#19 - The Art of Game Design - Chapters 7,8,9

Chapter 7 - The Game Improves through Iteration

I'd read a paper once that described how they made a game in 4 weeks, but it sucked.  After careful reconsideration and further iteration over the course of 12 more weeks, they polished the game into a fine product which became one of the best games on the mobile market.  It doesn't take a long time to make a game, but to make a finely polished game is something entirely different.  Unfortunately, thanks to the great video game crash of 1984, we realize that players don't just want games, they want great games.

Lens #13: The Lens of the Eight Filters
Lens #14: The Lens of Risk Mitigation
Lens #15: The Lens of the Toy

Chapter 8 - The Game is Made for the Player

Know your audience and know how to entertain them! An entire chapter is here that describes how to do it and introduces several taxonomies that I have never seen before.

Lens #16: The Lens of the Player
Lens #17: The Lens of Pleasure

Chapter 9 - The Experience is in the Player's Mind

In this chapter we talk a lot about experience from the perspective of the player. One topic that comes up a lot in my research is Flow. A game needs to be challenging enough without being too difficult. This makes up an "Aspect of Replayability" in my characterization of games in the aspect of Challenge. The other five aspects are Social, Experience, Mastery, Impact and Completion (SChEMICo).

Equally important however is motivating the player to get into your game at all. This is done by Playability. We need to both judge what entices the player and what keeps them happy in the game.

Lens #18: The Lens of Flow
Lens #19: The Lens of Needs
Lens #20: The Lens of Judgment