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...
Tag: player agency
Generative Resilience: Why Good Failure Keeps Players Engaged
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....
Immersive Design: A Paradigm, Not a Genre
For decades, developers and critics have debated what makes a game “immersive.” Is it realism? Detail? Storytelling? But true immersion isn’t about spectacle - it’s about systems. Immersive Design isn’t a genre like RPG or horror; it’s a paradigm - a design philosophy that creates worlds that think, react, and remember...