There are three fields that concern themselves with studying the human mind and human heart: Psychology, Anthropology and Design.

 

Anthropology is the study of human societies and cultures and their development.

 

Psychology is the scientific study of human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behaviour in a given context. Psychology was further divided into behaviourists (a study of measurable behaviour with controlled experimentation) and phenomenologists (introspection or examining experiences as they happen).

 

People who study design care about the human experience.

 

The field of design seems to be the less evolved and less organized of the three and I say that because a designer from one field (musicians) may not know the working principles of another field (web design). Many existing principles from the field of Psychology and Anthropology can be used in the field of design and the intersection of these fields is inevitable. For example, cultural anthropology (study of living peoples’ ways of lives) is of a particular interest for Game Designers. Game designers identify with phenomenologists as they use the art of introspection. While Game Designers keep iterating a prototype until it “feels” like the right amount of fun, there is no way to clearly define what “fun” is. So this works on a trial and error basis.

 

But what if Game Designers started measuring the different parameters that make that particular genre fun and start documenting it?

 

These are some disadvantages of using an introspective approach:

• The results of introspection can be subjective

• Introspection or experiments happening up there in our mind may not be under controlled conditions and can lead to impure data

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Here are several of the benefits of using a behaviourists’ approach:

• Emotions can be more objectively defined, For example: speed = 110 m/s, activity = chase, emotion = thrill

• One can define a range of parameters and Game Designers can keep experimenting within that range to identify the sweet spot

• All Game Designers can perform the same experiment on the same game and come up with identical results proving its validity

• Documented data can reduce the amount of time it takes to make progress by trial and error

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Scientists and anthropologists have published plenty of papers about their discoveries but not all fields within Design have managed to do so. I think it’s time for the Game designers to start doing the same thing! Imagine having data on great games and then being able to quickly get to that point of “fun”. And why do it with just good games? Game Designers can learn even more from terrible games! Imagine having a dataset for both good and terrible games and being able to identify the success or failure of your game through Machine Learning, doesn’t this sound just wonderful?

 

In the spirit of this discussion, I have decided to post about the game I am currently researching on to identify what makes it so successful.