December 2015
Beginner
480 pages
13h 25m
English
book
Players Making Decisions: Game Design Essentials and the Art of Understanding Your Players
by Zack Hiwiller
Content preview from Players Making Decisions: Game Design Essentials and the Art of Understanding Your Players
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10. Decision-Making
A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself.
—JOHN FOSTER WATSON
It’s not enough to ask players to make decisions—the designer must frame decision points in a way that is conducive to generating or maintaining flow for the player. This critical component is where many games fail. To understand how to craft the most effective decisions, designers must first understand the basics of decision-making in games and then the basic features that make those decisions interesting or less interesting.
Interesting decision-making does not necessarily mean “decision-making that I, the designer, like.” Instead, it is decision-making that keeps the player in a space between frustrating challenge and tepid boredom.
Player ...
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.