lead the princess around by the hand, helping her through all 
  kinds of dangerous perils. Because of the way the princess follows Ico, responding 
  to every tug of his hand as he runs, climbs, and jumps, she seems alive in a way 
  that is completely new and different. Most of the puzzles in the game are based on 
  the fact that Ico has to lead the princess around, which would be impossible with-
  out these algorithms. The engineers and designers behind Ico found a way to take a 
  technology that had been used purely as a decoration, and turn it into the founda-
  tion of a game experience the world had never encountered before. 
  
  409
    As these examples show, it is a good habit, when encountering a new technol-
  ogy, to ask yourself  “ How can I make this foundational to my game? ”  
   The Hype Cycle 
    Another good way to ward off the intoxicating effects of technology is to understand 
  the pattern of that intoxication. This is best described through a model created by 
  Gartner Research, which they refer to as the Hype Cycle. 
  Peak of inflated expectations
  Visibility
  Technology trigger
  Trough of
  disillusionment
  Slope of enlightenment
  Plateau of
  productivity
  Time
   Hype Cycle  
  F I G U R E
  26.4
     The graph above represents visibility (the number of people talking about it) over 
  time. Gartner suggests that every new technology goes through five phases of hype: 
    1.   Technology Trigger. This is when the technology is first discovered or 
  announced. 
    2.   Peak of Inflated Expectations. This is when many more people are talk-
  ing about the technology than have actually experienced it. In other words, 
  “Nobody knows what it’s really like, but everyone says it’s great. ” Companies 
  launching a product (like, say, the iPhone) try to make the most of this quirk 
  of human nature to believe that a new technology will make your dreams come 
  true, though this never seems to actually happen. 
    3.   Trough of Disillusionment. When the technology can’t live up to the incredible 
  hype that surrounded it (like, say, the Segway), and people see it in the cold, 
  harsh, light of reality, it quickly becomes unfashionable, even despised. 
    4.   Slope of Enlightenment. Gradually, people and businesses start to figure out the 
  areas where the technology is actually useful and beneficial. 
  THE HYPE CYCLE
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX • THE TEAM BUILDS A GAME WITH TECHNOLOGY
  410
   5.   Plateau of Productivity. At this point, the benefits of the technology are widely 
  understood and accepted. The height of this plateau is dependent on how 
  broadly useful the technology really is.  
   The funny thing about the Hype Cycle is that it happens  every time. Somehow, peo-
  ple never seem to learn, and they repeat the same silly behaviors again and again: 
  Assuming the “new thing ” will be life-changing, hating it when it isn’t, and eventu-
  ally using it for the things it is good at. As a game designer, you need to know about 
  the Hype Cycle for three big reasons: 
   1.   Immunity. If you are aware of the Hype Cycle, you can make yourself immune 
  to its effects and not risk your career on a technology you haven’t actually seen 
  work. 
   2.   Inoculation. Chances are good that at some point you are going to find your-
  self surrounded by people who have bought into the hype on some crazy new 
  technology, and they will want you to design a game around it. If you can make 
  them understand about the Hype Cycle, you may be able to save your team from 
  making a dangerous decision. 
   3.   Fundraising. There is no pretty way to say this. At some point, you are going to 
  have an opportunity to pitch a design to someone who is fully under the spell 
  of inflated expectations, and they are going to be willing to fund your game not 
  because of its merits, but because they believe that the technological bandwagon 
  they are jumping on is going to make them very rich. You can try to persuade 
  them of the truth, but it won’t work. The trick is to get the money before the 
  trough of disillusionment,  and then to make something great, despite the tech-
  nology. If you can do this, it will be a roller coaster ride, but you will get the 
  game made.  
    It can be very interesting to look back at the launch of different games and game 
  systems, and think about their Hype Cycles. I’ll leave that as an exercise to the 
  reader, though, because we have a dilemma to discuss. 
   The Innovator’s Dilemma 
    Another pattern anyone working with new technologies needs to be aware of is the 
  innovator’s dilemma (see Figure 26.5), from the book of the same name by Clayton 
  Christensen. The basic idea is that technology companies often fail because they 
  make the mistake of  listening to their customers. This sounds counter-intuitive — as 
  we’ve discussed, listening to the people who play your games is very important. 
  But Christensen is talking about a very specific situation: where a new technology 
  has appeared that is different, and not yet good enough to replace the old one. If 
  you ask your customers what they think of the new technology, they will say  “not 
  
  411
  good enough. ” As a result, you might choose to ignore this new technology and 
  focus on making gradual improvements to your old one. But that new technology is 
  gradually improving, too. And suddenly, almost overnight, the new technology will 
  cross some threshold into the realm of  “good enough, ” and all the customers of the 
  old technology will suddenly jump ship for this new  “disruptive technology ” that is 
  faster, better, and cheaper. 
    We’ve seen this in videogames many times. Makers of retail PC games did not 
  take console gaming seriously for years — consoles just weren’t  “good enough. ” 
  And then, suddenly, they were. And in less than a year, PC games went from being 
  mainstream to being fringe. Motion controllers have been around for twenty years, 
  but they were always considered too expensive, or not reliable enough. As a result, 
  most console manufacturers didn’t take them seriously. But then, after a series of 
  gradual improvements and innovations, Nintendo released the Wiimote, with a 
  clever motion controller that was  “good enough, ” and nearly took over the console 
  market in the process. And right now, technologies like speech recognition, artifi-
  cial intelligence, brainwave sensing, and many more are ignored because they aren’t 
  “good enough ” for games. If you can manage to design games for technologies that 
  are on the verge of  “breaking through, ” you can ride a wave of success that no one 
  else saw coming — provided, of course, the technologies are foundational! 
   The Singularity 
    We’ve all noticed how technology presses into our lives ever more strongly with 
  each passing year. Without a doubt, the pace of technological progress is not just 
  increasing, it is  accelerating. As it does so, it becomes more and more difficult to 
  Time
  Performance demanded at the
  low end of the market or in a
  new emerging segment 
  Performance demanded at the
  high end of the market
  Progress due to
  disruptive technologies
  Progress due to
  sustaining technologies
  Product performance
      Innovator’s Dilemma   
  F I G U R E
  26.5
  THE SINGULARITY
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX • THE TEAM BUILDS A GAME WITH TECHNOLOGY
  412
  predict the future. A thousand years ago, you could make a pretty good guess at 
  what daily life would be like one hundred years in the future. Now it is difficult for 
  us to make guesses at life just ten years in the future. Some people theorize that 
  as technology continues to accelerate, soon we won’t be able to make predictions 
  about what life will be like a year away, a month away, or eventually, in the next 
  ten minutes. The moment where technological progress is so fast that we can make 
  no predictions whatsoever is called the singularity, and some predict it will arrive in 
  our lifetimes. 
   This may sound farfetched, but there is no doubt that the rapid pace of techno-
  logical change is good news for game designers, since new technologies mean new 
  game possibilities. Further, it is not out of the question that our techniques of devel-
  oping engaging virtual worlds, now considered merely an amusing pastime, may 
  blossom into something central to the nature of human experience if the technolo-
  gies for creating and experiencing virtual realities take sudden leaps forward. 
   Technology is the medium of your game and one of the four cornerstones of 
  game design. Use this handy lens to examine your technological choices carefully.
   Lens #92: The Lens of Technology 
   To make sure you are using the right technologies in the right way, ask your-
  self these questions: 
   ●  What technologies will help deliver the experience I want to create? 
   ●  Am I using these technologies in ways that are foundational or 
  decorational? 
   ●  If I’m not using them foundationally, should I be using them at all? 
   ●  Is this technology as cool as I think it is? 
   ●  Is there a  “disruptive technology ” I should consider instead?  
   Look Into Your Crystal Ball 
   One effect of rapid technological change is that people get so caught up trying to 
  understand the new technology that is here now, they stop thinking about what 
  is coming next. Weary with so much innovation, they have given up on trying 
  to predict the future, believing it to be too difficult. This is to your tremendous 
  advantage — for a great deal of what is to come can be guessed at, if you sit down 
  and carefully think it through. And what a benefit to you, the designer, if you can 
  guess right! You’ll be able to prepare for trends and developments that no one else 
  saw coming, except you, because you used logic and reason to see what was coming 
  
  413
  before it arrived. You won’t always get it right, of course, but each time you get it 
  wrong, you’ll realize why, and it will make you a better predictor next time. The 
  very act of trying to predict the future can change the way you see the world. Give 
  it a try with some of these examples: 
    ●  What year will the next generation of game consoles come out? How will it differ 
  from the current generation? Be as concrete as possible. 
    ●  How about the generation of consoles after that? 
    ●  Two years from now, what percentage of games will be downloaded, as opposed 
  to being loaded from a disk or cartridge? Why? How about five years from now? 
    ●  Will mobile phones ever become the dominant handheld gaming platform? 
    ●  What will the next trend in massively multiplayer games be? Why? 
    ●  What will small game studios be working on four years from now? 
    ●  What will large game studios be working on four years from now? 
    ●  How will sports games be different four years from now? 
    ●  How will first-person shooters be different four years from now? 
    ●  How will  � genre of your choice � be different four years from now? 
    ●  What new genres might appear in the next four years? Why?  
    Answering questions like this can be tough. It helps if you discuss them with others. 
  As you do so, you’ll find yourself plotting out things that are likely to happen and 
  using those certainties as a scaffolding for your less confident predictions. It is not 
  the predictions themselves that will be valuable to you, but rather the scaffolding 
  that you create to make them. Further, attempts to predict the future often force you 
  to examine historical trends, which give you insights that you can really use, and 
  that are often correct. With practice, trying to predict the future of technology won’t 
  seem like such hard work and will start to become habitual. And who doesn’t want 
  to see into the future?
   Lens #93: The Lens of the Crystal Ball 
    If you would like to know the future of a particular game technology, ask 
  yourself these questions, and make your answers as concrete as possible: 
    ●  What will ____ be like two years from now? Why? 
    ●  What will ____ be like four years from now? Why? 
    ●  What will ____ be like ten years from now? Why?  
  LOOK INTO YOUR CRYSTAL BALL
  
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  CHAPTER
  415
    Your Game Will 
  Probably Have a  Client 
  415
  TWENTY-SEVEN
  F I G U R E
  27.1
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN • YOUR GAME WILL PROBABLY HAVE A CLIENT
  416
   Form follows function. 
  – Louis Sullivan, architect  
  Form follows fun. 
  – Susannah Rosenthal, toy designer 
  Form follows funding.
  – Bran Ferren, realist  
    Who Cares What the Client Thinks? 
   In a perfect world, you, as a game designer, would only have to worry about pleas-
  ing two groups of people: (1) your team and (2) your players. 
   But this is not a perfect world, and in most cases, there is someone else you have 
  to think about: your client. 
   Sometimes this client is a game publisher, sometimes it is a media company 
  that holds the rights to a popular franchise, and sometimes it is just someone with 
  no entertainment experience who has decided they need a game for some reason. 
  Clients come in all shapes and sizes. 
   Why do you care what the client thinks? Well, unless you are making your game as 
  a hobby, or you are independently wealthy, the client is probably paying you to make 
  the game. And if they don’t like the way things are going, it’s literally game over. 
   Now, you might expect that the client views you as an expert — after all, the 
  client can’t make the game themselves — that’s why they came to you. And, natu-
  rally, you might then assume that the client respects your opinions about what is 
  going to make the best game. 
   And sometimes that happens. 
   Or so I have heard. 
   But most of the time, your client is going to have  very strong opinions about how 
  the game should look, act, and play. And rightly so — they are paying for it, after 
  all. Your ability to deal with these opinions is critical, and here is why. There are 
  two kinds of game designers in the world: happy ones and cranky ones. The happy 
  ones are either independently wealthy, or are good at dealing with the strong opin-
  ions of their clients. The cranky ones are  not good at dealing with these strong opin-
  ions. This might sound glib, but I’m quite serious — your ability to build bridges 
  of compromise that delight both you and your client is possibly the single greatest 
  indicator of whether you will be happy as a game designer in the long term. 
   But why? What’s so bad about the strong opinions of a client? What if the client 
  has smart opinions? This can happen — sometimes clients have opinions that are 
  very thoughtful and wise — and it’s a wonderful thing. But there are other times 
  
  417
  when the client will have opinions that are so idiotic, so foolish, and so hypocriti-
  cal that it beggars belief. Some of the stupidest things you will ever hear in your life 
  will come out of your client’s mouth, and somehow, you will have to deal with that. 
  And a lot is riding on how you do: your relationship with the client, your reputation 
  as a designer, your happiness, and your game. 
   Coping with Bad Suggestions 
    Many designers, when they get a bad suggestion from a client, freeze like a deer in 
  headlights, terrified of what to say. There are three ways to deal with this: 
    1.   Agree to the bad suggestion, for fear of displeasing the client. This is a disservice 
  to your client and your game. 
    2.   Immediately tell the client why their suggestion is bad, so the client will be 
  impressed with how wise you are. This usually backfires. 
    3.   Try to understand why the client is making this suggestion.  
    Response number three is the right answer. When someone makes a bad sug-
  gestion, it doesn’t mean they are dumb — it just means they are trying to help. 
  And most of the time, when one of these bad suggestions comes up, it is a solution 
  to an unstated problem. This is a perfect time to pull out our old friend, Lens #12: 
  The Lens of the Problem Statement! Because if you can figure out what problem the 
  client is trying to solve with their suggestion, perhaps you can come up with a solu-
  tion that does a better job of solving the problem, and the client will be thrilled. 
    As an example, there was once a racing game that was about halfway through 
  development when the client came in for a review. After toying with the prototype 
  for a few minutes, he looked at the team and said,  “These cars need more chrome. ” 
  The lead artist looked at the designer in a panic — the models were mostly com-
  plete, and had been approved by the client months ago. The lead engineer was simi-
  larly panicked — performance was tough as it was, and adding shiny chrome meant 
  more drain on an already overworked CPU. 
    The designer could have said  “Yes, ” and he could have said  “ No, ”  but instead he 
  said the only wise thing: “Why? Why do they need more chrome? ” And the client’s 
  response was surprising:  “Well, as I was playing, I kind of felt like the cars weren’t 
  as fast as they should be. I know changing the car speeds would probably be a lot 
  of work for you guys, so I was just thinking that if you just put more chrome on 
  the cars it would make them  look faster. ” Now, this might sound like some pretty 
  strange logic, but set that aside, and take note that  the client was only trying to help! 
  In fact, the team had the same feeling that the cars felt too slow and were going 
  to bring that up. Their solution was a combination of making the cars move faster 
  (easy) and lowering the camera viewpoint to make the perceived motion faster. 
  COPING WITH BAD SUGGESTIONS
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN • YOUR GAME WILL PROBABLY HAVE A CLIENT
  418
  They were able to make the changes with the client standing right there. He was 
  thrilled to see the improvement, and also pleased to understand a little more about 
  how a racing game is put together. 
   This was a straightforward case of the The Lens of the Problem Statement saving 
  the day. People’s brains work fast, and they tend to jump to solutions before they 
  even are sure what problem they are solving. Most bad suggestions can be resolved 
  by the magic words  “What problem are you trying to solve? ” 
    Not That Rock 
   A completely different way that clients drive designers crazy is by the opposite of 
  strong opinions: not knowing what they want. This is sometimes known as the 
  game of “Bring Me a Rock. ” It works like this:
   Client: Bring me a rock. 
  Designer: Okay, how about this one? 
  Client: No, not that rock. 
  Designer: Oh. Uh, how’s this? 
  Client: No, not that one, either. 
  (Repeat two hundred times.) 
   After ten or twenty rounds of this game, designers often become frustrated, 
  shouting to anyone who will listen,  “I can’t believe this client! They have no idea 
  what they want! ” And that may well be true. But, really, if they knew exactly what 
  they wanted, wouldn’t the game already be designed? A big part of the designer’s 
  job is to help the client figure out what they want. This is just like listening to your 
  audience — you must get to know the client better than he knows himself. Here’s 
  the right way to play  “Bring Me a Rock ”:
   Client: Bring me a rock. 
  Designer: What kind of rock? 
  Client: I’m not sure … I don’t know much about rocks. 
  Designer: Well, what are you going to do with it? 
  Client: Oh… I was going to put it by my driveway and paint a house number 
  on it. 
  Designer: Ah… I think I know a good one … Let me bring you a few to choose 
  from.  
   When you can manage to help a client figure out what they actually want, you 
  are engaging in the design process, and at the same time, you are empowering your 
  client by giving him an education he needs. If you play the game right, the client 
  will come away feeling smart, and you will have designed a game that meets his 
  needs perfectly. 
  
