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That doesn’t seem too bad. Definitely agree with him on these people who try to make this such a formal thing throwing around all of this terminology whenever talking about games / design, writing white papers and books on such stuff. It’s like geesh loosen up a bit egg heads.
Yet in his own way he is trying to formulize it to as well. Just not nearly to the same degree.
It was good to hear someone’s view on what works for them.
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…Sounds familiar, at least to me… 
As for the rest of it…I really like how he presented it. The egg-headed stuff that academics - and those like me who tend to fall into academic habits - talk about, has really simple underlying principles.
I like that all relationships he discusses are linear, and thus simple and quick to develop and debug. Having a bajillion different knobs to turn is powerful, but it bogs you down (this is why JRPGs suck - knobs, knobs as far as the eye can see.)
Also, thinking in terms of economy and how to enforce balance of player resources is a really cool idea. One of my frustrations with JRPGs is how by the end of a campaign, you are a millionaire because you beat up random monsters both for fun and profit (more of the latter, less the former.)
Really good post, thanks! This helps.
I want to boil his stuff down even simpler:
- Does the player understand?
- Does the player care?
- Does the player have an action?
- Does the player’s action create a satisfying response (or unsatisfying response if they fuck up)?
- Does this scenario fit the game.
Loops, etc,
It’s all these basic questions. He brings a few cool tools into bear:
Action - Sustain - Decay ) ) This is about broadening the action space and connecting it to the response
Mental Modelling ) ) This is all about giving you tools to break down what’s going on when overwhelmed.
Generate - Pool - Consume ) ) This is all about creating freedom for the player to choose when to make these decisions. Bigger pool? More freedom to wait. Slower gen? More precious the choice.
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