Tag: systemic game 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...

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...

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...

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...

Mechanical Foreshadowing: Teach The Rule Before The Test

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

A lot of difficult moments in games are not actually difficult. They are simply unexplained. The player enters a room, touches something they did not know was dangerous, and dies. A hidden sniper fires from outside the frame. A floor collapses without warning. An enemy suddenly becomes immune to the strategy that worked five minutes earlier. The game may technically be challenging the player, but the player is not being tested on understanding. They are being punished for missing information they were never given...

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...

The Simulation Compass: Why Players Need Direction Before They Need Freedom

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

One of the biggest myths in game design is that player freedom automatically creates immersion. It doesn't. Freedom only matters when players understand what they can actually do with it. This is where many systemic games fail. Designers spend months building interconnected mechanics, emergent interactions, and multiple solution paths. The systems are there. The depth is there. The possibilities are there. The player never sees them. Instead, they walk into a space, identify the most obvious solution, and move on. Not because they don't want to experiment, but because the game never taught them how to recognise opportunity. This is what the Simulation Compass solves...