  419
   The Three Layers of Desire 
    To really give your client what they want, you have to understand what is important 
  to him — you have to care about what they care about, and think how they think. 
  Doing your homework to learn about the client, both personally and professionally, 
  is time well spent. Does he care more about striking it rich quickly, or slowly build-
  ing a reputation for good games? Is he looking to get into a new market, or to capital-
  ize on an existing one? What does he think makes a good game? You can learn a lot 
  about a client just by talking to him and asking what he wants — but keep in mind 
  that people don’t always tell the truth. When trying to figure out what a client wants, 
  keep in mind that everyone has three layers of desire: words, mind, and heart. 
    For example, a client might come to you and say, with her words:  “I want you to 
  make a game for the Rittenhouse Foundation. The game needs to teach algebra to 
  eighth graders. ”  
    But in her mind, she might be keeping a secret:  “Actually, I want to make a 
  space-themed game that teaches geometry. I’ve got it all planned out how it should 
  work. I’m only going along with this algebra thing because the Rittenhouse people 
  think it’s important. ”  
    But in her heart, she might be thinking something else entirely:  “I’m tired of 
  being the financial person. I want people to see I have a creative side. ”  
    Now, if you simply took her at her word, you might find, as the project pro-
  ceeds, that she is fighting you on it, and that she is taking it in directions that seem 
  opposed to what the funders want, and overall, her behavior is quite strange. But if 
  you are able to learn what is in her mind, and even better, her heart, you can pos-
  sibly incorporate elements from this game she has been imagining and maybe find 
  other ways to let her contribute creative ideas, or at least take credit for them. If you 
  are very clever, you can probably find a way to fulfill all three layers of desire —this 
  is not a trivial thing, for when you have fulfilled someone’s heart’s desire, you may 
  find you have a friend for life. 
   Firenza, 1498 
    I’d like to close this chapter with one of my favorite stories about dealing with cli-
  ents. It happened in Florence, Italy, during the Renaissance. The city, years earlier, 
  had purchased a very large, fine piece of marble for a sculpture, but an inexpert 
  sculptor had set to work on it and gouged a great hole in the marble. The city 
  lost confidence and fired him, and the great piece of marble deteriorated in the 
  cathedral yard, exposed to the elements for many years. But in 1498, the mayor, 
  Piero Soderini, went on a crusade to have something carved from the marble. He 
  approached Leonardo da Vinci, but Leonardo had no interest in working with a 
  damaged piece of marble. Besides, he remembered how the previous sculptor had 
  been treated and wasn’t interested in getting the same shabby treatment. But one 
  FIRENZA, 1498
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN • YOUR GAME WILL PROBABLY HAVE A CLIENT
  420
  sculptor did come forward — a young man of twenty-six named Michelangelo. The 
  mayor was skeptical that someone so young would be qualified, but Michelangelo 
  brought a prototype with him: a model made of wax that showed how he would 
  carefully arrange the legs of the figure to deal with both the fact that the marble 
  was thin and badly gouged. Soderini and the commissioners were impressed and 
  awarded Michelangelo the commission to create a statue of David. 
   One day, as the statue was nearing completion, the mayor decided to drop by to 
  see how the work was going. The statue of David is very large, fourteen feet tall. 
  This means that to work on it, Michelangelo had to surround it with scaffolding. 
  As Michelangelo was working away high on the scaffold, Soderini came inside the 
  scaffolding for a clear view. Fancying himself an expert, he told Michelangelo that 
  the statue was good, but clearly, the nose was too large. 
   It was obvious to Michelangelo that Soderini was standing far too close to the 
  statue for a proper viewing angle, because, after all, everyone’s nose looks too big 
  when you look straight up at it. But it was also obvious that Soderini’s words were 
  not telling the whole story — he had deeper layers of desire. Instead of trying to 
  give Soderini a lesson in perspective, Michelangelo invited him to climb up the scaf-
  fold where the two of them could fix the nose together. As Soderini was climb-
  ing, Michelangelo scooped up a little bit of marble dust in his pinky finger. When 
  Soderini was at a proper viewing angle, Michelangelo put his chisel near the nose, 
  gave it a few pretend taps with his hammer, and dropped the dust from his pinky 
  to make it look like actual sculpting was in progress. After a couple minutes of this, 
  Michelangelo stepped away, and said,  “Look at it now. ” “I like it better, ” replied 
  Soderini, “you’ve made it come alive! ”
   This may seem like a cruel trick on Soderini. But was it? Clearly he came that day 
  because he wanted some ownership of the statue — he wanted to be a creative part-
  ner. And he came away feeling he was. After this, if someone were then to criticize 
  the statue, you can be sure that Soderini would be the first to come to its defense. I 
  tell this story not to suggest that you lie to your clients, but rather to underline the 
  importance of finding ways for them to feel like creative partners on your game. It is 
  possible to do this without compromising your creative vision. Always keep in mind 
  that the client has more to offer than just funding. It may be connections, business 
  expertise, or a special understanding of the audience for your game. You will find that 
  if you listen to your clients — truly, deeply, listen to them — they will listen to you.
   Lens #94: The Lens of the Client 
   If you are making a game for someone else, you should probably know what 
  they want. Ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  What does the client say he wants? 
  
  421
    When you are proposing a new idea is when you need the client to listen to you 
  most, and that is the subject of our next chapter.  
    ●  What does the client think she wants? 
    ●  What does the client really want, deep down in his heart?  
  FIRENZA, 1498
  
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  CHAPTER
  423
   The Designer Gives 
  the Client a Pitch 
  423
  TWENTY-EIGHT
  F I G U R E
  28.1
  
  424
    Why Me? 
   If you are going to get someone to fund your game, publish your game, or distribute 
  your game, you are going to have to convince them that your game is worth the 
  risk, and this means pitching your game. You might be thinking,  “Why me? Isn’t 
  it enough that I’m designing it? Couldn’t someone else do this? ” But, really, who is 
  more qualified than you? The artists? The engineers? Management? As the game’s 
  designer, you should know the game and why it is great better than anyone else. 
  And if you don’t believe in your game enough to get up in front of people and sing 
  its praises, then why should anyone else believe in it? 
   So, who will you pitch to, and when? In the beginning you’ll be pitching rough 
  ideas to team members and potential partners. When the team has agreed on a con-
  cept, you’ll be pitching to management to get approval to build a prototype. When 
  the prototype is built, you’ll likely be pitching your game to publishers, trying to 
  get a development deal. And during development, when you realize that the game 
  has to change in some important way, you’ll be pitching those changes to almost 
  everyone. After the game is done, you might even find yourself pitching it to 
  reporters at game conferences. The highest pressure pitches are the ones where 
  you are trying to get funding for the game, so this chapter will focus a little more 
  on those. 
   A Negotiation of Power 
   Before we get into the specifics of putting together a good pitch, we should take a 
  moment to understand exactly what a pitch is. And to understand that, it is neces-
  sary to understand what power is. Power does not have to be about wealth or con-
  trolling people, although it can be about those things. Power is simply  the ability to 
  get what you want. If you can get what you want, you are powerful. If you can’t get 
  what you want, you are powerless. 
   But notice that our definition of power has two parts:  “the ability to get, ” and 
  “what you want. ” Most people focus entirely on the first part, the ability to get. But 
  the second part, what you want, is equally important. For if you don’t know what 
  you want, you will find yourself continually grasping and never satisfied. But if you 
  know what you want, you can focus your efforts much more effectively toward get-
  ting it, and in doing so, you will become powerful. 
   And when you pitch your game, you are entering into a negotiation of power, 
  where you are going to try to get what you want, while you convince someone else 
  that your game is going to help them get what they want. For this reason, the foun-
  dation of any successful pitch is knowing what you want and knowing what they 
  want, which can be kind of complicated, keeping in mind that you each have three 
  layers of desire. 
  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT • THE DESIGNER GIVES THE CLIENT A PITCH
  
  425
   The Hierarchy of Ideas 
    Novice designers will frequently be heard to complain,  “I can’t believe it! I pitched 
  this really cool idea, and no one was interested! What is wrong with people? ” The 
  answer is that nothing is wrong with people — it is just that cool ideas have a pretty 
  low value on the hierarchy of ideas shown here:
    
  Type of Idea
  Description
  Value
   Idea 
   Just a plain old idea 
   $0.083 
   Cool idea 
   An idea that captures the 
  imagination
   $5 
   Really cool idea 
   A cool idea, shouted 
   $5 
   Good idea 
   An idea that someone could 
  actually use 
   $100 
   Good idea in the right 
  place at the right time, sold 
  convincingly 
   Just what it sounds like 
   $1,000,000 �
    I know that’s silly, but the point is that when you pitch an idea, it won’t be 
  judged on its overall merit — it will be judged by how useful it is, right now, to the 
  person you are pitching it to. Those are the ideas that land deals worth millions. 
  When you pitch a good idea, and it gets rejected, don’t grind your teeth —take it to 
  someone who can use it, or put it in your back pocket so you have it ready when its 
  time finally comes. 
    Twelve Tips for a Successful Pitch 
    So — you’ve learned about who you are pitching to and have figured out a good 
  idea that they can use now, and you even know what you want them to do for you. 
  Now what? 
      Pitch Tip #1: Get in the Door 
    You can’t pitch your idea if you can’t get in the door. Some doors are easy to get 
  into, some aren’t. Game publishers can be very hard to get an audience with. They 
  are like the prettiest girl at school, and they know it. They will often ignore e-mails 
  and messages, and cancel meetings with almost no warning. They have their pick 
  of developers to work with, so unless you can convince them you have something 
  pretty special, it can be hard to even get in the door, especially if you are using the 
  front door; that is,  “Uh, hello, is this Big Time Games? I have a game design I want 
  to pitch… who should I talk to? ”  
  TWELVE TIPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL PITCH
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT • THE DESIGNER GIVES THE CLIENT A PITCH
  426
   A much better approach is to use the back door, if you can; that is, know some-
  one on the inside who can vouch for you. A publisher who would ignore your 
  e-mail won’t ignore the e-mail of someone he works with on a regular basis. I think 
  it is safe to say that the majority of game deals happen this way — a developer and 
  publisher were introduced to each other by a mutual friend. This is why indus-
  try events like the Game Developers Conference, and local International Game 
  Developer Association (IGDA) meetings are so important — they help you build up 
  networks of contacts so that when your pitch is ready, you can get in the door. 
   Pitch Tip #2: Show You Are Serious 
   When I worked at Walt Disney Imagineering there was a remarkable event, held 
  twice a year, called the Open Forum. It was an opportunity to pitch your brilliant 
  idea to the top creative minds in charge of the Disney theme parks. Anyone at all 
  in the entire organization was welcome to come and give their five-minute pitch to 
  this panel of decision makers. They would then deliberate privately for five-minutes, 
  and then give you five minutes of feedback. If they liked the idea, it would get taken 
  to the next level and possibly get deployed in the parks! I loved the idea of getting a 
  chance to pitch new ideas, and would take advantage every time I could. Generally, 
  I would be well-prepared, but for one of the sessions, I just didn’t have the time. 
  Instead of giving one fully fleshed out idea, I thought maybe I would come in with 
  two less-fleshed out ones. One was a fountain made of soap bubbles, and the other 
  was a mini-campfire for a restaurant so that guests could roast marshmallows right 
  at their tables. When I presented these ideas, the panel had many questions. Would 
  the fountain actually work? Would the mini-campfire be safe? Had I built prototypes 
  to answer these questions? I had to admit that I hadn’t. One panel member became 
  indignant: “If you don’t care enough about these ideas to try them out, why should 
  we? ” It was humiliating, but he was absolutely right. 
   When you pitch a game, you have to show that you are serious about building it. It 
  used to be that a developer could get a deal with a publisher just with a few sketches 
  and a description of what the game would be like. That kind of deal is increasingly 
  rare now — a working prototype is required in this day and age. But even a proto-
  type is not enough — you need to show that you have given serious thought to your 
  game, its market, and how it works. This can be with a detailed design document 
  (no one will read it, but they will weigh it), or even better, with a clear presenta-
  tion that details why the game will sell. Believing that your game could be fun isn’t 
  enough — you must show you’ve done the work that proves your game will be fun. 
   Pitch Tip #3: Be Organized 
   It’s real easy to fall into the  “creative people aren’t organized ” trap. Organization is 
  just another way to show someone that you are serious. Also, the more organized 
  you are, having just what you need at your fingertips, the more calm you’ll be, and 
  
  427
  the more in control you will be. A publisher is going to see an organized designer as 
  a  “ lower risk ” designer, which will make them more likely to trust you. 
    So — make sure your pitch is well-planned. If you bring handouts (you should), 
  make sure they are easily accessible and that you have enough for everybody. If 
  your presentation involves a computer, a projector, or (gulp) an Internet connec-
  tion, make sure that they are really going to work — get there early to test, just in 
  case. I once scheduled a very important pitch with someone where we set a date, 
  but forgot to set a time! The day before I was scrambling to get in touch with them, 
  to figure out if our meeting was still on, and when exactly it would be! The whole 
  thing was stressful, embarrassing, and unnecessary.
   Organization is not a burden. Organization will set you free.  
   Pitch Tip #4: Be Passionate!!!!! 
    Unbelievably to me, I see pitches all the time where the person presenting seems 
  kind of ambivalent about the game they are talking about. You want to get the people 
  you are talking to excited about your game — to do that,  you must be excited about 
  your game! DO NOT try to fake this — it will come off completely phony. If you are 
  actually, genuinely excited about your game when you talk about it, it will come 
  through in the presentation, and it might even be infectious! And passion represents 
  more than excitement — it also represents drive and commitment to deliver a quality 
  game at any cost. A publisher needs to see this kind of commitment if they are going 
  to entrust you with the millions of dollars it will cost to produce your genius game. 
   Pitch Tip #5: Assume Their Point of View 
    In previous chapters, we’ve talked about the importance of listening to your audi-
  ence, your game, and your team — the pitch is just one more occasion for listen-
  ing. So often we assume that selling is all about us — if only we push hard enough, 
  they’ll buy it. But no one likes to be confronted with a hard, pushy salesperson. What 
  we like is when someone listens to us and tries to solve our problems. Your pitch 
  should be all about that. Speak with the person you are going to pitch to in advance. 
  Learn what you can about them, and make sure that the game you are planning to 
  pitch is going to be a good fit for them — if it isn’t, don’t waste their time. 
    Even though you know the game you are pitching backwards and forwards, you 
  must remember the person you are pitching to has never seen it before, so make 
  sure you explain it in a way that they will easily understand — avoid jargon wher-
  ever possible. Practice your pitch on friends and colleagues who aren’t familiar with 
  the game idea to see if it makes sense to them. 
    Also remember that the person you are pitching to has probably seen hun-
  dreds of pitches and is very busy. Make sure that you don’t waste any time and 
  get straight to the point. If they seem bored with a point you are making, pass over 
  TWELVE TIPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL PITCH
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT • THE DESIGNER GIVES THE CLIENT A PITCH
  428
  it and move on. If there is something they want more details about, they will ask 
  questions. 
   One more way to assume the client’s point of view: consider the best-case sce-
  nario. That is, they LOVE your pitch. Now what happens? In most cases, a deal 
  can’t happen yet. The person you pitched to probably has to pitch it to colleagues 
  or superiors at their company. How easy have you made it for them? Things that 
  make it much easier for a  “fan” of your project to pitch it to others: 
   ●  Give your idea  “handles” — that is, provide short phrases that summarize the 
  idea: “It’s a bowling RPG! ” “It’s Pokemon for grownups! ” “It’s Nintendogs, with 
  a whole zoo! ” 
   ●  Give them a professional looking report (both printed and digital) that summa-
  rizes what is great about the idea, and, more important, what is great about your 
  company. The IGDA has an excellent white paper, the Game Submission Guide, 
  that details exactly what should go into this document ( http://www.igda.org/
  biz/submission_guide.php ). 
   ●  If you have a PowerPoint presentation, or design document, you should give 
  them a CD with a copy. 
   ●  If you can, make short videos that highlight the gameplay. These are safer than just 
  giving a prototype, which might be buggy, or which they might forget how to play.  
   Pitch Tip #6: Design the Pitch 
   The pitch is an experience, right? Why wouldn’t you design it at least as well as 
  your game! Lots of lenses from this book will help you do it. Your pitch should 
  be accessible, have surprises, have a good interest curve (a hook, a build, tense 
  and release, a climax), etc. It should have a good aesthetic design, favoring images 
  over words whenever possible. Your pitch should be elegant; focusing primarily on 
  what is unique about your game, why it will succeed against the competition, and 
  why it is a good fit for the person you are pitching it to. You should have thought 
  through every moment that will happen during the entire pitch encounter. Do you 
  have other team members there? When will you introduce them? When will you 
  show your prototype? If you think that  “over-planning ” will spoil the energy of your 
  pitch, you are wrong. You can always deviate from a plan if you want to, but having 
  a plan will keep your mind free to focus on giving a great pitch, and you won’t have 
  to worry about whether you have forgotten something important. 
      Pitch Tip #7: Know All the Details 
   During a pitch, you are going to get questions. Experienced, busy publishers aren’t 
  going to wait until the end, either — they will break into your carefully planned 
  
