Tag: player experience design

Process Trust: Why Believable Games Need Accountable Systems

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

Players are getting better at reading the process behind games. They notice when a world behaves consistently. They notice when a studio can explain what it made, why it made it, and who is accountable for the result. They notice when a mechanic keeps its promise, when a rule survives new situations, and when a production claim sounds like something the team can actually defend. They also notice when a game asks for trust it has not earned. That is why production is becoming part of design. Not in a boring spreadsheet way. In a player-facing way. The tools a team uses, the systems it protects, the shortcuts it accepts, the rules it keeps consistent, and the people it allows to own creative decisions all shape what the player eventually believes about the game. This is process trust...

Studios Rejecting Generative AI Show That Human-Made Is Becoming A Design Promise

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

Studios refusing generative AI are making more than an ethical statement. They’re turning human authorship, creative accountability, production culture, and player trust into visible parts of the game itself...

Pixel art game studio revealing the shared knowledge network beneath a finished game world.

The Work Players Never See: Why Game Development Depends on Shared Memory

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

A game studio does more than produce code, art, levels, and documents. It produces shared memory. This article explores how institutional knowledge, team continuity, and the history behind thousands of small decisions shape coherent games - and why losing that memory changes a project long before players ever see the consequences.

Technology Doesn’t Save Projects. Focus Does.

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

Brendan Greene's PlayerUnknown Productions has announced layoffs, cancelled further development of Prologue: Go Wayback!, and is downsizing its team while continuing work on its proprietary terrain-generation technology, Melba. The studio says the decision was driven by the costs associated with developing the technology, which is also intended to power its future MMO project, Artemis. On the surface, this looks like another unfortunate downsizing story in an industry that has seen far too many of them. But underneath it sits a problem that affects studios of every size. Sometimes the technology becomes the project...

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...

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...