Tag: Immersive Design

Good Friction Makes The Fantasy Stronger

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

A lot of games are designed around removing friction. Movement becomes faster. Failure becomes softer. Resources become plentiful. Objectives become impossible to miss. Characters automatically grab ledges, recover health, identify important objects, and politely solve half the problem before the player has finished working out what the problem was. These decisions can improve accessibility, pacing, and usability. That doesn’t make them bad. The problem begins when removing friction also removes the behaviour that makes the fantasy meaningful...

Games Shouldn’t Aim For Realism. They Should Aim For Believability

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

A lot of games are trying very hard to look real. Skin stretches over simulated muscles. Rain collects on individually modelled surfaces. Characters have pores, eyelashes, fabric fibres, dental records, and enough facial detail to make you wonder whether the art team has accidentally created a second human being. None of that automatically makes the experience believable. A game can reproduce reality with extraordinary accuracy and still feel artificial the moment a character slides across the floor, an enormous creature changes direction without transferring its weight, or an object that appears physically important refuses to react to anything around it. The image looks real, but the behaviour underneath it breaks the illusion...

When Everything Affects Everything: The Overconnection Problem

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

A strong systemic game isn’t one where everything connects to everything else. It’s one where the right systems connect in ways players can understand, predict, and use. When too many consequences propagate at once, depth becomes noise...

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....

AI Is a Tool. Not a Designer.

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

AI is at its best when it’s doing work, not thinking. Bulk tasks, renaming assets, cleaning data, writing quick editor scripts, handling batch operations, setting up repetitive structures. That’s where it delivers real value. It removes friction from production so you can focus on the part that actually matters: designing the game. Used properly, it accelerates output without interfering with intent. The problem is that most teams aren’t using it this way. They’re pushing it into areas it doesn’t belong, expecting it to generate ideas, content, and even systems. That’s not acceleration. That’s substitution. And the moment you substitute design thinking with generation, you lose something fundamental...

Building a Systemic Rule Matrix

Posted on by trwebads2 in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

How to design worlds that stay coherent, flexible, and expressive as they scale Most games don’t fail because they lack content. They fail because their systems stop agreeing with each other. As development progresses, features pile up. Exceptions creep in. One-off rules appear to “fix” a level or support a single moment. Over time, the world starts to look systemic but behaves inconsistently. Players feel this immediately. Immersion fractures, experimentation slows, and the game quietly becomes scripted...

Immersive Design: Embodied Interaction and the Player’s Body

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

In Human-Computer Interaction, embodiment describes how people physically and mentally engage with technology. In games, it becomes something sharper: the way player intent turns into in-world action. It is literal (movement, camera, physics, VR) and cognitive (rules, affordances, systemic consistency)...

Immersive Design: The Third Wave of HCI and Why Games Are Leading It

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

Game design has always been a form of HCI: people interacting with systems to create meaning. What’s changed is the philosophy behind those interactions. We’ve moved from making humans operate machines, to helping them solve problems, to inviting them to participate as embodied beings inside living systems. Games aren’t just part of this shift - they’re showing everyone else how it’s done...

Immersive Design: The Simulation Ruleset – When Worlds Think Back

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

Every believable game world runs on logic - not lore. The Simulation Ruleset is the first pillar of Immersive Design, and it’s what separates scripted games from thinking ones. When cause and effect operate consistently, the player doesn’t need exposition or tutorials to understand the rules. They learn through play. Immersion doesn’t come from visual fidelity or cinematic spectacle. It comes from a world that behaves as expected. It’s the quiet satisfaction of seeing systems respond truthfully - the instant when the player realises the world isn’t just reacting to them, it’s reasoning with them...