  429
  presentation and ask detailed questions about the things they think are important. 
  You need to have as many facts as possible at your fingertips. These include: 
    ●  Design details. You should know your design inside and out. For parts of the 
  design you’ve been putting off, you should at least have a guess. You should 
  have confident answers for questions like  “How many hours of gameplay? ” “ How 
  long does it take to finish a level? ” “How does multiplayer work? ” and hundreds 
  more. 
    ●  Schedule details. You need to know how long it will take to create the game 
  and roughly how long it will take your team to get to each of the important mile-
  stones (design document completed, first playable prototype, first alpha, second 
  alpha, beta, gold master). Make sure these times are realistic, or the publisher 
  will lose confidence in you fast. Be ready for the question:  “What’s the fastest 
  you could get this done? ” Expect to be held to your answer. 
    ●  Financial details. You should know what it will cost to get the game done. This 
  means knowing how many people will be working on the game, how long they’ll 
  be working on it, and other costs. Also expect the question:  “How many units 
  do you think this will sell? ” You should probably base that answer on how com-
  parable titles have sold. Don’t just give one number — give what you think are 
  realistic minimums and maximums. Make ABSOLUTELY sure that the minimum 
  number you give still makes the game a profitable venture for the publisher. 
    ●  Risks. You will be asked what the biggest risks on the project are. You need to 
  be ready to state them clearly and succinctly, along with your plan for manag-
  ing each one of them whether they are technical, gameplay, aesthetic, marketing, 
  financial, or legal.  
    You also need to anticipate the questions that the people you are pitching to are 
  going to ask. There is a legend about Imagineer Joe Rohde who was giving the 
  final pitch of the Animal Kingdom theme park to Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Eisner 
  had long wavered about whether this park was a good idea, and Joe was given 
  his last chance to explain why it was. After Joe’s detailed presentation, Eisner said, 
  “I’m sorry… I still don’t see what is so exciting about live animals. ” Joe walked out 
  of the meeting and returned, moments later, leading a Bengal tiger into the room. 
  “ This, ”  he declared,  “is what is so exciting about live animals. ” The theme park got 
  its funding. When you can anticipate what questions are coming, and give perfect 
  answers, you can be magically persuasive. 
   Pitch Tip #8: Exude Confidence 
    While passion is important, confidence is just as important, and not at all the same 
  thing. Being confident means you are sure your game will be perfect for the client, 
  and that your team is the perfect team to pull it off. It means not getting shaken 
  TWELVE TIPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL PITCH
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT • THE DESIGNER GIVES THE CLIENT A PITCH
  430
  when you get a tough question. It means knowing all the details. Keep in mind, you 
  aren’t just selling the idea, you are selling yourself. If you seem nervous, it’s going 
  to make people think you don’t believe what you are saying. When you show some-
  thing impressive, you should act like it was nothing, like it was easy. If your other 
  team members are with you, you should answer questions as a team with each con-
  fident about which questions the others can answer best. 
   And here is a magic word you can use when a tough question tries to shake your 
  confidence: “Absolutely. ” For questions like:  “Do you think this will sell in Europe? ”
  “Can the servers handle the load? ” “Can you make a kid’s version? ” You might be 
  thinking “yes ” or “probably, ” but I guarantee that  “absolutely” will sound far more 
  confident. Of course you need to back up that confident answer! 
   And a quick word about handshakes: if you aren’t sure you have a confident 
  handshake, you need to practice until you do. Handshakes are a secret system by 
  which people, mainly men, assess personalities. Your words may sound confident, 
  but if your handshake is not, it will cast doubt on everything you say. 
   But what if you don’t feel confident? What if you get really nervous talking in 
  front of a group? The best thing to do is visualize a time when you were supremely 
  confident. Putting yourself into that past moment will help you remember what 
  confidence feels like, and that you can be a confident person calmly in charge of an 
  important situation. 
   Pitch Tip #9: Be Flexible 
   During your pitch, you are going to get curveballs. The person you are pitching 
  to might suddenly reveal they hate your concept — what else do you have? You 
  might have planned on a one-hour meeting only to be told  “I only have twenty 
  minutes. ” You need to handle these kinds of things with coolness and confidence. 
  Game designer Richard Garfield tells a story about how he went to a publisher to 
  pitch RoboRally, an elaborate board game about robots in a factory. Garfield loved 
  his game and gave a detailed pitch to a game publisher who sat patiently through 
  it, and then said, “I’m sorry, but we can’t use this. It’s too big. We’re looking for 
  games that are small and portable. Got anything like that? ” Garfield could have 
  walked out, insulted, but instead he stayed objective, and considered that his goal 
  was to get a game published — not necessarily this game. He mentioned that he 
  was working on an idea for a new kind of card game — could he come back and 
  present that? The game he pitched the second time eventually became the megahit 
  Magic: The Gathering. 
   Pitch Tip #10: Rehearse 
   Planning your pitch is good, rehearsing it is better. The more you get comfortable talk-
  ing about your game, the more natural your pitch will be. Look for any opportunity to 
  
  431
  practice — when your mother asks,  “So, what have you been working on? ” give her 
  the pitch. Give it to your co-workers, to your hairdresser, to your dog. It isn’t that the 
  specific words of your pitch need to be memorized, but the chain of ideas needs to be 
  able to spring forth naturally from you, like a favorite song. 
    If you are going to show a demo, rehearse that, too. Avoid, at all costs, pitch-
  ing while you play! It makes you sound mentally deficient and wastes valuable 
  time. Have a colleague play the game while you talk about it and answer ques-
  tions. Unless they are excited about it, don’t expect executives to play your proto-
  type. There is too much danger of them embarrassing themselves or crashing your 
  prototype and embarrassing you. 
      Pitch Tip #11: Get Them to Own It 
    In Chapter 28 we heard Michelangelo’s clever method of getting a client to own the 
  project. But you don’t have to be so sneaky. Ideally, you want them to come away 
  from your pitch thinking of the game as  “their game. ” Having an inside advocate 
  in the group you are pitching to really helps — someone who is pre-sold on the 
  concept and who will defend it to the others. Another way to improve the chances 
  of them taking ownership is to integrate the ideas of the client into the pitch. If, in 
  a previous conversation with them, they said  “So, it’s a war game, huh? Does it 
  have helicopters? I love helicopters! ” you should be darn sure there are helicopters 
  in your pitch somewhere. You can even integrate the client’s ideas on the fly, using 
  concepts from their early questions ( “Could it have giant rats? ”) to explain things 
  later in the pitch ( “So, say you come upon a room full of giant rats… ”). The easier 
  you make it for them to imagine that it is their game, the closer they get to accept-
  ing your proposal. 
   Pitch Tip #12: Follow Up 
    After your pitch, they will thank you, and promise to get back to you. And they 
  might — but they might just as easily not. This doesn’t mean that they didn’t like 
  your pitch. They might have liked it very much, but gotten swept up in some other, 
  more pressing emergency. Within a few days of the pitch you should find an excuse 
  to follow up with them by e-mail or phone ( “you had asked about details of the 
  texture manager, and I just wanted to get back to you on that ”) to subtly remind 
  them that you are still around, and that they owe you feedback. You have no good 
  reason to nag them outright for an answer — if you do, you are likely to get an 
  answer quickly:  “no thanks. ” They may need time to think about it, time to discuss 
  internally, or time to review other competing proposals. Just keep following up peri-
  odically, not too often, until you get an answer. Never get frustrated if they don’t 
  respond — be patient, and understanding. It may be that the time for your idea to 
  be useful just isn’t here yet. It is not uncommon to ping a publisher six months after 
  TWELVE TIPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL PITCH
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT • THE DESIGNER GIVES THE CLIENT A PITCH
  432
  a pitch, and to hear back, “Hey, I’m glad you contacted me. Remember that pitch 
  you gave? I think we might want to talk to you about it. Can we meet next week? ”
   A game begins with an idea, but it gets funded with a pitch. Keep this lens so 
  you don’t forget to design your pitch as well as you design your game.   
   Lens #95: The Lens of the Pitch 
   To ensure your pitch is as good as it can be, ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  Why are you pitching this game to this client? 
   ●  What will you consider  “a successful pitch ”?
   ●  What’s in it for the people you are pitching to? 
   ●  What do the people you are pitching to need to know about your game?  
   If you are pitching to a publisher, the most important thing to them will be whether 
  the game can make money, and how much. This is the subject of our next chapter.  
  
  CHAPTER
  433
   The Designer and 
  Client Want the Game 
  to Make a Profit 
  433
  TWENTY-NINE
  F I G U R E
  29.1
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE • THE DESIGNER AND CLIENT WANT THE GAME TO MAKE A PROFIT
  434
   Love and Money 
   It is time to face a painful truth. 
   I know that you, personally, are designing games out of love for the medium. If 
  there were no way to make money at game design, you would surely continue to do 
  it as a hobby. The very word  “amateur” literally means lover. 
   But money is the fuel that drives the game industry. 
   If games were not profitable, the industry would wither and die. 
   And in the real world of the game industry, there are many people who, if they 
  learned today they could make 2% more profit a year selling can openers instead of 
  games, would do so, and feel really proud of their choice. 
   Perhaps you view these people with a certain contempt. But should you? Profits 
  are necessary to the industry — who better to be in charge of them than people 
  who love money? I mean, you don’t want to worry about money all day, do you? 
  You have games to design. Why not let the money people be in charge of the money 
  and the design people be in charge of the design, and everyone will be happy, right? 
   Sadly, no. Remember  “form follows funding ”? Decisions that the money people 
  make ( “you need to make this game with three million dollars, not the five million 
  you asked for, ” “we’ve decided this MMO needs to have microtransactions, not a 
  subscription,” “you have to include in-game advertising ”) can have a tremendous 
  impact on the game design. And the opposite is true — game design decisions will 
  have an enormous impact on profitability. In a weird way, design and management 
  each hold the strings controlling the destiny of the other. Because of this, the money 
  people are going to step in and tell you how to design your game, because they are 
  afraid you might not understand the impacts of your design on profitability. And 
  when there is a conflict between the two of you, who do you think is going to win? 
  Keep in mind the golden rule: The one with the gold makes the rules. 
   For this reason, it’s really important that you understand enough about the busi-
  ness of games so that you can have an intelligent discussion with the money people. 
  This will give you much more creative control, because if you can explain why your 
  precious feature will make more money, in terms they’ll understand and believe, 
  you’ve got a much better shot at having the game turn out the way you know is best. 
   You might be thinking  “I don’t know the first thing about business — all this 
  financial stuff is going to be over my head. ” But you don’t have to master it — you 
  just need to know enough to think about it and talk about it. It’s certainly simpler 
  than learning about probability, and you seemed to understand that pretty well. I’m 
  sure you’ve met someone with an MBA who, surprisingly, didn’t seem too bright. If 
  that guy can understand it, so can you. And, making money is a lot like a game —
  when you consider it from that point of view, it can actually be kind of fun to 
  think about. 
   This chapter isn’t going to get into great detail about the business of games — 
  there are other books for that. But we’ll talk about things you can do to make it 
  easier to have meaningful conversations with the people who hold the purse strings 
  on your game. 
  
  435
   Know Your Business Model 
    To understand any business, follow the money. If you understand where the money 
  goes and why, you understand the business. For example, when a consumer buys a 
  $50 retail game title, this diagram shows, on average, where the money ends up: 
  Keeps: $3
  Keeps: $7
  Keeps: $16
  Keeps: $10
  Keeps: $8
  Keeps: $6
  $3
  $7 
  Permission
  Consumer
  Retailer
  Publisher
  Platform
  holder
  Media
  manufacturer
  Developer
  Ad Agencies
  and media
  $50
  $37
  $8
  $6
  Buys
  game
  Buys
  game
  $3
  Markdown
  reserve
  Advertising
  Making the
  game
  Disk
  and box
  F I G U R E
  29.2
     Seeing this kind of diagram leads to questions like: 
    Q: What is a platform holder? 
    A: This is the company that makes a given console (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft). 
  They don’t usually make any money selling the consoles (they often lose 
  money, selling them below cost!). They make their money by  “ taxing ”  the 
  publisher for each title made. 
    Q: Why does the retailer take so much? 
    A: Doesn’t the retailer seem greedy? But they aren’t. Retail is a low-margin busi-
  ness where they have to cut every possible corner to survive. It just costs a lot 
  to run a store. 
    Q: Why does the publisher take so much? 
    A: Look at everything they have to do! They have to coordinate and bargain with 
  all these different companies, and if anything goes wrong, they are the ones who 
  lose money. If the game doesn’t sell, the developer still got paid to make the title, 
  KNOW YOUR BUSINESS MODEL
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE • THE DESIGNER AND CLIENT WANT THE GAME TO MAKE A PROFIT
  436
  and the retailer will make the publisher buy back the unsold titles. Part of the 
  reason the publisher takes so much is because they have to pay for titles that 
  lose money. 
   Q: What is a markdown reserve? 
   A: Eventually, the title will be marked down, sold at a lower price. The retailer 
  makes the publisher absorb some of the loss when this happens. On average, 
  that comes to about $3 a unit. 
   Now, keep in mind, these numbers are averages. What really happens is much 
  more detailed. I’m sure you have many more questions about this — following the 
  money does that — it raises questions — find the answers, and you’ll understand 
  the business model. 
   Retail isn’t the only business model, of course: there are many more: Internet 
  downloads, console downloads, mobile phone games, board and card games, 
  advergames, subscription MMOs, microtransaction MMOs, and many more. Many 
  of these have grown quickly in the last few years, partly in an attempt to escape 
  the high costs of retail. And the peculiarities of each business model exert powerful 
  forces that help define the nature of the games sold through them, which is why 
  you need to understand them. 
   It isn’t hard, really. If you find yourself baffled by a new business model, all you 
  have to do is find a money person, and ask them  “Hey, can you show me where the 
  money goes? ” and pretty soon you’ll know just what questions to ask. 
   Units Sold 
   Inevitably, you will find it useful to compare your game to others that have come 
  before. The last thing you want is to be caught in a conversation similar to
   YOU: Our game is awesome! It’s like  Katamari Damacy, but in space! 
  PUBLISHER: (disdainfully) Do you how many units  Katamari Damacy actually sold? 
  YOU: Uh …    a lot?  
   Units sold equals success. Unfortunately, getting your hands on these numbers can 
  be hard. If you are lucky, you can sometimes find them in a Web search or a maga-
  zine article. If you are at a big developer or publisher, they may have access to the 
  NPDs retail tracking service ( www.npd.com ), and you can use that to get the data. 
   These data are really important, because how well past games sold is going to be 
  how a publisher will estimate how a new game will sell. Units sold is one of those 
  cold hard facts that are hard to argue with — so if you can get data, use it to your 
  advantage. 
   Breakeven 
   A really important number for you to figure out is  “breakeven. ” That is, how many 
  units of the game have to be sold before the publisher makes back the money they 
  
  437
  put into the game. Because if you proudly explain how your game will surely sell 
  200,000  units based on how competing titles have sold, and some simple arith-
  metic shows the publisher that he won’t make any money until 400,000  units are 
  sold, you’ve got trouble. If you aren’t sure how a particular publisher calculates 
  breakeven, ask them. 
   Know the Top Sellers 
    Try this: make a list, right now, of the top ten best-selling videogames for last year. 
  After you make your list, go on the Web and compare reality to your list. If you had 
  a perfect match, good job. If not, you should think about why you were off base. 
  Did you not realize that titles based on movie franchises were so popular? Did you 
  forget about sports games? Did you think handheld games wouldn’t be on the list? 
  Did you assume that the games you liked best were the games everyone else liked? 
  I can guarantee you that any publisher you pitch to can name last year’s top ten 
  games. Why? Because the game industry is a hit-driven business. Publishers make 
  their money off of big hits, and so they study the hits scrupulously, in an attempt to 
  understand what made them successful. 
    If you want to understand how publishers think, you need to analyze the hits. 
  One company, Electronic Entertainment Design and Research ( www.eedar.com ), 
  is taking this analysis to new levels by breaking games down feature by feature 
  and performing complex mathematical analysis to try to understand which features 
  contributed most to the financial success of each title. How much does multiplayer 
  matter? How much do hours of gameplay matter? etc. This is so developers and 
  publishers can use these data for future titles. 
    However you do it, find some way to get familiar with the hits in your mar-
  ket and demographic and understand why they were so successful. It will help you 
  build a common understanding with the money people. And if you have special 
  insights as to why certain game designs made so much money, I can guarantee that 
  the money people will want to hear what you have to say. 
   Learn the Language 
    Every specialty has jargon, and the economics of games are no exception. Really, 
  though, most of it is pretty standard retail or e-commerce jargon, with a few excep-
  tions. None of it is that hard to learn — mostly just shorthand names for simple 
  concepts. 
    Some terms you should know: 
    ●  SKU: Pronounced  “skew. ” Stands for “stock keeping unit. ” It means a unique 
  inventory item for a store. One game might come out as many SKUs, since each 
  LEARN THE LANGUAGE
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE • THE DESIGNER AND CLIENT WANT THE GAME TO MAKE A PROFIT
  438
  different console release is a SKU, and each language version ( Halo 3 in French) 
  is a SKU. Publishers often measure themselves in terms of how many SKUs they 
  put out in a year. 
   ●  COGS: No, not like cogs in a machine. This is Cost of Goods Sold. That is, what 
  does it cost, per unit, to actually make the game. 
   ●  Burn rate: What does it is cost, per month, to keep your studio open? Salaries, 
  benefits, rent, etc. 
   ●  Sold in vs. Sold through: When the retailer buys games from the publisher, they 
  are  “sold in, ” that is, sold into the store. But when a customer buys the game, 
  then we say it is  “sold through. ” Since the publisher has to buy back titles the 
  retailer can’t sell, the number of sold-in and sold-through titles might be very dif-
  ferent. If a boastful publisher brags to you that a title has sold 1.5  million copies, 
  and it’s just been out for a week, you can often burst his bubble by asking  “sold 
  in or sold through? ” In the end, only “sold through ” matters. 
   ●  NPV: This stands for “net present value. ” The idea is that money in your hand 
  now is worth more than money you will receive in the future. So, if (somehow) 
  I have a game that is guaranteed to make me a million dollars profit a year for 
  five years, it is not worth five million dollars — it is worth less than that. You 
  can look up how to do the calculation — it’s pretty simple. If you ever plan to 
  get money from a venture capitalist to make your game, there will be a lot of 
  talk about NPV. The same goes if you are trying to persuade a publisher to spend 
  money on a technology that can be used in many games. The main thing that 
  affects an NPV calculation is your opinion about how much the value of money 
  goes down over time. We call this percentage the  “discount rate, ” and it is usually 
  between 4 and 10%. A good trick, when a money person corners you demanding 
  to know the NPV of your game, is to ask  “at what discount rate? ” They’ll often 
  be stunned into silence by this as they realize that you might know what you are 
  talking about. If they give you a number, write it down, and say  “I’ll get back to 
  you with the exact figures. ” Then go figure it out — it isn’t that hard. 
   ●  Christmas: This has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus, and everything to 
  do with the fact that 75% of all games in the United States are sold during the 
  Christmas season.  
   There’s lots more of these, of course, but I list these just to give you a sam-
  ple. You see they really aren’t that complicated. If you can have some familiarity 
  with this kind of language, and are brave enough to ask for explanations when you 
  hear terms you don’t know, the money people will start to respect you, because 
  they’ll see you care about the things they think are important. And these things are 
  important — without them, game design couldn’t be a career, only a hobby. To help 
  you remember, take this lens.   
  
