We all have our own unique motivations for playing games. Maybe you play games to make friends and meet new people. Maybe you play games to get immersed in exciting new worlds. Or maybe you play games cause you like making things explode. Whatever your motivations may be, as designers its our job to make sure that all types of players are engaged with our games. But what are the different player types, and how can we make sure that all of them are having fun? Let’s take a look at the many different ways of classifying players and see what we can discover.
Read moreAdaptation and the Nature of Reality
NPC stat block by MeertoontheMontague
When you get information - fictional or not - your brain calculates what elements are plausible, given the contextual parameters of the story. Then, for all matches, your brain files away those plausibilities for later use.
Read moreThe Nuzlocke Challenge: Personalizing Difficulty
It’s not necessarily about making the game more difficult, rather it’s about making it the right difficulty for that player. When I was playing through my Nuzlocke Challenge, it wasn’t just about making the game more difficult. It was about making it feel new again. It was about changing the Pokémon experience entirely. While there should certainly be self-imposed ways to make a game more difficult, maybe there should also be self-imposed ways of making a game easier as well.
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