Tag: game design theory

Coherence Is Expensive: Why Consistent Game Rules Require Disciplined Systemic Scope

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

Systemic games are often described as though the solution is simply to connect everything to everything else. Fire affects grass. Water conducts electricity. Sound attracts enemies. Objects have weight. Characters remember what happened. Weather changes visibility. Food spoils. Doors react to pressure. Somebody suggests adding wind, and suddenly the engineering team is explaining why every loose object in the game now needs an opinion about aerodynamics. These relationships can create remarkable depth. When rules remain consistent across different situations, players begin treating the world as something they can understand. They form expectations, test ideas and carry knowledge into new encounters. A mechanic stops being a button they press and becomes part of a larger model of how the world behaves...

The Fear Of Letting Go: Why Game Designers Need To Author Rules, Not Outcomes

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

Games are expensive, complicated and held together by an alarming combination of specialised technology, production planning and at least one tool that everybody is frightened to update. When a team spends months creating an encounter, cinematic, environment or narrative sequence, it naturally wants the player to experience that work correctly. The problem begins when protecting every authored moment prevents the player from meaningfully participating in the game. The player can move, aim, select dialogue and activate objects, but they can’t genuinely construct an outcome. Their role is to confirm a sequence that has already been decided. Systemic design asks designers to let go of some direct control. Instead of authoring every solution, we author rules, relationships, spaces and constraints that allow players to form solutions for themselves...

Model Transferability Is How Players Learn The World

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

Good game systems do not just teach players what to press. They teach players how the world works. That difference matters because a player who only learns inputs can only follow instructions. A player who understands the model can solve problems the game has not explicitly explained yet. This is where Model Transferability becomes important...

The Problem With Modern Immersion: Why Looking Real Is Not Enough

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

A lot of modern games look immersive before they actually feel immersive. The lighting is expensive. The animations are polished. The worlds are huge. Characters blink, breathe, sweat, stumble, and stare dramatically into the middle distance. Everything looks like it should pull the player in, but somehow the experience can still feel strangely hollow. That is the problem with modern immersion...

Activation vs Construction: Why Pressing A Button Is Not The Same As Solving A Problem

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

A lot of games give players choices. The problem is that not all choices ask the player to think. Some choices are simply buttons attached to pre-designed outcomes. Press this to distract. Press that to persuade. Select this option to set a trap. Choose this dialogue line to resolve the scene. These interactions can be useful, readable, and satisfying, but they are not the same as letting the player construct an outcome through the world. This is the difference between activation and construction. Activation is when the player triggers a designed outcome. Construction is when the player builds an outcome through interacting systems. Both can look like agency from the outside because both involve player input, but the player’s relationship to the result is completely different. One asks the player to select a solution. The other asks the player to understand the world well enough to create one...

The Simulation Mask: Why Players Need to Become the Character

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

Most games tell players who they are. You are a detective, a soldier, a thief, a hunter, a wizard, or a survivor. The problem is that being told something and feeling something are not the same thing. A game can spend hours explaining who your character is through dialogue, cutscenes, lore entries, and exposition, but if the player’s behaviour never changes, the fantasy remains superficial. They are controlling the character, not inhabiting them...

Responsibility in Immersive Design: Why Consequences Create Meaning

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

Most games want players to feel like their choices matter, immersing them in a world where every decision has weight and significance. The problem is that many of those choices don't actually change anything meaningful within the game. You pick dialogue option A or dialogue option B, often leading to interactions that feel strikingly similar despite the initial differences in choice. You choose one path over another, venturing into distinct story arcs that ultimately converge at the same destination. You spend resources one way instead of another, believing that your strategy will yield varied outcomes. Yet somehow, the game quietly bends itself back into the same shape, leaving players questioning the impact of their decisions...

The Simulation Meaning: Why Mechanics Need a Purpose

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Featured, Game Design

You can usually tell when a game knows what it wants to be. Not because of its story. Not because of its graphics. Because every system seems to be pulling in the same direction. The opposite is also true. Some games have perfectly functional combat, progression, crafting, and exploration systems, yet the experience feels strangely hollow. Nothing appears broken, but nothing feels meaningful either. The player is busy, but they are not immersed. This is often a simulation meaning problem. Simulation meaning is what happens when the rules of your game world express the deeper purpose of the experience. It is not enough for a system to be fun in isolation. It needs to support the fantasy the player is stepping into. The meaning comes from how the player interacts with the world, not just what the story tells them...

Gameplay Exhaustion: Why More Content Is Making Your Game Feel Empty

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

There’s a growing issue in modern game design, and it isn’t a lack of content. It’s the opposite. Games are full of things to do, but very little of it carries weight. Players move from task to task, clearing objectives, ticking off systems, progressing through experiences that feel large on the surface but hollow underneath. This is what I call gameplay exhaustion. It’s the point where the player is still playing, but no longer thinking. At the start, everything works. The player is learning patterns, testing systems, figuring out how things behave. That learning phase is where engagement is strongest. But over time, that process stops. The player begins to predict outcomes. They recognise the structure. The game becomes readable in the wrong way. Not understandable, but repetitive. That’s where exhaustion begins...

Generative Resilience: Why Good Failure Keeps Players Engaged

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

Failure is usually treated as something to reduce, smooth out, or remove. But there’s a specific kind of failure that does the opposite. It keeps players engaged, focused, and willing to push further. This is what I call generative resilience. It occurs when failure is produced by a system that behaves consistently, where outcomes emerge from the player’s own decisions rather than from arbitrary punishment or scripted outcomes....