  439
    In the next chapter, we’ll talk about something far more important than money.  
   Lens #96: The Lens of Profit 
    Profits keep the game industry alive. Ask these questions to help your game 
  become profitable. 
    ●  Where does the money go in my game’s business model? Why? 
    ●  How much will it cost to produce, market, and distribute this game? Why? 
    ●  How many units will this game sell? Why do I think that? 
    ●  How many units need to sell before my game breaks even?  
  LEARN THE LANGUAGE
  
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  CHAPTER
  441
   Games  Transform 
  Their Players  
  441
  THIRTY
  F I G U R E
  30.1
  
  442
    How Do Games Change Us? 
   There is much debate about the long-term effect of games on the mind. Some 
  believe that they have no lasting effect — that they just serve as a momentary dis-
  traction. Others believe that gameplay can be dangerous, inciting players to vio-
  lence, or ruining their lives through addiction. Still others believe that games are so 
  good for us that they will become the cornerstone of 21st century education. 
   How games change us is not a trivial question, for the answer to it is transform-
  ing society as we speak — either for the better, or for the worse. 
   Can Games Be Good For You? 
   Games come so naturally to humans, and afford so much pleasure, that only some-
  one of a very extreme philosophical orientation would maintain that all gameplay is 
  harmful. Several positive effects are often attributed to games. 
   Emotional Maintenance 
   Games are one of many activities that people engage in to try to maintain and con-
  trol their mood and emotional state. People play games to try to 
   ●  Vent anger and frustration. Games, particularly sports involving a lot of physi-
  cal activity (football, basketball) or videogames involving a lot of fast action and 
  battles, can be a cathartic way to  “take out your feelings ” on someone else in the 
  safe world of the game. 
   ●  Cheer up. When a person is depressed, whimsical games with funny situations 
  (Cranium,  Mario Party) can be a way to take your mind off your troubles, and 
  remember that you can still have fun. 
   ●  Gain perspective. There are times when our troubles loom large on us, and little 
  things seem like they are the end of the world. Playing games gives us some dis-
  tance from our real-world problems, so when we return we more easily see them 
  for what they are. 
   ●  Build confidence. After a few real-life failures, it is easy to start to feel like you 
  aren’t good at anything, which can lead to a feeling that everything in your life 
  is beyond your control. Playing a game where your choices and actions can lead 
  to a successful outcome can give a feeling of mastery that helps remind you that 
  you can succeed, that you have some control over your destiny. 
   ●  Relax. Sometimes we are simply unable to let go of our worries, either because 
  of their size or their sheer number. Games force our brains to engage with some-
  thing completely unconnected to our worries, letting us escape them for a while, 
  and giving us a much needed “emotional rest. ” 
  CHAPTER THIRTY • GAMES TRANSFORM THEIR PLAYERS
  
  443
    And while it is true that efforts to play games for these reasons sometimes 
  backfire — if the game proves just as frustrating as real life, for example — in gen-
  eral games serve the above tasks fairly well, acting as tools that help maintain our 
  emotional health. 
   Connecting 
    Connecting socially with others is not always an easy thing to do. We are each 
  caught up in our own problems and worries that others might not understand or 
  care about. Games can act as a  “social bridge, ” giving us reasons to interact with 
  each other, letting us see how others respond to a variety of situations, introducing 
  topics of conversation, showing us what we have in common, and creating shared 
  memories. This combination of factors makes games a great tool to help build and 
  maintain relationships with the important people in our lives. 
    Exercise 
    Games, particularly sports, give us reason and motivation to perform healthy physi-
  cal exercise. Recent studies have shown the health benefits of mental exercise, par-
  ticularly for the elderly. The problem-solving nature of games makes them flexible 
  tools to provide both physical and mental exercise in many forms. 
   Education 
    Some hold the position that education is serious, but games are not; therefore games 
  have no place in education. But an examination of our educational system shows 
  that it is a game! Students (players) are given a series of assignments (goals) that 
  must be handed in (accomplished) by certain due dates (time limits). They receive 
  grades (scores) as feedback repeatedly as assignments (challenges) get harder and 
  harder, until the end of the course when they are faced with a final exam (boss 
  monster), which they can only pass (defeat) if they have mastered all the skills in 
  the course (game). Students (players) who perform particularly well are listed on 
  the honor roll (leader board). 
    So, why doesn’t education feel more like a game? The lenses in this book make 
  it pretty clear. Traditional educational methods often feature a real lack of surprises, 
  a lack of projection, a lack of pleasures, a lack of community, and a bad interest 
  curve. When Marshall McLuhan said  “Anyone who thinks education and entertain-
  ment are different doesn’t know much about either, ” this is what he was talking 
  about. It’s not that learning isn’t fun, it is just that many educational experiences 
  are poorly designed. 
  CAN GAMES BE GOOD FOR YOU?
  
  CHAPTER THIRTY • GAMES TRANSFORM THEIR PLAYERS
  444
   So why haven’t educational videogames found more of a home in the classroom? 
  There seem to be several reasons: 
   ●  Time constraints. Playing games can take a long time, and a variable amount of 
  time — many meaningful, educational games are just too long of an experience 
  for a classroom setting. 
   ●  Variable pacing. One thing games are good at is letting players proceed at their 
  own pace. In a school setting, the instructor usually has to keep everyone mov-
  ing along at a single pace. 
   ●  1965. People born before 1965 did not grow up playing videogames; therefore 
  games do not come naturally to them and seem kind of foreign. At the time of 
  this printing, the educational system is primarily run by people born before 1965. 
   ●  Good educational games are hard to make. To create something that delivers a 
  complete, verifiable, assessable lesson, while still engaging students is very hard. 
  And an average semester class contains two or three dozen different lessons that 
  must be covered.  
   Despite these challenges, games can be excellent tools for education, but they 
  work best as tools and not complete educational systems. A wise educator uses the 
  right tool for the right job — what are the right educational jobs for games? Let’s 
  consider some of the areas where games seem to have some advantage. 
   Facts 
   One of the first areas that people naturally think of using videogames is to convey 
  facts and to drill those facts. This works mainly because learning facts (state capi-
  tals, times tables, names of infectious diseases, etc.) is dull and repetitive. It is an 
  easy thing to integrate them into game systems that give auxiliary rewards as you 
  make progress learning information that is not inherently interesting. Videogames, 
  in particular, can make use of visuals that can help players learn these facts. And 
  while a game may be a minor improvement over the more straightforward ways of 
  memorizing these facts, at the present time they are rarely much more than that. 
   Problem Solving 
   Remember our definition of game?  A problem-solving activity approached with a 
  playful attitude. Naturally, when it comes to practicing problem solving, games have 
  a chance to shine, particularly in cases where students need an opportunity to show 
  that they can use a variety of different skills and techniques in an integrated way. 
  For this reason, it may be the case that game-like simulations may start to serve as 
  final exams in areas where multiple techniques need to be combined in a realistic 
  setting, such as police and rescue work, geology, architecture, management, etc. 
  
  445
    Classroom work aside, it is interesting to note that an entire generation is being 
  raised playing very complex videogames that require a great deal of planning, strat-
  egy, and patience if the player is to succeed. Some theorize that this will lead to 
  a generation that is far better at problem solving than any generation previous — 
  whether this is true remains to be seen. 
   Systems of Relationships 
    The thing that games arguably are best at teaching is illustrated by an ancient Zen 
  koan:
   Hyakujo wished to send a monk to open a new monastery. He told his pupils 
  that whoever answered a question most ably would be appointed. Placing a 
  water vase on the ground, he asked:  “Who can say what this is without calling 
  its name? ”  
  The chief monk said:  “ No one can call it a wooden shoe. ”
   Isan, the cooking monk, tipped over the vase with his foot and went out. 
  Hyakujo smiled and said: “The chief monk loses. ” And Isan became the master 
  of the new monastery.  
    The chief monk knew his words could not tell the truth of what a water vase 
  really is like, so he slyly tried to say what it was not. But Isan, whose training was 
  in the most practical of arts, cooking, knew well that some things cannot be under-
  stood with words, they must be demonstrated to be understood. 
    And interactive demonstration is one place that games and simulations excel. 
  Education researchers frequently refer to Miller’s pyramid of learning: 
  Does
  Knows
  Knows how
  Shows
  F I G U R E
  30.2
     In this model, being able to do something is the pinnacle of knowledge, and 
  game-based learning is almost entirely focused on doing. 
  CAN GAMES BE GOOD FOR YOU?
  
  CHAPTER THIRTY • GAMES TRANSFORM THEIR PLAYERS
  446
   Lectures, readings, and videos all have the weakness of being linear, and a linear 
  medium is a very difficult way to convey a complex system of relationships. The 
  only way to understand a complex system of relationships is to  play with it, and to 
  get a holistic sense of how everything is connected. 
   Some systems of relationships best understood via simulation are listed below. 
   ●  The human circulatory system 
   ●  Traffic patterns in a major city 
   ●  A nuclear reactor 
   ●  The workings of a cell 
   ●  The ecology of endangered species 
   ●  Heating and cooling in the earth’s atmosphere  
   There is a tremendous difference in understanding between people who have 
  merely read about these things, and people who have played with simulations of 
  them, because the players have not just read about the systems of relationships, 
  they have experienced them. And one of the most powerful ways they experience 
  them is by testing their limits, pushing the simulation until it breaks. How much 
  traffic does it take to make the commute time longer than the workday? How much 
  water can the reactor lose before it melts down? What will irreversibly melt the 
  polar ice caps? Simulations give the player  permission to fail, which (aside from 
  being fun) is incredibly educational — because the learner not only sees the fail-
  ures, but sees why they happened, which leads to significant insight about the 
  workings of the whole system. 
   One of the most striking instances of this I have ever seen is in the game 
  Peacemaker from Impact Games.  Peacemaker is a simulation of the Israeli/
  Palestinian conflict, where players have the choice of playing the role of either the 
  Israeli prime minister or the Palestinian president, with a goal of trying to make 
  peace between the two nations. When playtesting the game with natives of these 
  countries, the natives would often enter the game with a belief that if the other side 
  would do a few simple things, the conflict would be over. As they would attempt 
  to play the opposing side, however, they would quickly see it wasn’t as simple as 
  they thought; complex pressures on both sides make it very difficult to reduce the 
  conflict. Players then quickly succumb to curiosity. First they try to see what it takes 
  to bring these nations to all out war, and when they have that out of their systems, 
  they try to solve the big challenge: Are there any techniques that will successfully 
  work to make peace between these nations? 
   Objections are often raised about simulating such serious topics. It seems 
  unlikely that these simulations can be perfect. What if someone who plays with 
  a simulation learns a technique that is only valid in the simulation, but would be 
  disastrous in the real world? For this reason, simulations often work much better 
  with a live instructor who is able to point out the discrepancies and use them as 
  
  447
  teaching moments. It is worth noting, though, that people do not expect 
  simulations to be completely accurate, and often, the simulation loopholes can be very 
  instructive — they cause players to wonder  “why doesn’t this happen in the real 
  world? ” That question alone can lead to deep insights about how the real world 
  actually works. In other words, in some cases, a flawed simulation can be  more 
  instructive than a perfect one! 
   New Insights 
    In the movie  Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a selfish, arrogant character who 
  gets caught in a time loop that forces him to relive the same day over and over 
  until he gets it right. Over the many repeats of that day, he experiments with how 
  to interact with people around him, gradually understanding them better and bet-
  ter. This understanding gives him insights that cause him to alter his behavior, until 
  finally he has become the kind of person that willfully does the right thing, and 
  when he finally escapes February 2, he is a changed man. 
    The important part of simulations of systems of relationships is the new insights 
  that are given to the players — they are able to see these systems in ways they 
  couldn’t before. And creating the change in perspective that leads to new insights 
  is something games are very good at, since games create whole new realities, with 
  new sets of rules, where you aren’t you anymore and you play the role of someone 
  else entirely. This is a power of games that is just beginning to be tapped for the 
  purposes of improving people’s lives. It is often said that children who grow up 
  in low-income neighborhoods tend to aim lower in career aspirations because they 
  simply can’t imagine they could succeed at a high-paying career. What if games 
  could be used to help them imagine success and make it seem more achievable to 
  them? What if games could help people understand how to escape an abusive rela-
  tionship, break an addiction, or simply be a better volunteer? Perhaps we have just 
  begun to scratch the surface of how life changing games can be. 
   Curiosity 
    It has always been true that students who are curious have an advantage over their 
  classmates who are not, because curious students are more likely to learn things 
  on their own, and they are more likely to retain what they learn, since they learn 
  it because they want to. In a sense, curiosity makes you  “ own ” your learning. But 
  the recent proliferation of Internet access has increased this advantage a thousand 
  times. A curious student can now learn as much as they want about any subject —
  all the information about every topic known to humankind is only a click away, 
  or will be soon. It seems very likely that a noticeable  “curiosity gap ” will begin to 
  appear, since curious people will quickly grow to become experts at whatever topics 
  interest them, while the incurious will be left far behind. It is possible that, in the 
  coming decades, a curious mind may be the most valuable asset a person can have. 
  CAN GAMES BE GOOD FOR YOU?
  
  CHAPTER THIRTY • GAMES TRANSFORM THEIR PLAYERS
  448
   Surprisingly, though, we know very little about curiosity. Is it something we are 
  born with, or is it something that can be taught? If it can be taught, nurtured, or 
  strengthened, shouldn’t that become a top educational priority? Now recall our defi-
  nition of play from Chapter 3:  “manipulation that indulges curiosity. ” Could it be 
  that shifting our educational systems toward more play-based models might be the 
  best possible way to prepare children to thrive in the 21st century?  
   Can Games Be Bad For You? 
   Some people are afraid of anything new. This is not unreasonable: many new things 
  are dangerous. Games and gameplay are not new, of course, they have been around 
  since the dawn of man. And traditional games have their dangers: sports can cause 
  physical injury, gambling can lead to financial ruin, and obsession with any pastime 
  can lead to a life out of balance. 
   But these dangers are not new. They are well-known, and society has methods 
  of handling them. What makes people nervous, especially parents, are the potential 
  dangers of new types of games that have suddenly appeared in popular culture. 
  Parents are always nervous when their children become immersed in something 
  that the parents did not grow up with. As a parent, it is an uncomfortable feeling, 
  because you have no idea how to properly guide your children and no idea how to 
  properly keep them safe. The two areas that cause the most concern are violence 
  and addiction. 
    Violence 
   As we’ve discussed, games and stories frequently feature violent themes, because 
  games and stories are often about conflict, and violent action is a simple, dramatic 
  way to settle a conflict. But no one worries much about the abstract violence that 
  takes place in chess, Go, or  Pac Man. Worries come about violence that is visu-
  ally graphic. One focus group I witnessed was trying to determine where the aver-
  age mom drew the line about what videogames were  “too violent ” for their kids. 
  Virtua Fighter was okay, said the moms,  Mortal Kombat was not. The difference? 
  Blood. It wasn’t the actions that were involved in the games that bothered them 
  (both games are mostly about kicking your opponent in the face), but rather the 
  graphic bloodshed in  Mortal Kombat that is completely absent in Virtua Fighter . 
  They seemed to feel that without bloodshed, it was just a game — just imaginary. 
  But the blood made the game creepily real, and to the moms in the interviews, a 
  game that rewarded bloodshed felt perverse and dangerous. 
   But there have been many games without any visible blood that have raised 
  concern. The 1974 game Death Race, based on the movie  Death Race 2000, was a 
  racing game that rewarded players for running down little animated pedestrians. 
  When angry parents began to protest this game appearing in local arcades, the 
  
  449
  publisher tried to make people believe that they weren’t people, but  “ goblins ”  that 
  you were supposed to run down with your car. No one believed that because the 
  dangers of reckless driving are too real. 
    When we did the very first test of  Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the 
  Buccaneer Gold for DisneyQuest, we were terrified. We were bringing families in 
  to play the game, and their reaction was going to determine the future of the game. 
  Everyone on the team was very uncomfortable because the Columbine high school 
  shootings had happened less than a week before, and here we were showing a 
  game where you pulled the trigger on a cannon, over and over, blasting everything 
  in sight. 
    To our surprise, no one even made the connection, and all the families had great 
  fun. No one expressed any concerns at all about the game being too violent, even 
  though we expressly asked about this in our interviews. Pirate cannons shooting 
  down cartoon enemies was so far removed from the real world that it didn’t cause 
  the slightest concern. 
    What accounts for these differences and inconsistencies? A simple fear: playing 
  games with realistic violent content might make people desensitized to real-world 
  violence, or worse, make them feel that real-world violence is fun and pleasurable. 
    How valid is this concern? It is hard to say for sure. We know it is possible to 
  become desensitized to blood and gore: doctors and nurses must do this to func-
  tion and make rational decisions during surgery. Soldiers and police officers must 
  take it a step further and become desensitized to wounding and killing others, so 
  they can think clearly in situations where they must commit violent acts. But this 
  kind of desensitization isn’t what parents are worried about — after all, if playing 
  videogames made people grow into better doctors and law enforcement officials, 
  there wouldn’t be much cause for concern. No, the worry about game violence is 
  about the apparent similarity between the videogame player and the murderous 
  psychopath — after all, both kill for fun. 
    But do violent games bring about this kind of psychopathic desensitization, or 
  is something different happening? As we’ve discussed, the more someone plays a 
  game, the more they see through the aesthetics of the game (for graphic violence 
  is just an aesthetic choice), and put their minds in the pure problem-solving world 
  of game mechanics. Even though the avatar may be going on a killing rampage, the 
  player generally does not have thoughts of rage or murder, but thoughts of perfecting 
  skills, solving puzzles, and accomplishing goals. Despite the millions of people who 
  play games with violent themes, it is rare to hear a story about someone who felt 
  drawn to act out a violent game in real life. It would seem that the average person is 
  very good at distinguishing the difference between the fantasy world and real world. 
  With the exception of those who already have violent psychotic tendencies, most of 
  us seem to be able to compartmentalize: We know that a game is just a game. 
    But the concern that most have is not about adults — it is about children and 
  teenagers who are still forming their views of the world. Are they able to safely 
  compartmentalize violent play? We know they can with some kinds of play. Gerard 
  Jones, in his book  Killing Monsters, in fact makes the case that some level of violent 
  CAN GAMES BE BAD FOR YOU?
  
