2. The Foundations Of A Model Of Game Design

Where chemistry separated itself from alchemy by building testable models of physical atoms, a science of game design concerns itself with testable models of human psychology.

Many of the attempts to define games have focused on the mechanistic elements of the game, such as the primitive actions that the system allows the player to perform or the tokens that the player manipulates. The approach has been to treat games as self contained logical system.

Mechanics and aesthetics are certainly important pieces of any model of game design, but in the end, such analysis provides little insight into what makes a game enjoyable. You end up with a set of fragmented pieces that tell you almost nothing about the meaningful interactions between the game as a simulation and the player as an active and evolving participant. Games are not mathematical systems. They are systems that always have a human being, full of desires, excitement and immense cleverness, sitting smack dab in the center. To accurately describe games, we need a working psychological model of the player.

Player Model

Our player model is simple: The player is entity that is driven, consciously or subconsciously, to learn new skills high in perceived value. They gain pleasure from successfully acquiring skills.

Diagram 3: The player follows clues to the acquisition of a new skill

Let’s dig into three key concepts in our player model.

· Skills

· Driven to learn

· Perceived value

Skill

A skill is a behavior that the player uses to manipulate the world. Some skills are conceptual, such as navigating a map while others are quite physical, such as pounding in a nail with a hammer.

Driven To Learn

Play is instinctual. In low stimulation environments where we are not actively pursuing activities related to food and shelter, people will begin playing by default. Strong feedback mechanisms in the form boredom or frustration prod us into action. Given a spare moment, we throw ourselves into playing with blocks or dolls as children and more intricate hobbies as adults. It is a sign of our need for meaningful stimulation that solitary confinement remains a vicious punishment for the most hardened criminals.¹

The flip side is that we are rewarded for learning. The sensation that gamers term ‘fun’ is derived from the act of mastering knowledge, skills and tools. When you learn something new, when you understand it so fully you can use that knowledge to manipulate your environment for the better, you experience joy.

There is a reasonable amount of neuroscience available to support this claim. Edward A Vessel, a cognitive neuroscientist at the NYU Center for Neural Science writes:

Upon the click of comprehension, a natural opiate called endomorphin, a messaging chemical in the brain similar in structure to morphine, is released. As humans, we are wired to crave new information constantly. In some sense, what you and I term curiosity can be interpreted as our brain looking for its next fix of deliciously fascinating information.

As game designers, we deal with the fun, boredom and frustration on a regular basis. It is good to recognize that these are biological phenomena, not some mystical or mysterious sensation. For more thoughts on the topic, I encourage you to have a quick read through Raph Koster’s book “A Theory of Fun for Game Design”