Chapter 10
Creating Compelling Game Systems
In this Chapter, you’ll learn:
- How pace, flow, and fun work together to make compelling games
- How to design game systems that result in compulsive interaction
- How to deepen your own game design skills while having fun doing it
There’s a huge difference between experiences that are simply fun activities and games that are fun over the long term. A fun activity might include any of the 42 types of fun covered in Chapter 5, but that’s usually not enough. If you want people to keep coming back, you need to do more. You need story and engagement, and effective methods to communicate a player’s progress within the game. This chapter introduces you to a number of game systems you can apply to any game or business environment to nurture long-term interactions with your customers.
To create enough fun to keep your players coming back, you need to create game experiences in which
- Each interaction is genuinely fun.
- The player has a combination of short-term and longer-term goals. The short-term goals satisfy the need for immediate enjoyment, whereas the longer-term goals persuade them to return.
- Challenge and skill are carefully balanced over time so that the experience doesn’t seem too easy or too hard.
- Players are constantly told about their progress toward their goals.
Understanding Flow
Have you ever felt so engaged by an activity that time seems to slip away—yet at the same time you feel a constant sense of success and joy in what you’re ...