  CHAPTER THIRTY • GAMES TRANSFORM THEIR PLAYERS
  450
  play is not only natural, but necessary for healthy psychological development. But 
  surely, there are limits. There are some images and ideas that children are not yet 
  ready to deal with, and this is why rating systems for videogames are absolutely 
  necessary so that parents can make informed choices about what their children can 
  play with. 
   So, do violent videogames change us for the worse? Psychology is too imperfect 
  a science to give a definitive answer, especially with something so new. So far, they 
  don’t seem to have damaged our collective psyche, but as designers, we must be on 
  guard. New advances in technology will continue to make possible more and more 
  extreme types of violent play, and perhaps we will, without warning, find ourselves 
  crossing some invisible line into gameplay that really does change people for the 
  worse. This seems unlikely to me personally, but to say that it is impossible would 
  be arrogant and irresponsible. 
   Addiction 
   The second greatest fear people have about the dangers of gaming is that of addic-
  tion; that is, playing so much that it is interfering with or damaging more important 
  things in life, such as school, work, health, and personal relationships. This is not 
  just a concern about too much game playing, because after all, too much of any-
  thing (exercise, broccoli, vitamin C, oxygen) can be detrimental. No, this is a fear 
  about compulsive behavior that a person in unable to give up, even though it is 
  clearly having harmful consequences. 
   It is true that designers do continuously seek to create games that capture and 
  engage the mind — games that make you want to keep playing. When someone is 
  excited about a new game, it isn’t unusual for them to compliment it by saying  “I
  love it! It’s so addictive! ” But by this, they rarely mean that the game is damaging 
  their lives, but rather that they feel some kind of pull to keep returning to it. 
   But there are people who play games so much that their lives suffer for it. 
  Modern massively multiplayer games, with their huge worlds, social obligations, 
  and multi-year play goals definitely draw certain people into self-destructive pat-
  terns of play. 
   It is worth pointing out that self-destructive game playing is nothing new. 
  Gambling is one form that has been around for ages, but it is a special case, since it 
  is the exogenous, not endogenous rewards that are so addictive. Even without mone-
  tary rewards, though, there have long been cases of people playing games more than 
  they should. The most common cases are college students. My grandparents used to 
  talk about classmates who had to drop out of school from spending too much time 
  playing bridge. Stephen King’s novel  Hearts in Atlantis is a story (based on true 
  events) about college students who fail out of school due to their addiction to the 
  card game of Hearts and end up drafted into the Vietnam war as a result. In the 
  1970s, overplay of  Dungeons and Dragons led to poor academic performance, and 
  today  World of Warcraft serves as an uncontrollable temptation for many students. 
  
  451
    Nicholas Yee performed a very thoughtful study of the factors involved in  “ prob-
  lematic usage ” of games, where he shows that the reasons for self-destructive game-
  play are different for different types of people, or as he says:
   The issue of MMORPG addiction is complex because different players are 
  attracted to different aspects of the game, to different degrees, and may or 
  may not be motivated by external factors that are using the game as an out-
  let. Sometimes the game is pulling the player in; sometimes a real-life problem 
  is pushing the player in. Oftentimes, it is a combination of both. There is no 
  one way to treat MMORPG addiction because there are many reasons why peo-
  ple become obsessed with or addicted to MMORPGs. If you consider yourself 
  addicted to MMORPGs and your playing habits are causing you real life prob-
  lems, or if someone close to you has playing habits which are obsessive and 
  unhealthy, consider seeking the help of a professional counselor or therapist 
  who is trained in addiction problems.  
    There is no denying that for some people, this can be a real problem. The ques-
  tion is, what can game designers do about it? Some have suggested that if the 
  designers wouldn’t build in such attractive qualities, the problem would go away. 
  But to suggest that it is irresponsible for designers to create games that are  “ too 
  engaging ”  is like saying that overeating is the fault of irresponsible bakers who insist 
  on making cake taste  “too delicious. ” It is incumbent upon game designers, who are 
  responsible for the play experiences they create, to find ways to make game struc-
  tures fit into a well-balanced life. We cannot forget this or pretend it is someone 
  else’s problem. It should be on all our minds, just as it is on the mind of designer 
  Shigeru Miyamoto, who often signs his autograph for children with the following 
  note: On a sunny day, play outside .  
   Experiences 
    So, do games change people? We have discussed at length the fact that we aren’t 
  really designing games, we are designing experiences. And experiences are the 
  only things that can change people — sometimes in unexpected ways. When cre-
  ating Toontown Online, we created a chat system where players could communi-
  cate quickly by picking phrases off a menu. Polite interactions between players 
  seemed to us an important part of the Toontown aesthetic, and we felt it helped 
  encourage cooperative play, so most of the phrases are supportive and encourag-
  ing ( “ Thanks!, ” “Good job!, ” etc.). This was in sharp contrast to standard MMO 
  culture, which involves a lot of trash-talking — insulting the people you play with, 
  as rudely as possible. During beta testing, we were surprised to get an e-mail from 
  a player who was upset with us. He explained that normally he played  Dark Ages 
  of Camelot and started playing Toontown on the side. Gradually, though, he found 
  himself playing Toontown more, and  Dark Ages less. The reason he was upset with 
  us was that Toontown had changed his habits — he found that he tended not to 
  EXPERIENCES
  
  CHAPTER THIRTY • GAMES TRANSFORM THEIR PLAYERS
  452
  trash-talk anymore, and was inclined to thank everyone who helped. He was embar-
  rassed (but also grudgingly grateful) that a simple game for children had manipu-
  lated his thought patterns so easily. 
   You might think that changing someone’s communication pattern is not that big 
  a deal — but returning to the question of violence, consider, for a moment, what 
  violence really is. Not the violence of stories or games, but real-world violence. In 
  the real world, violence is seldom a means toward an end; instead, it is a form of 
  communication — one that people resort to when all else fails. It is a desperate way 
  of saying  “I’m going to show you how much you are hurting me! ”
   We are just starting to understand how games can change us. It is imperative 
  that we learn more about how they do, because the more we learn, the more we 
  can use them not just as an amusement, but as a valuable tool for improving the 
  human condition. Take this lens to help you remember this important idea.
   Lens #97: The Lens of Transformation 
   Games create experiences, and experiences change people. To make sure only 
  the best changes happen to your players, ask yourself these questions: 
   ●  How can my game change players for the better? 
   ●  How can my game change players for the worse?  
   Is it really your business, though, to worry about how your game changes play-
  ers? This is the subject of our next chapter.  
  
  CHAPTER
  453
   Designers 
  Have Certain 
  Responsibilities  
  453
  THIRTY-ONE
  F I G U R E
  31.1
  
  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE • DESIGNERS HAVE CERTAIN RESPONSIBILITIES
  454
   The Small Box 
  The small box gets its first teeth 
  And its small length 
  Its small width and small emptiness 
  And all that it has got 
  The small box is growing bigger 
  And now the cupboard is in it 
  That it was in before 
  And it grows bigger and bigger and bigger 
  And now it has in it the room 
  And the house and the town and the land 
  And the world it was in before 
  The small box remembers its childhood 
  And by overgreat longing 
  It becomes a small box again 
  Now in the small box 
  Is the whole world quite tiny 
  You can easily put it in a pocket
   Easily steal it easily lose it 
  Take care of the small box
  – Vasco Popa 
  I got into television because I hated it so. And I thought there was some way of 
  using this fabulous instrument to be of nurture to those who would watch and 
  listen. 
  – Mister Rogers  
   The Danger of Obscurity 
   You should be prepared to understand that as a game designer, you are not going to 
  get a lot of respect. If you manage to find a way to design games professionally, you 
  can expect a lot of conversations like this:
   FRIEND OF A FRIEND: So, what do you do? 
  YOU: I design videogames. 
  FRIEND OF A FRIEND: (clearly uncomfortable) Oh … so, like that  Grand Theft 
  Auto ?  
   It’s the same as if everyone who makes films were asked,  “Oh… so, you’re a 
  pornographer? ”
  
  455
    But you really can’t blame people. There is a lot of lurid material in the world 
  of videogames, and lurid stories always get the most press. Slowly, this will surely 
  change, as games become more and more mainstream. But even as it does, and it 
  becomes less embarrassing to be a game designer, it will continue to be a profession 
  where it is difficult to become famous, well-known, or respected. Screenwriters have 
  the same problem: people generally don’t care who makes the things they like, and 
  the publishers would rather you didn’t become famous anyway, because it makes 
  you expensive. But I’m not complaining about this — I am only mentioning it to 
  point out something quite dangerous: Because you will be able to work in relative 
  obscurity, no one is going to ask you to take responsibility for what you create. 
    And you might say,  “It’s not my name on the line, it’s the name of the publisher, 
  and they’re so worried about getting sued, I’m sure they won’t let anything out the 
  door that would hurt anybody. ”
    But are you sure? Corporations make mistakes all the time. And further, corpora-
  tions have no ethical responsibility. Sure, they have to follow the law, but beyond 
  that, their sole and single purpose is to generate money, and ethics don’t enter into 
  it, because corporations have no souls. Bank accounts, yes, legal responsibility, yes, 
  but not souls — and that means no ethical responsibility. Only individuals can take 
  ethical responsibility. Are you going to assume that game company managers are 
  going to take on that kind of personal responsibility? They might, but you and I 
  know they probably won’t. No, there is only one person who can take responsibility 
  for what you create, and that is you. 
   Being Accountable 
    In Chapter 30 we talked about some ways that games might be dangerous. And as 
  new technologies arrive, there are also new ways for games to accidentally do harm. 
  Of all the dangers that games might or might not contain, the one that is most real 
  and undeniable for players of online games is the potential to meet with dangerous 
  strangers. When most people think about making their online game  “ safe, ” they 
  think about making sure that children aren’t exposed to foul language. But while 
  foul language may be inappropriate, it has nothing to do with safety. No, the real 
  danger is the fact that online games can be a mask of anonymity which danger-
  ous people can use to take advantage of innocents. If you are designing a game 
  that involves strangers talking each other, you must take responsibility for what that 
  might lead to. This is one of the rare cases where your choices in game design could 
  cause lives to be saved or lost. You might think there is a one in a million chance 
  of something dangerous happening in your game, but if that is true, and your game 
  is so successful that five million people play it, that dangerous thing will happen 
  five times. 
    Many designers decide that they cannot be held responsible for what happens in 
  their game, and they leave it to the lawyers to decide what is and is not safe. But are 
  you content to leave your ethical responsibility in the hands of corporate lawyers? 
  BEING ACCOUNTABLE
  
  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE • DESIGNERS HAVE CERTAIN RESPONSIBILITIES
  456
  If you aren’t willing to take personal responsibility for the games you make, you 
  shouldn’t be making them. I worked on one project where the team felt so strongly 
  about this we asked our concept artist to create an image of what the cover of  Time 
  magazine would look like the week a child was abducted due to a lack of communi-
  cation safeguards in our game. We never showed it outside the team, but every one 
  of us burned this image into our minds to help us remember the responsibility that 
  was on our shoulders. 
   Your Hidden Agenda 
   But you might argue that your game really is safe — there is no way it could do 
  harm. And you might be right. Consider this: is it possible you could find a way for 
  your game to do good? To somehow make people’s lives better? If you know this is 
  possible, and you choose not to do it, isn’t that, in a way, just as bad as making a 
  game that harms people? 
   Now, don’t get me wrong — I’m not the type who is going to tell you that it is 
  the responsibility of game companies to better the human race, even if it means los-
  ing some profits. The only responsibility of a game company is to make money. The 
  responsibility for making games do good lies solely with you. Am I saying that you 
  should try to convince management that your title will be better if it can somehow 
  improve mankind? I am not. Management won’t care about that — their job is to 
  serve the corporation, and the corporation only cares about making money. 
   What I am telling you is that, if you want to, you can design your games so that 
  they will improve people’s lives, but you will probably need to do this  in secret. 
  Generally, it will not serve you well to tell management about how it is important 
  to you that you use the powerful medium of games to help people, because if they 
  know that is your goal, they will think your priorities are out of whack. But they 
  aren’t. For if you make a game that is really good for people, but no one likes it (the 
  game version of a broccoli smoothie), you haven’t helped anyone. The only way 
  your games can serve humanity is if as many people play them as possible. The 
  trick is to figure out what you can put into your best-selling games that will trans-
  form players for the better. You might think this impossible — that people only like 
  what is bad for them. But it isn’t true. One thing people like better than almost any-
  thing else is being cared for. And if you can manage, through your game, to make 
  your players into better people, they will feel, appreciate, and remember that rare 
  feeling that someone else cares what they become. 
   The Secret Hidden in Plain Sight 
   Is it overkill to put this much consideration into the effect that games have on peo-
  ple? It is not. Games are not just trivial amusements. Games are a means of creat-
  ing experiences, and life itself is composed of nothing but experiences. Moreover, 
  
  457
  the experiences that game designers create aren’t everyday experiences — they are 
  ones where people live out their fantasies and strive to become what they have 
  always secretly wished to be. Fantasy worlds created for children become modern 
  mythology — shared story worlds that stay with them as a guiding compass for the 
  rest of their lives. We create utopias: ideal societies to which all nations are compared. 
    It is not enough to think of how games affect people today — we must con-
  sider how they will affect people tomorrow. You are working in, and inventing, the 
  medium that will subsume all others. The medium that a person is immersed in 
  when they are young defines how they will think for their entire lives. As you con-
  tinue to invent and improve the medium of games, you are defining the thought 
  process of the next generation. This is no trivial matter. 
    When you think about it, is there any human activity that cannot be viewed as a 
  game, and therefore benefit from the principles of good game design? 
   The Ring 
    Have you ever thought about your pinky? How it is strangely smaller than all 
  the other fingers? It almost seems like an accident — like some kind of withered 
  appendage. But it isn’t. It has a purpose that most of us are completely unaware of. 
  Your pinky guides your hand. Every time you pick something up or put something 
  down on a surface, your pinky is there first, feeling things out like a little antenna 
  and safely guiding the hand into position. 
    In 1922, Rudyard Kipling was asked by the University of Toronto to create a rit-
  ual to help remind graduating engineers of their obligation to help society. At the 
  conclusion of this solemn ritual, still practiced today, the engineer is given an iron 
  ring, placed on the pinky finger of their dominant hand, as a lifelong reminder of 
  this obligation. 
    One day, game designers may concoct their own ritual of obligation, but you 
  don’t have time to wait for that. Your obligation begins today — this minute. If you 
  truly believe that games can help people, then, here — take this ring. It is invisible, 
  like mine — that way, you can’t lose it. If you are willing to accept the responsibili-
  ties that go along with being a game designer, then you should put it on. Wear it 
  as a reminder to let these responsibilities guide your hand. Think about it carefully 
  before you put the ring on, though, because it doesn’t come off. Oh — and if you 
  look closely, you’ll see it bears this inscription:
   Lens #98: The Lens of Responsibility 
    To live up to your obligations as a game designer, ask yourself this question: 
    ●  Does my game help people? How?  
  THE RING
  
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  CHAPTER
  459
   Each Designer has a 
  Motivation 
  459
  THIRTY-TWO
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  460
   The Deepest Theming 
   At the start of this book, we talked about how listening is the most important skill 
  for a game designer. And through the book, we examined facets of listening to your 
  audience, to your game, to your team, and to your client. 
   But now, it is time to talk about the most important type of listening — listening 
  to your  self. You might think it is easy to listen to yourself. But our subconscious 
  mind holds many secrets. We often do things, and we don’t know why. Why, for 
  instance, is game design so very important to you? Do you know? You might think 
  that the time for this kind of self-reflection can come later. But it can’t, because life 
  is very short. In a blink, you will look up, and realize you don’t have any time left. 
  For time destroys everything, takes everything away. Like Poe’s raven, it mocks you, 
  cackling “nevermore ” as it glides into the night. You can’t stop it. Your only hope 
  is to do your important work  now, while you still can. You must run like death is 
  behind you because  death is behind you. Quick — take this lens so you don’t forget.  
   Lens #99: The Lens of the Raven 
   To remember to only work on what is important, ask yourself this question: 
   ●  Is making this game worth my time?  
   But what is that important work? How can you know? This is why you must 
  learn to listen to yourself. There is some important purpose that is hidden inside 
  you, and you must find out what it is. Surely there is some reason you are going 
  through all the trouble of trying to design great games. Maybe it is because you can 
  see something in your mind’s eye that you feel will change someone’s life. Maybe 
  it is because of something wonderful that you experienced once, and you want to 
  share it with the world. Maybe something terrible happened to someone you loved, 
  and you want to be sure it never happens again, to anyone. No one can know this 
  purpose but you, and no one needs to know it but you. We spoke about how much 
  more powerful your game will be if you know its theme, but do you know your 
  own personal theme? You must figure it out as soon as possible, for once you know 
  it, you will undergo an important creative change: your conscious and subconscious 
  motivations will be united, and your work will gain a passion, a focus, and an 
  intensity that cannot possibly be greater. 
  
  461
   Lens #100: The Lens of Your Secret Purpose 
    To make sure you are working toward your one true purpose, ask yourself the 
  only question that matters: 
    ●  Why am I doing this?  
  THE DEEPEST THEMING
   To help you find your true motivation, take this final lens.  
  
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  463
   Goodbye  
  463
  
  464
    All Good Things … 
   My goodness! Look at the time! I’ve talked long enough to fill a whole book. Thank 
  you so much for dropping in — I really do enjoy talking about these things with 
  someone as thoughtful and insightful as you are. Say, what was that clever anagram 
  you mentioned? If I mix up the letters in  “Art of Game Design ” it spells “Ragged …”
  something? Oh, yes! Very clever! I’ll have to remember that! 
   You have your map? Your ring? And all your lenses? Good, good. No, really, you 
  can keep them — if you promise to use them. And good luck with that game you 
  mentioned — it sounds really fun! Let me know when we can try it out! 
   Thanks again for coming, and thanks so much for listening. 
   Keep in touch, okay? 
   After all, we game designers have to stick together.  
  GOODBYE 
  
  465
    Endnotes 
   Hello 
     Page 19 — Maxwell H. Brock: A character in Roger Corman’s classic film, A Bucket 
  of Blood (1959). 
    Page 24 —  We might as well omit to study nature because she is old.  
  – Henry David Thoreau,  Walden  
   Chapter 1: Designer 
     Page 2 —  “When a thing must be attempted, one must never think about possibility 
  or impossibility. ” I borrowed this phrase from C.S. Lewis in  Mere Christianity .  
    Page 2 —  “ They lack a fear of ridicule. ” Pointed out to me by Cary Evans. 
    Page 2 —  “‘Animation ’  means ‘to give life ’. ” Thanks to Ben Johnson for reminding
  me of that! 
    Page 5 —  “Brian Moriarty once pointed out …” He said this in his 1997 GDC lecture
  called “Listen! The Potential for Shared Hallucinations. ” There is some doubt 
  about this etymology. 
    Page 5 —  “ To listen with a silent heart … ” Herman Hesse,  Siddhartha. 1922.  
   Chapter 2: Experience 
     Page 12 —  “Psychology, Anthropology, and Design. ” I was surprised to find this 
  triad reinforced by other sources. George Santayana, in  The Sense of Beauty 
  forms a similar triad of Psychologist, Anthropologist, and Artist. Marc Prensky, 
  in Digital Game Based Learning, talks about the three paths to knowledge:  “ The 
  analytical path, where philosophers reflect, mediate, and make sense of objects 
  and events; the empirical path, where scientists manipulate variables and con-
  duct controlled experiments to validate reliable principles; and the pragmatic 
  path where practitioners struggle with real-world challenges and come up with 
  strategies for effective and efficient performance. ” Analytical corresponds to 
  Anthropology, Empirical to Psychology, and Pragmatic to Design. 
  
  ENDNOTES 
  466
   Page 14 —  “Xenophilic ” You can also say  “xenophilous, ” if you like. 
   Page 15 —  “Socrates, for example, noted …” Plato’s  Phaedo . 
   Page 17 —  “He simply was not able to clearly dissect his experiences. ” Yes, Jeff, this 
  is you. 
   Page 18 —  “Defeating Heisenberg ” Ben Johnson suggests another category of intro-
  spection: Looking for the first time that you get swept up in your game.  
   Chapter 3: Game 
    Page 26 —  “I don’t think anyone will disagree with that. ” Actually, Bernard Mergen 
  will in a couple of pages. See what I mean about no consensus? 
   Page 27 —  “participants received sprays of sugar water …” Berns GS, McClure SM, 
  Pagnoni G, Montague PR. Predictability modulates human brain response to 
  reward.  Journal of Neuroscience 2001 April 15; 21(8):2793–2798. 
   Page 27 —  “This is a tricky one. ” I’m not the only one who thinks so. Check this 
  out: “The nature of  … play has long baffled philosophers and psychologists. ”
  Colwyn Trevarthen, “infancy, mind in ” in The Oxford Companion to the Mind 
  (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004) p. 460. 
   Page 27 —  “Play refers to those activities …” J. Barnard Gilmore,  “Play: A Special 
  Behavior. ” In Child’s Play, edited by R.E. Herron and Brian Sutton-Smith (New 
  York: John Wiley  & Sons, 1971), p. 311. 
   Page 28 —  “Play is free movement within a more rigid structure. ” Katie Salen, Eric 
  Zimmerman, Rules of Play (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004) p. 304. 
   Page 28 —  “Play is whatever is done spontaneously and for its own sake. ” George 
  Santayana,  The Sense of Beauty (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1896) p. 19. 
   Page 28 —  “Games, competitive games, which have a winner or a loser …”
  Bernard Mergen,  Play and Playthings (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing 
  Group, 1983). 
   Page 28 —  “In ev’ry job that must be done …” Richard M. Sherman, Robert B. 
  Sherman. “Spoonful of Sugar ” from Mary Poppins (Walt Disney Pictures, 1964). 
   Page 29 —  “The task he has to perform …” Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Flow (New 
  York: Harper  & Row, 1990) p. 39. 
   Page 29 —  “Work and play  … become equivalent to servitude and freedom. ” George 
  Santayana,  The Sense of Beauty (New York: Dover, 1955) p. 19. 
   Page 29 —  “It is an invariable principle of all play …” James P. Carse,  Finite and 
  Infinite Games (New York: Ballantine Books, 1986) p. 4. 
   Page 31 —  “many people have tried to define  ‘game. ’” In chapter 7 of Rules of Play , 
  Salen and Zimmerman have done an excellent analysis of the many definitions 
  
  467
  that have been put forth, which I will not repeat here. Not surprisingly, the defi-
  nitions reach little consensus. 
    Page 31 —  “Games are an exercise of voluntary control systems …” Elliott Avedon 
  and Brian Sutton-Smith, eds,  The Study of Games (New York: John Wiley  & 
  Sons, 1971), p. 405. 
    Page 31 —  “[A game is] an interactive structure of endogenous meaning …” Greg 
  Costikyan,  “ I Have No Words, and I Must Design. ” (version 2) p. 24. 
    Page 31 —  “However, the points serve no purpose …” Or, if they had some other 
  purpose, I could never figure it out! 
    Page 32 —  “A game is a closed, formal system …” Tracy Fullerton, Chris Swain, 
  and Steven Hoffman. Game Design Workshop (San Francisco: CMP Books, 2004) 
  p. 37. 
    Page 34 —  “Johan Huizinga called it ‘the magic circle ’” Johan Huizinga, Homo 
  Ludens .  
    Page 38 —  “The whole truth regarding play …” Lehman and Witty,  Psychology of 
  Play, Chapter 1. 1927.  
   Chapter 4: Elements 
     Page 40 —  “As she looked around for a new object …” She did eventually stump me: 
  “ Daddy, what are feathers made of? ”  
    Page 44 —  “…the faster the invading army gets. ” A note from Wikipedia:  “ The 
  change in speed was minor at the beginning of a wave, but dramatic near the 
  end. This action was originally an unintentional result of the way the game was 
  written — as the program had to move fewer and fewer aliens it ran faster and 
  faster, but was kept after finding favour with the development team. ” Thanks to 
  Ben Johnson for pointing it out!  
   Chapter 5: Theme 
     Page 49 —  The Plenitude has finally been published! The Plenitude, Rich Gold, MIT 
  Press, 2007. We miss you, Rich! 
    Page 49 —  “The Disney VR Studio ” This team used to be part of Walt Disney 
  Imagineering, but is presently part of Disney Online Studios. 
    Page 50 —  “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me. ” Yo Ho (A Pirates Life For Me) X. 
  Atencio and George Bruns, 1967. 
    Page 52 —  “ One witty gentleman …”  It was Greg Wiatroski. Who else? 
    “…the cast member … ” This is the term Disney uses instead of  “employee. ”  
  CHAPTER 5: THEME
  
  ENDNOTES 
  468
   Page 53 —  “This film deeply moved audiences …” Moved them to the point of col-
  lecting $600 million at the box office. 
   Page 56 —  “Does Super Monkey Ball have a deep resonant theme? ” But then again, 
  food gathering is a very primal instinct, as is fear of heights …  
   Chapter 6: Idea 
    Page 58 —  “…my repertory of tricks was limited to two …” Reverse cascade and 
  “the claw. ” I learned them both from  The Juggling Book by Carlo. 
   Page 61 —  “…in what parts of the tetrad? ” 1: Technology.  “Board game ” and “mag-
  nets” have already been decided. 2: Story. 3: Aesthetic — but be careful — this
  game needs to feel like a surrealist painting. Does it need to look like one? 4: 
  Mechanics. You might say technology, but perhaps an improvement would be to 
  use a new technology. 
   Page 64 —  “There is a muse …” Stephen King, On Writing (Scribner, New York, 
  2000), p. 144–145. 
   Page 72 —  “…Athena-like …” Read your mythology!  
   Chapter 7: Iteration 
    Page 76 —  “Best guess. Mr. Sulu. ” That’s a nerdy  Star Trek reference. 
   Page 82 —  “…Winston Royce, who wrote the paper …” Winston Royce, Managing 
  the Development of Large Software Systems: Concepts and Techniques, Proc. 
  WESCON, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 1970. 
   Page 82 —  “…Barry Boehm presented a different model …” Barry Boehm, “A Spiral 
  Model of Software Development and Enhancement, ” ACM SIGSOFT Software 
  Engineering Notes, August 1986. 
   Page 82 —  “…many descendants of the spiral model …” Some of them are Scrum, 
  ROPES, and the fountain model. 
   Page 89 —  “…you can do it all lightning fast! ” Chapter 7: Prototyping, in the book 
  Game Design Workshop by Fullerton, Swain, and Hoffman has excellent tips for 
  making paper prototypes. 
   Page 90 —  “Game Designer David Jones …” These quotes are from a talk he gave at 
  DICE 2001. 
   Page 94 —  “…never finished — only abandoned. ” Paul Valery said this about 
  poetry, but it is certainly true of game design as well. 
   Page 94 —  “…Mark Cerny …”“The Method  ” Cerny is speaking from a reference 
  point of action-based platform games. For other types of games, you need to 
  
  469
  determine for yourself what the equivalent of  “two publishable levels ” means. 
  http://www.gamasutra.com/features/slides/cerny/index.htm.  
   Chapter 8: Player 
     Page 99 —  “If you are creating a game for a target audience …” Some adults have 
  a hard time remembering what childhood was like at a certain age. If you ask 
  someone “What was your favorite book when you were eight years old? ” they 
  often draw a blank. If you instead ask  “What was your favorite book when you 
  were in the third grade? ” they can more easily remember. If this is the case for 
  you, then learn this simple rule: to convert from age to grade, just subtract five. 
  That way, when someone says  “What kind of game is good for 10–12 year olds? ” 
  you can automatically access your memories by thinking about what you and 
  your friends liked in 5th, 6th, and 7th grades. 
    Page 102 — Peter Pan and Wendy quote: From the 2003  Peter Pan movie. 
    Page 102 —  “Raph Koster, in his book  A Theory of Fun …” Raph Koster.  A Theory of 
  Fun. (Paraglyph Press, Scottsdale, 2005), p. 106. 
    Page 103 —  “…males generally have stronger skills of spatial reasoning than 
  females … ” Hilmar Nordvik, Benjamin Amponsah.  “Gender differences in spatial 
  abilities and spatial ability among university students in an egalitarian educa-
  tional system, ” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, June 1998.  http://www.findar-
  ticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2294/is_n11-12_v38/ai_21109782.  
    Page 104 — Heidi Dangelmeier quote: Quoted in Beato, G. 1997.  “Computer Games 
  for Girls Is No Longer an Oxymoron. ” Electrosphere, 5.04, April.  http://www.
  wired.com/wired/archive5.04/es_girlgames-pr.html  .
    Page 104 —  “1/3 of all fiction books sold are romance novels ” http://www.
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_novel.  
    Page 105 —  “There is no female equivalent of a pick-up game of touch football. ” 
  Interesting note from Ben Johnson: Men have also traditionally had a hard time 
  spending time together (without women) when there isn’t some sort of work 
  or competition involved. You could say that pick-up games exist so that men 
  can know each other socially.  http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/fashion/
  10date.html?8hpib  � & pagewanted  � all & position  � NYT article on the “ man-date ”
  neologism .
    Page 105 —  “The designers of Hasbro’s  Pox …” John Tierney.  “Here Come the Alpha 
  Pups. ”  New York Times, August 5, 2001. 
    Page 109 —  “LeBlanc’s Taxonomy of Game Pleasures ” The taxonomy is introduced 
  in “MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research ” by Robin 
  Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek. It is explained more thoroughly in  “I
  Have No Words and I Must Design ” by Greg Costikyan.  
  CHAPTER 8: PLAYER
  
  ENDNOTES 
  470
   Chapter 9: Player’s Mind 
    Page 114 —  “Consider this pattern ” Borrowed from Julian Jaynes,  The Origin of 
  Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Dover, 1976), p. 40. 
   Page 118 —  “a feeling of complete and energized focus …” http://en.wikipedia.
  org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29  .
   Page 118 — A note on flow from Ben Johnson: some EA sports titles create  “virtual 
  flow ” by letting avatars do things that are superhuman when in a  “flow ” state. 
   Page 126 —  “Abraham Maslow wrote a paper …” Abraham Maslow,  “A Theory of 
  Human Motivation ” in Psychological Review, 50, 370–396. 
   Page 126 — A note on Maslow’s hierarchy: It is interesting that the hierarchy is at 
  work, even within the game — my first priority is to make my character survive, 
  etc.  
   Chapter 10: Game Mechanics 
    Page 138 —  “…all about guessing the states of your opponent’s private attributes. ”
  Imagine how different Monopoly would be if you did not know which properties 
  had houses and hotels on them, for instance. (possible exercise). 
   Page 138 —  “Celia Pearce points out another kind of information …” Pearce, Celia. 
  The Interactive Book (MacMillan Technical Publishing, Indianapolis, 1997), p. 423. 
   Page 144 —  “…caused text adventures to fall from favor. ” This idea was suggested 
  to me by Phillip Saltzman, in an essay he wrote for my Game Design class at 
  Carnegie Mellon. 
   Page 145 — Parlett’s Rule Analysis: David Parlett, Rules OK.  http://www.davpar.
  com/gamestar/rulesok.html.  
   Page 145 —  “foundational rules ”: Zimmerman and Salen call these “constituative 
  rules” ( Rules of Play, page 130). David Parlett prefers the term  “foundational 
  rules, ” as do I.“ Unwritten Rules ”: Steven Sniderman. Unwritten Rules.  http://
  www.gamepuzzles.com/tlog/tlog2.htm  
   Page 146 —  “Consider these tournament rules for playing  Tekken 5 …” These were 
  rules from the 2005 Penny Arcade Expo (PAX).  
   Page 147 —  “Sid Meier proposes an excellent rule of thumb ”: Sid Meier. Three 
  Glorious Failures. DICE 2001 (video). 
   Page 162 —  “…which squares are landed on most frequently? ” The top three 
  most frequently landed on squares, in order, are Illinois Avenue, GO, and the 
  B&O Railroad. Maxine Brady.  The Monopoly Book (New York: David McKay 
  Company, 1975), p. 92. Don’t forget the Chance and Community Chest cards in 
  your simulation! 
  
  471
    Page 165 — Tversky quote found in: William F. Altman.  “Determining Risks with 
  Statistics — and with Humanity. Baltimore Sun, October 13, 1985. p. 50. 
    Page 165 —  “Tversky asked people to estimate the likelihood of various causes …”
  Taken from Bernstein, Peter L.,  Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk 
  (New York: John Wiley  & Sons, 1996), p. 279. He took it from a paper by Tversky.  
   Chapter 11: Balance 
     Page 177 —  “Alien vs. Predator ” Thanks to James Portnow for this unusual example. 
    Page 180 —  “Michael Mateas points out …” Interactive Drama, Art, and Artificial 
  Intelligence 2002. Mateas, M. Ph.D. Thesis. Technical Report CMU-CS-02-
  206, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. 
  December 2002.  
   Chapter 12: Puzzles 
     Page 208 —  “A young Chris Crawford once made the bold statement …” Chris 
  Crawford,  The Art of Computer Game Design (Berkeley: Osborne/McGraw Hill, 
  1984), p. 7. 
    Page 209 —  “A puzzle is fun, and has a right answer. ” What is a Puzzle? http://
  www.scottkim.com/thinkinggames/whatisapuzzle/index.html  .
   Chapter 13: Interface 
     Page 233 —  “ juicy :” I first heard this term from the Experimental Gameplay research 
  team at CMU: Kyle Gabler, Kyle Gray, Matt Kucic, and Shalin Shodhan. They 
  made many juicy games.  
   Chapter 14: Interest Curves 
     Page 250 —  “Mark 2 version of Aladdin’s Magic Carpet virtual reality experience ”
  Though the Mark 3 version is playable at DisneyQuest in Orlando at the time of 
  this printing, the Mark 2 version was shut down in 1997. 
    Page 251 —  “Half Life 2, one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time. ” 
  Metacritic score of 96 — not too shabby.  www.metacritic.com  .
    Page 251 —  “…graph of the number of player deaths …” From  http://www.steam-
  powered.com/stats/ep1/  .
  CHAPTER 14: INTEREST CURVES
  
  ENDNOTES 
  472
   Chapter 15: Story 
    Page 270 —  “How could you make a game out of  Romeo and Juliet …” I was dis-
  cussing this idea with Chris Crawford, and he jokingly suggested that perhaps 
  God made time travel impossible in our universe to ensure that our decisions 
  meant something. I still lie awake at night thinking about this. 
   Page 270 —  “…will have to be clever indeed. ” MMOs do not have save points — 
  and therefore have no time travel. It may well be that the most moving and dra-
  matic gameplay experiences will thus come from that medium. 
   Page 274 —  “As Bob Bates puts it: ” From  “Into the Woods: a Practical Guide to the 
  Hero’s Journey. ” “…as I paused on my map of  ‘Treasure Island ’…” The Art of 
  Writing, by Robert Louis Stevenson, Chapter 5.  
   Chapter 16: Indirect Control 
    Page 290 —  “But then the art director had an idea. ” That was Gary Daines. 
   Page 292 —  “Restaurants use this method all the time …” Areni, C.S.,  & Kim, D. 
  “The influence of background music on shopping behavior: Classical versus 
  top-forty music in a wine store, ” Advances in Consumer Research, 1993, 
  20, 336–340.  � Additional research on the influence of music on shopping 
  behavior. 
   Page 293 —  “…$20 just to play this game one time. ” DisneyQuest originally sup-
  ported a “pay per ride ” model, with the “pay one price ” model being optional. 
  The “pay one price ” model won out in the long run. 
   Page 294 —  “…we drew up an initial map. ” Animation Director Bruce Woodside 
  drew the map. 
   Page 298 —  “The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote …” from the Tao Te Ching.  
   Chapter 17: Worlds 
    Page 301 —  “the combined sales of all Pokemon products combined is over $15 bil-
  lion,” http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2006-12-11-foxcards-usat_x.htm . 
   Chapter 18: Characters 
    Page 316 —  “…a small, distilled list of traits that encapsulate the character. ” David 
  Freeman is well-known for championing this approach, which he calls the  “char-
  acter diamond. ”  
  
  473
    Page 318 —  “This complex diagram …” From  Better Game Characters by Design by 
  Katherine Isbister, p. 26. 
    Page 322 —  “TRAMP: ‘Ere! Where are you going? ” Impro, by Keith Johnstone, 
  p. 36. 
    Page 325 —  “We are also the only animal that blushes …” Or needs to blush, as 
  Mark Twain points out.  
  “... the only animal that cries.” Some say that elephants cry too. Probably because 
  of all these jokes.
   Chapter 19: Spaces 
     Page 334 —  “Imagine yourself on a winter afternoon …” Christopher Alexander.  The 
  Timeless Way of Building, pp. 32–33. 
    Page 337 —  “In the most profound centers …” Christopher Alexander.  The 
  Phenomenon of Life, p. 222. 
    Page 342 —  “…pioneered by the designers of  Max Payne …”
  Realistic 
  Level Design for Max Payne by Aki Maatta.  http://www.gamasutra.
  com/features/20020508/maatta_01.htm  .
    Page 343 —  “…the devil is in the details. ” Others say that God is in the details. 
  Frankly, I’m beginning to suspect they are the same guy.  
   Chapter 20: Aesthetics 
     Page 351 —  “distant mountains. ” Thanks to Ted Elliot for this story.  http://www.
  ugo.com/ugo/html/article/?id � 16210 & sectionId  � 88  .
   Chapter 21: Other Players 
     Page 356 —  “You can learn more about a man in an hour of play than a year of con-
  versation. ”  This is frequently attributed to Plato, and said to be part of the text 
  of the Republic. Honestly, though, I can’t find it in there.  
   Chapter 22: Communities 
     Page 358 —  “Two psychologists who set out to better understand …” D. W. McMillan 
  and D.M. Chavis, 1986.  “ Sense of community: A definition and theory, ” p. 16. 
    Page 358 —  “Amy Jo Kim’s succinct definition of community …” Amy Jo Kim, 
  Community Building on the Web, p. 28.  
  CHAPTER 22: COMMUNITIES
  
  ENDNOTES 
  474
   Chapter 23: Team 
    Page 374 —  “think of it as … a game for the intended audience. ” This is how you 
  should have been thinking all along, of course! 
   Page 380 —  “If you give a good idea to a mediocre group …” http://news-service.
  stanford.edu/news/2007/february7/pixar-020707.html . 
   Chapter 25: Playtesting 
    Page 400 —  “…if you use a five point scale …” This kind of scale is generally called 
  a Likert Scale, if you want to sound like you know what you are talking about. 
  Most people pronounce it Like-urt, but Dr. Likert pronounced it Lick-urt, so basi-
  cally it is dealer’s choice. Maybe we should ask people to rate the two pronun-
  ciations on a scale from one to five.  
   Chapter 26: Technology 
    Page 406 —  “…another Mickey cartoon that was released six months earlier. ” What, 
  you don’t believe me?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse .
   Page 409 —  “Nobody knows what it’s really like, but everyone says it’s great. ” This 
  is a line from the song about the Hype Cycle called  The Spiraling Shape by They 
  Might Be Giants, in case you want to, you know, sing about the Hype Cycle.  
   Chapter 27: Client 
    Page 419 —  “Firenza, 1498. ” My favorite telling of the Michelangelo story can be 
  found in The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene and Joost Elffers.  
   Chapter 28: Pitch 
    Page 423 —  “$0.083” That’s a dime a dozen, of course. 
   Page 427 —  “Organization will set you free. ” Alton Brown originated this statement, 
  I believe.  
   Chapter 29: Profit 
    Page 435 —  “When a consumer buys a $50 retail game title …” Data from  “Game 
  Industry Roles and Economics ” by Kathy Schoback in  Introduction to Game 
  Development, edited by Steve Rabin, 2005, Charles River Media, p. 862.  
  
  475
   Chapter 30: Transform 
     Page 443 —  “Recent studies have shown the health benefits of mental exercise …”
  http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/articles/2006/rebok_mentalexercise.
  html , for example. 
    Page 443 —  “Some hold the position that education is serious …” These people are 
  often assuaged by semantics: while they may find  “entertaining games ” unac-
  ceptable, they often consider  “engaging simulations ” a valuable tool — same 
  thing, different name. 
    Page 445 —  “Hyakujo wished to send a monk …” The Gateless Gate, by Ekai, called 
  Mu-mon, tr. Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps [1934]. 
    Page 445 —  “Miller’s pyramid of learning …” Miller G.E. The assessment of clinical 
  skills/competence/performance.  Acad Med 1990:S63–67. 
    Page 446 —  “…a linear medium is a very, very difficult way to convey a complex 
  system of relationships. ” Writing this book, for example, was no picnic! 
    Page 446 —  “ Peacemaker from Impact Games ”  www.peacemakergame.com. 
    Page 451 —  “problematic usage ” a more technically correct term than  “addiction,”
  which has a specific medical definition. 
    Page 451 —  “Nicholas Yee performed a very thoughtful study …” “Ariadne — 
  Understanding MMORPG Addiction ” by Nicholas Yee, October 2002 (http://
  www.nickyee.com/hub/addiction/home.html).  
   Chapter 31: Responsibilities 
     Page 454 —  “Mister Rogers ” To learn more about this fascinating man, I suggest 
  watching the DVD  Fred Rogers — America’s Favorite Neighbor, 2002. 
    Page 457 —  “In 1922, Rudyard Kipling was asked …” http://en.wikipedia.
  org/wiki/The_Ritual_of_the_Calling_of_an_Engineer .  
  CHAPTER 31: RESPONSIBILITIES
  
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  481
  481
    INDEX
   A
   abstract formal systems  ,   102–103  
  Achievers  ,   110 
   actions, game  
   deﬁ nition ,  140  
   emergent gameplay, increasing ,  141–142  
   gap in,  versus books and ﬁ lm ,  143  
   operative ,  140  
   resultant ,  140–141  
   addiction, game ,  450–451 
   aesthetics ,  42  ,  44–45 ,  73
   artist involvement ,  349–350  
   as measure of interest  ,   254  
   audio ,  351–352  
   deep seeing ,  348–349  
   game space, of  ,  135  
   importance ,   347 
   technology, balance between the two ,  352  
   Aladdin’s Magic Carpet VR Adventure  ,  195  ,  250 , 
   251 ,   289–291 
   Alexander, Christopher ,  334–337  
   AND function ,   157–160 
   animation ,  2–3  
   anthropology ,   3 ,  13–14  
   anxiety during game  ,   121 
   architecture, game  ,   3 
   purpose of ,   330 
   real  vs. virtual ,  338–342  
   Aristotle ,  15 
   art bible ,  385  
   audience . See also  client ;  demographics 
   knowing, importance to game design ,   98 
   targeting ,   99 
  avatars .  See also  characters, game  
   iconic nature of ,  313–314  
   idealization ,  312–313  
   projecting onto ,   312  
   Avedon, Elliot ,  31 
   Axis  & Allies ,  109  
   B
   balance, game  
   artiﬁ cial ,  197  
   biplane game scenario ,   174–176  ,   180  
   challenge  vs. success ,   177–179  
   choices, meaningful  ,   179–180  ,  181  
   competition  vs. cooperation ,   185–186  
   detail  vs. imagination ,  199–200  
   dynamic ,   205 
   economies  ,   203–204  
   fairness  ,   176–177  
   freedom  vs. controlled experience ,   195  
   head  vs. hands  ,   184–185  
   length of game  ,   188  
   methodologies for achieving , 201–203  
   natural ,   197  
   overview ,   172  
   punishment ,  192–194  
  rewards  ,   188–191  
   simple  vs. complex  ,   195–196  
   skill  vs. chance  ,   183  ,  184  
   symmetry ,   172–173  ,   202–203  
   Barnsdall, Aline ,   330  
   Baron, Jonathan  ,   361  
   Bartle, Richard ,   110–112  
   Bates, Bob ,   262  
   Baum, L. Frank  ,   306  
   behavioral traits  ,   322  
   Berry, Dani Bunten  ,   354  
   Boehm, Barry  ,   82  
   boredom  ,  119  ,   121  
   brain 
   complexity of ,   114–115  
   focusing power ,   118  ( see also  focus ) 
   reality-processing functions  ,  117  
   subconcious  ,   115  
   brainstorming ,  3 ,   376  
   awakening subconscious  ,   65–66  
   tips  ,   68–74   
  
  INDEX
  482
   Brooks, Fred  ,   87 
   budgeting, game design ,   385  
   Busby ,   33  
   business model .  See also  client
   breakeven point  ,   436–437  
   competition ,  437  
   jargon, business  ,   437–438  
   overview ,   435–435  
   units sold  ,  436  
   C
   Campbell, Joseph ,   273  
   CAVE  .  See  Computer Augmented Virtual 
  Environment (CAVE)  
   Cerny, Mark ,   94 
   challenge 
   increasing ,  121–122  
   chance  . See also  probability 
   controlling ,  168–169  
   dice rolling ,   158–159  ,   160  ,  162  ,  163–164  
   estimating ,  167–168  
   importance to games  ,   153  
   skill, relationship between ,  169  ,   183 ,  184  
   characters, game  ,   198–199 
   avatars ( see  avatars ) 
   cartoon-like  ,   328 
   change over the course of storyline  ,  326–327  
   dominant/submissive diagram  ,  319  
   elements , 311  
  facial expressions  ,  324–326  
   functions ,  315–316  
   indirect control of player through  ,  292  
   interpersonal circumplex  ,   317–318  
   likeness to actual human beings  ,  327–328  
   qualities ,  310–311  
   status ,   321–324  
   traits  ,   316–317  
   voice  ,   324 
   vs. movie characters  ,  310 
   vs. novel characters  ,  310 
  web ,   319–321  
   choices in a game ,   179–180 ,  181  ,  267–268  
   Christensen, Clayton  ,  410  
   Cicero ,   150 
   cinematography  ,   3 
   cliches in storytelling ,   279–280  
   client 
   dealing with difﬁ cult suggestions  ,  417–418  
   discerning their wish list/wants for game  , 
   419  ,  427–428  
   opinions of  ,  416–417  
   types of  ,  416  
   Club Penguin  ,   332  
   collusion 
   characters with designer  ,   295–296  
   Pirates of Caribbean game, use in  ,   293–295  
   Colonization , 202  
   Colossal Cave  ,   333  
   communication 
   channels ,  237–238  
   importance to game design ,  4–5  
   listing ,   235  
   mapping ,   236–237  
   prioritizing ,  234–235  
   community, game 
   conﬂ ict as part of  ,   361–362  
   encouraging  ,   358–359  
   events, creating ,  367  
   friendships, fostering  ,   359–361  
   future of  ,   370 
   grieﬁ ng within ( see  grieﬁ ng ) 
   guilds ( see  guilds) 
   managing ,   366  
   player dependence on others  ,   365–366  
   property, community ,   362  
   psychological reasons for  ,   358  
   self-expression ,  362–363  
   shaping ,   362  
   complexity, game  ,   195–196  . See also  difﬁ culty, 
  game 
   Computer Augmented Virtual Environment 
  (CAVE)  ,  49 ,   50–52  
   concentration  ,   118  
   concept art  ,   350  
   conﬁ dence building  ,   1–2 ,  6–7  
   constraints, game  ,   285–286  
   Cookie and Cream  ,   186  
   Costikyan, Greg  ,  31 ,  33  
   Crash Bandicoot ,   331  
   creative writing skills, importance to game 
  designers  ,   3 . See also  dialog;  storylines  
   Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi  ,  29 ,   119  
   curiosity ,  447–448  
   curiostiy , 30  
   D
   Dali, Salvador ,   62  ,   63 ,  67  
   Dangelmeier, Heidi ,   104  
   Dark Tower  ,   333  
   Darth Vader ,   322  
   Death Race 2000  ,   448–449  
   demographics ,  77  .  See also psychographics 
   age-related  ,   100–102  
   gender ( see  gender) 
  
  INDEX
  483
   overview ,  99–100 
   design, game .  See also  engineering, game 
   art bible ,  385  
   artifact  vs. experience  ,  11–12  
   audience for ,   16–17 
   budgeting ,  385 
   collusion principle in ,   295–296  
   control  vs. freedom, player feelings of ,  284  
   detailed design document  ,  383–384  
   documenting ,  382–383  
   drawing from real experiences  ,   20–21   
   ﬁ lters to analyze  ,   76–79 
   overview ,  383  
   philosophy of ,  10–11  
   scheduling ,  385 
   story bible ,   386 
   teamwork  ( see  team design ) 
   tools gathered from other design and artistic 
  ﬁ elds ,   14  
   designers, game 
   accountability ,  455–456  
   analysis of feelings/experiences  ,   17–18 
   ethical responsibilities  ,  455–456  
   introspection as line of inquiry ,  15–16 
   listening skills  ,   4 
   organizational skills  ,   426–427  
   details, providing in game ,  200 
   Diablo ,   193 
   dialog ,  105 ,  316  ,  317 ,  386  
   status, relationship between  ,  323  
   difﬁ culty, game  ,  177–178  ,  215–216  .  See also 
   complexity, game 
   Disney, Walt ,   306 
   DisneyQuest ,  49  ,  107 
   dogs, empathy of ,  123–124  
   Donkey Kong ,   143 
   Dungeons and Dragons  ,  161 ,  450 
   E
   economics of game design resources  ,  3 .  See also 
   budgeting, game design 
   economies, game ,  203 
   Edison, Thomas  ,  12 
   educational games ,  443–445  
   Einstein, Albert  ,   99 
   elegance ,  197–198  
   elemental tetrad  
   aesthetics ,  42  ,  44–45  ,   347  
   interrelatedness of  ,   43 
   Lens of  ,  43  
   mechanics , 41  ,  44 
   overview ,  41 
   risk assessment based on  ,  83–86  
   story  ,   41–42  ,   44  
   technology ,   42–43  ,   44  
   emotions 
   anxiety during game  ,   121  
   boredom  ,  119  ,   121  
   empathy ,   123  
   love of game experience ,  373–375  
   manipulating ,  123  
   part of game experience ,  104  ,   442–443  
   teamwork, invoked by  ,   372–373  
   empathy, power of ,   123  
   endogenous meaning ,   32–33  
   engineering, game  .  See also  design, game  
   complexity ,   3 
   pipeline overview ,   384  
   system, awareness of limitations  ,   384  
   technical design document  ,   384  
   Essential Experience, Lens of  ,   21  
   exercise, as part of game experience ,   443  
   experiences, analyzing ,   18–19  
   Explorers  , 110  
   F
   Facade ,  295–296  
   facial expressions on characters  ,   324–326  
   fairness  ,   172–173  ,   176–177  
   feedback ,  228  ,   230  
   continuous ,   233  
   frustrations when unavailable ,   231–232  
   Fermat, Perrie de ,   154  
   Final Fantasy ,   208  ,   328  ,  333  
   Final Fantasy VII ,   240  , 311  
   ﬂ ow state ,  118–120  ,   121  
   Lens of ,  122  
   recognizing ,  122–123  
   testing  ,   122  
   focus groups  ,   390  
   focus, sustained ,  118–119  
   frustration ,  120  
   Fullerton, Tracy  ,   33  
   fun, deﬁ nition of ,   37  
   G
   game industry, business of  ,  3 
   Gameboy ,   301–302  
   games .   See also speciﬁ c game titles 
   deﬁ ning ,  24–25  ,   26  ,   30–34  
   elements of  ,   41–44  
   experience of ,   45  ,   451–452  
   love of  ,  373–375  
  
  INDEX
  484
  games (continued)
   qualities of ,   34–35 
   themes  ( see  themes, game ) 
   value of ,  32  
   Garriot, Richard  ,  194  
   Gartner Research ,   409  
   gender  .  See also  demographics 
   differences between  ,   105–108  
   female game preferences  ,   104–105  
   male game preferences  ,   103–104  
   sexualized female characters , 102  
   videogame sales, differences in  ,   102–103  
   Gilmore, J. Barnard ,  27 
   goals, game ,  286 
   deﬁ ning ,  148  
   qualities of, for good gameplay  ,  148–149  
   Gold, Rich ,  49  
   Gombauld’s law  ,   162–163  
   Gombauld, Antoine  ,   154  
   Grand Theft Auto  ,   90 ,  272  
   grieﬁ ng 
   deﬁ ning ,  368  
   systems that allow too easily  ,   368–369  
   guilds ,  365 ,  366–367  
   Guitar Hero ,  331  
   H
   Half Life ,  2 ,  251 
   Halo  ,   188  
   Halo ,   2 ,  240  
   Harry Potter  ,  303 
   Harvest Moon  ,  143  
   Heisenberg principle  ,   18 
   hero’s journey  ,  273–274 ,  275  
   heroism  ,   273 
   hints  ,   217–18  
   history-based games ,  3 
   Hoffman, Steve ,   33 
   Holmes, Sherlock ,  304 
   holographic design ,   46 
   humor  ,   69–70  
   Hype Cycle  ,  409–410  
   I
   Ico  ,   408 
   ideas, hierarchy of ,  425  
   imagination 
   importance to gaming ,   124  
  player’s  ,   199–200  
   information ﬂ ow  ,   228 
   dimensions ,  237–238  
   mapping ,   236–237  
   innovation, technological ,  410–411  
   inspiration ,  58–59  
   interest curves  ,   247–249 
   fractal ,   252  
   patterns of  ,   250–252  
   interest, measuring 
   comparison graphs  ,   258–259  
   curves  ( see  interest curves ) 
   inherent ,  253–254  
   overview ,   253  
   presentation, beauty of ,  254  
   projection ,  255–257  
   interfacing 
   as method of control over player  ,   286–287  
   mode ,   238–240  
   physical  ,   226  
   tips for creating  ,   241–244  
   virtual ,  225  
   interpersonal circumplex graph ,  316–318  
   intuition, training  ,  202 
   J
   Jenkins, Henry ,  301 
   Jones, Gerard  ,   449–450  
   Journey ,  408  
   Joust ,   186  
   judgment, human need for  ,   127–128  
   Jumble word game  ,   217  
   jumping the shark  ,   276  
   Jungle King ,   240  
   K
   Katamari Damacy  ,   143  
   Kelley, Tom ,  70  
   Killers  ,  110  
   Kim, Amy Jo ,  358  
   Kim, Scott  ,   209  
   King’s Quest ,   209  
   Kipling, Rudyard  ,   457  
   Koster, Ralph , 102  
   Kroeber, Alfred L.  ,   13  
   L
   landmarks in game space  ,   333–334  
   Lao Tzu ,  298  
   learning 
   curiosity as part of ,   447–448  
   insights  ,   447  
   pyramid of ,  445–447  
  
  INDEX
  485
   LeBlanc, Marc  ,  108  ,  109–110 
   Legend of Zelda  ,  234  ,  235  ,  332  
   Legend of Zelda: Windwalker  ,   210  
   Legend of Zelda; Windwalker  ,   325  
   length of games ,  188  
   prolonged play rewards ,   189  
   shortened/terminated play  ,  192  
   Lenses 
   Accessibility ,  213  ,   348  
   Action ,  144  
   Avatar, of the  ,  314  ,   348  
   Balance , 205  
   Beauty ,  255  ,  347  
   Challenge ,   179 
   Chance ,  169   
   Channels and Dimensions ,  238  ,  348  
   Character ,  199  
   Character Function ,   316  
   Character Traits ,  316  
   Character Transformation ,   327  
   Character Web ,  321 
   Client ,   420–421 
   Collusion ,  297–298  
   Community ,  367  
   Competition ,  186  
   Competition  vs. Cooperation ,  187  
   Control  ,  222–223  
   Cooperation ,  187   
   Crystal Ball  ,   413 
   Curiosity , 30 ,  33 ,   347  
   Documentation ,   387  
   Dynamic State ,   140  
   Economy ,  204 
   Elegance ,   198 ,  208 ,  348  
   Emergence  ,  143 ,  196  
   Endogenous Value  ,  32 
   Essential Experience  ,  21 ,  347  
   Expected Value  ,  167  ,  182  
   Expression ,   363 
   Fairness ,  176–177  
   Feedback ,  230 ,  239  
   Filters, Eight  ,   79 
   Flow  ,   122 
   Freedom ,  284 
   Friendship ,  361 
   Fun  ,   27 
   Functional Space  ,  135  
   Goals ,  149  
   Grieﬁ ng  ,   370 
   Head and Hands  ,  185  ,  208 
   Holographic Design ,  46 
   Imagination , 201  ,   348  
   Indirect Control  ,   293  ,   348  
   Inﬁ nite Inspiration ,   59–60  ,  347  
   Inherent Interest  ,   254  
   Inner Contradiction ,   335  ,  348  
   Interest Curve  ,   252–253  ,  274  
   Interpersonal Circumplex ,   319  
   Judgment  ,  128  
   Juiciness  ,  233  
  Love ,   375  
   Meaningful Choice ,   181  
   Modes  ,   240  
   Nameless Quality ,   337–338  ,  348  
   Needs  ,   127  
   Obstacle ,  271  
   Parallelism ,  216  
   Physical Interface  ,   226  
   Pitch, The  ,   432  
   Player, of the  ,   106  ,   183  ,  185  ,   348  
   Playtesting ,  401  
   Pleasure ,  112  ,   348  
   Problem Solving ,   37  
   Problem Statements ,   62  
   Proﬁ t ,   439  
   Projection ,  257  ,   348  
   Punishment ,  194  
   Puzzle  ,  219  
   Pyramid ,   217  
   Raven, of the ,   460  
   Resonance  ,   56  ,   347  
   Responsibility ,   457  
  Reward ,   191  ,  348  
   Risk Mitigation ,   86  
   Rules ,   150  
   Secret Purpose ,   461  
   Simplicity and Transcendence  ,  272–273  ,   348  
   Simplicity/Compexity ,   196–197  ,  348  
   Skill ,   153  ,   185  
   Skill  vs. Chance  ,   184  
   Status ,   322–23  ,   323  ,   348  ,   368  
   Story  ,   280–281  
   Story Machine ,   266  
   Surprise  ,  26  ,   347  
   Team, of the  ,   380  
   Technology ,   412  
   Time ,   189  
   Toy, of the  ,   90–91  ,   347  
   Transformation ,   452  
   Transparency  ,   227–228  ,   239  
   Triangularity ,  182  
   Uniﬁ cation ,  53  ,   347  
   Virtual Interface ,   226–227  
   Visible Progress  ,   214  ,   348  
  
  INDEX
  486
   Lenses  (continued)
   Weirdest Thing ,  279  
   World ,  307  ,   348 
   levels 
   community, within game  ,  363–365  
   design ,  343  
   system ,   364 
   listening 
   ﬁ ve kinds of, in game design  ,   5–6  
   importance to a game designer  ,  4–5  ,  11 
   Lord of the Rings  ,  303 
   Lucas, George  ,  306 
   M
   management of game design teams  ,   3 
   manuals, game ,   386 
   mapping ,   224–225  ,   227  
   Marvel Comics  ,  303  
   Maslow, Abraham  ,  126  
   Mateas, Michael  ,  296  
   mathematics in game design  ,  3 
   enumeration  ,  156–157  ,  159  ,   160  
   fractions ,   155  
   probability  ( see  probability ) 
   McCloud, Scott  ,   313–314 
   McLuhan, Marshall  ,  443  
   mechanics, game 
   actions  ( see  actions, game ) 
   chance ( see  chance) 
   objects ( see  objects, game ) 
   rules ( see  rules, game ) 
   skill ( see  skill, game ) 
   space ( see  space, game ) 
   Meier, Sid  ,  147  ,  350 
   Melville, Herman  ,   48 
   memory, imperfection of ,  18 
   Mere, Chevalier de  ,  154  
   Mergen, Bernard  ,  28 
   Method, The  ,   94–95  
   Michelangelo ,  419–420  ,   431  
   Minotaur ,  188  
   Miyamoto, Shigeru  ,   306 ,  451 
   mode, interface  .  See under  interfacing  
   modeling 
   empathy ,   123  
   example, Charlie Brown  ,   116 ,  117 
   overview ,   115–16 
   vs. reality , 116  ,   117–118 ,  123  
   Molyneux, Peter  ,   350  
   Monet Refuses the Operation ,  346–347  
   Monkey Island ,   209 
   Mordak’s Revenge  ,   275–276  
   Mori, Masahiro  ,   327   
   Mortal Kombat  ,   448  
   motion platform  ,  51  
   motivation 
   gameplay ,   127  
   Maslow’s hierarchy  ,   126  
   self-esteen ,  127–28  
   Mueller, Lisel  ,   347  
   multiplayer games 
   community, sense of  ( see  community, 
  game) 
   motivation for  ,   354–356  
   music in games ,   3  ,   292–293  
   Myst  ,   209 ,  407  
   N
   Nemesis Factor  ,   211–212  
   NES games ,  152  
   newbies  ,   363–364  
   Nichikado, Toshihiro  ,   43  
   Nintendo , 301–302  
   novelty ,  77  
   O
   object of game  .  See  goals, game  
   objects, game 
   attributes of  ,   136  
   dynamic  vs. static ,   136  ,   140  
   public/private  ,   138  
   secrets regarding ,   137–139  
   One Tough Puzzle  ,   215  
   OnLive Traveler  ,   325  
   OR function ,   157  
   P
   Pac Man ,  136  ,   137  ,   173  ,   197  ,   448  
   Pac Man 2: The New Adventures  ,   184  
   parallelism ,  216  
   Parlett’s Rule Analysis  ,   145  
   Parlett, David  ,   145  
   Pascal, Blaise  ,   154  
   passive entertainment, myth of  ,   263–264  
   patterns, interest curve  ,   250–252  
   Penny Arcade  ,   228  
   physical input  ,   223–224  ,   225  
   physical output  ,   224  ,   225  
   physics, ragdoll ,  408–409  
  
  INDEX
  487
   Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the 
  Buccaneer Gold ,  49–50 ,  107–108 ,  198  , 
   277–278  ,  293–295  ,  449  
   pitch, game ,   424 
   client, empathy of ,  427–428  
   cold calling ,   425–426 
   conﬁ dence, exuding ,   429–430  
   designing ,  428  
   detailed presentation ,   426  ,  428–429  
   follow-up  ,   431–432  
   organized presentation ,  426–427  
   passion for game, radiating ,   427  
   rehearsing  ,  430–431  
   Pitstop ,  147  
   play 
   deﬁ ning ,  27 ,   28 ,   29 
   elements of ,   30 
   purpose of  ,   28 
   surplus energy theory of  ,   27 
   work, relationship between  ,   29 
   players, types (Bartle’s taxonomy)  ,  110–111  
   Playstation ,  2 ,  186  
   playtesting 
   choosing testers  ,  393–394  
   data collection ,  398–399  
   ﬁ netuning purpose of  ,   396  
   location for testing ,   394–396  
   overview ,  390–391 
   particulars of testing ,  396–398  
   post-play interviews ,  400–401  
   post-play surveys ,  399–400  
   questions to ask before beginning ,  392  
   Poe, Edgar Allen  ,  10 
   Pokemon , 301–303  
   Polar Express  ,   328 
   Popa, Vasco  ,  454  
   presentations, design ,   4 
   probability ,  153  .  See also  chance 
   actual ,  166 
   AND ,  157–160  
   enumeration  ,  156–157  ,  159  ,  160  
   expected value  ,  163–164  
   fractional and percentile representation ,   155  
   Gombauld’s law  ,   162–163  
   historical overview  ,   154–155  
   human behavior, as predictor of ,   165–167  
   linear random selection ,  160–161  
   OR ,  157  
   perceived ,  166  
   practical ,  162 
   range of ,  155 
   theoretical ,  162  
   problem solving ,   34–37  
   problem statement  ,   60–61  ,  62  ,   201 
   prototypes  
   fast loop  ,   89–90  
   formal loop ,   91–92  
   informal loop ,   91 
   paper ,   88–89  
   sample loops  ,   92–94  
   tips for productive ,   86–90  
   psychographics . See also  demographics 
   deﬁ nition ,  108  
   LeBlanc’s taxonomy of game pleasures , 
   109–110  
   pleasures  ,  109–110  ,   111–112  
   types (Bartle’s taxonomy)  , 110–111  
   psychology of game design ,  4 ,   12–13  
   puzzles 
   accessibility ,   212–213  
   answer, revealing ,   218  
   block , 211  
   deﬁ ning ,  208  
   goal of a well-designed puzzle  ,   211  
   hints  ,   217–218  
  key ,   211  
   parallelism ,  216  
   perceptual shifts  ,   218–219  
   progression ,  213–214  
   pyramid structure ,   216–217  
   solvability ,  214  
   Q
   QA testing ,  390  
   Qix ,   182–183  
   Quake  ,   332  
   quality assurance  ,   390  
   R
   ragdoll physics ,   408–409  
   Ramey, Louise ,   103 
   randomness  ,  169  
   RC Pro Am  ,   152  
   reality 
   simpliﬁ ed ,  125  
   vs. illusion ,  21–22  
   vs. modeling ,  116  ,   117–118  
  reward systems  ,   188–191  
   risk assessment  ,   83–86  
   risk-taking ,  192  
   role-playing games ,   134  
   Royce, Winston ,   82  
   Rubik’s Cube ,   209  ,   212  ,   214  
  
  INDEX
  488
   Rule of the Loop  ,   80 ,  84 ,  87 ,  94 
   rules, game 
   advisory ,  147  
   behavioral ,  145–146  
   enforcement  ,   147–148  
   foundational ,  145  ,   150  
   house ,  147  
  laws ,   146–47 
   modes and sub-modes  ,   147  
   ofﬁ cial ,  147  
   operational  ,   145  ,   150  
   overview ,   144  
   Parlett’s Rule Analysis  ,   145  
   unwritten ,  146  
   written ,  146  ,   150  
   S
   Salen, Katie ,   28 
   Santa Claus ,  304–305 
   Santayana, George  ,  28 
   Satoshi, Tajiri ,  301  ,  306 
   scale in games ,  41–42  ,   336  ,   339–340  
   scheduling, game design ,   385  
   Schiller, Freidrich  ,  27 
   script  ,   386 
   second-order motion ,   233  
   Sega Genesis ,  33  ,  184  
   self, sense of ,  19  
   self-actualization ,   66 
   self-expression through gaming ,  362–363  
   7th Guest, The  ,  210  
   Sim City ,  335  
   Sims ,  104 ,  365  
   single-player games  ,   354  
   singularity, technological ,  411–412  
   skill levels 
   competition aspect of ,   186  
   difﬁ culty ,  177–178  ,  179  
   playtesting ,  178  
   skill, game .  See also  skill levels 
   chance, relationship between  ,  169  ,  183 ,  184  
   enumerating  ,  152  
   mental ,  151 
   overview ,   150–151  
   physical ,   151  
   probability statistics as part of  ,  168  
   real  vs. virtual ,  151–152  
   social ,  151  
   sleep, importance of  ,  62–65  ,  67 
   Sniderman, Steven  ,  146  
   Socializers , 110 
   Socrates ,  15 
   software engineering 
   historical overview ,  81–82  
   prototypes   ( see  prototypes ) 
   spiral model ,   82  ,   83 f 
   waterfall model ,   81–82  
   solitaire  ,  209  
   Sonic the Hedgehog  ,   184  ,   407  
   Sonic the Hedgehog  ,   2 ,  33  
   sound design  ,   4  
   Space Invaders  ,   43  ,   45 ,  181–182  ,   197  
   space, game 
   aesthetics of  ,   135  
   complexity  ,   134  
   continuous  ,   131  ,   133  
   creating ,   330–31  
   discrete  ,   131  ,   132  ,   133–134  
   divided ,  333  
   grid ,  331–332  
   landmarks within ,   333–334  
   linear  ,   331  
   mathematical construct of ,  130–132  
   nested ,  134  
   objects within  ( see  objects, game ) 
   points in space  ,   332–333  
   third-person distortion  ,   340–342  
  web ,   332  
   zero dimensions  ,   134–135  
   spontaneity  ,   28  
   Spy Hunter  ,   188  
   Star Trek , 303  
   Star Wars  ,   300–301  ,  303 
   Stern, Andrew  ,   296  
   story bible  ,   386  
   storylines ,  262–263 
   cliches ,  279–280  
   combinations  ,   267  
   consistency ,  276  
   endings, preference for singular  , 
   267–269  
   hero’s journey  ,   273–274 ,  275  
   interactive ,  263–264  ,   266–267  
  overview, documenting ,  384  
   screenwriting tips  ,   270–271  
   simplicity ,  271–272  
   story bible  ,   386  
   story machine method  ,   265–266  
   string of pearls method  ,   264–265  
   transcendence  ,   272  
   unity ,   266–267  
   videogames  vs. movies/television ,  269  
   subconcious  ,   115 
   encouraging creativity from  ,   64–68  
  
  INDEX
  489
   meaningfulness of images produced by  , 
   63–64 
   recording ideas from  ,   66 ,  68  
   Super Mario Brothers  ,  184  ,  331 
   Super Monkey Ball  ,  56 
   surprise, element of in game designs ,   26–27 
   Sutton-Smith, Brian ,  31 
   Swain, Chris ,  33  
   Swiffer ,  228–230  ,  232  ,   233  
   symmentrical games  ,  172–173  
   T
   team design 
   communication skills on ,  5–6  
   communication, importance of ,  376–380  
   overview ,  375–376  
   respect, mutual ,  378  
   unity ,  379–380  
   teamwork, elements of ,   372–373  
   technical writing ,  4 
   technology, game  
   decorational ,  405 ,  406  
   foundational ,  405 ,  406  ,  407 
   future predictions ,  412–414  
   innovation ,  410–411 
   overview ,  404–405  
   phases of hype  ,  409–410  
   singularity ,  411–412 
   Tekken  ,   5 ,  146  
   tetrad, elemental  .  See  elemental tetrad  
   Tetris ,   88 ,  209 ,   259 
   themes, game 
   focus of  ,  56  
   Hercules storyline ,  54 
   importance to art form  ,  48 
   power of ,  53–54  
   resonance ,   53–56 
   truth-based  ,  54–55 
   unifying ,  49–52  ,  53 
   time travel ,  269–270  
   Toontown  ,  54–55 
   Toontown Online  ,  104–105 
   Transformers  ,   303  
   transmedia worlds  ,   300–301 .   See also speciﬁ c 
  games 
   evolution of ,   304–305 
   intuitive nature of  ,   305–306  
   longevity of ,   304 
   mediums ,   305 
   power of , 303  
   stories of ,   306 
   understandability  ,  306 
   wish fulﬁ llment  ,   306  
   triangularity  ,   181–183  
   truth, search for ,   15  
   tutorials  ,  386  
   Twenty Questions  ,   213–214  
   U
   Ultima III ,   194  
   Unreal Tournament ,   365  
   usability testing ,   390  
   V
   verbal puzzles  ,   105 
   Verne, Jules ,   277  
   violence, game  ,   448–450  
   Virtua Fighter ,   448  
   virtual interface ,   225  
   virtual skillset  ,   151–152  
   visible light ,   115–116  
   visual arts, language of  ,   4 
   visual design ,   287  ,   289–291  
   Vogler, Christopher  ,   273  
   voice actors  ,   324  
   Von Kekule, Friedrich  ,   63 ,   64  
   W
   walkthrough, game  ,   386  
   Warcraft  ,   148  
   web, character  ,   319–321  
   Wii Sports ,   21  
   Wizards of the Coast  ,   302 
   work  
   play, relationship between ,  29  
   purpose of  ,   29  
   World of Warcraft  ,   358  ,   366  ,   450  
   worldbuilding 
   accessibility ,   277  
   Wright, Will ,   350  
   Y
   Yee, Nicholas ,   451  
   Yin-Yang  ,   222  
   Z
   Zelda ,   208  
   Zelda: Ocarina of Time ,   333  
   Zelda: Windwalker ,   336  
   Zimmerman, Eric ,   28  
   Zork  ,   208  ,   209  ,   332  
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SOURCE: textdata/thevault/_GM Books/World Building & Game Design/ Misc T/The Art of Game Design  A Book of Lenses.pdf