Did you get to Unite 2016? If not, Unity posted a fantastically edited video of my game design talk on Youtube. The camera, audio, and video were strikingly professional.
Topic: What Makes Great Games Great?
Where: Unite 2016 (LA)
Gigi
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Great talk Gigi! I learned a ton.
I’m wondering if you could elaborate more on the “No Distractions” part of flow. How do you know if the feature you want to add would be a distraction? A lot of features in games that I would label a “distraction” are great additions to the game in my opinion. For example, in The Elder Scrolls games you can be on your way to a quest you want to do, and see a tower in the distance and decide that you should go check out that tower instead. This seems like a distraction, but it is a lot of people’s favorite part of these types of games.
I’ve got quite a few thoughts on some other things you said if you don’t mind being bombarded with questions.
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thank you 
this was very informative and I think it brought alot of things together in a quite simple way that is usually so scattered across the internet and various websites 
Heck, I tried to explain to people what design means…heck I even tried to explain it to myself for years, but it’s really hard to find the right words for it So congrats on this
Also, I want to add THIS is what makes the difference between someone who has just an idea and someone who designs something around an idea. The moment you design, the idea, barely, if at all, matters anymore, because you can make something good out of ANY idea, if you design it right
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I watched this recently, it was very good. Thanks Gigi. The flow that you describe sounds to me like a kind of meditative state.
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A good presentation to help people start thinking about various aspects of design. I showed this in class last week to a class of new first year game design students and it led to some interesting discussions.
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Really enjoyed this, Gigi! It was also fun to watch you having fun. Great to see people we know here almost in person. You definitely made me want to budget for Unite next year.
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It was good meeting you, Gigi. My wife and I enjoyed the talk, and I was glad you had great turnout even though you were competing with the shiny new toys in the roadmap session!
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Is it required? Open world games like Elder Scrolls, Skyrim, and GTA 5 have tons of ‘optional’ content that slowly becomes available through exploration. They are offered as optional things you might want to explore - aka ‘Player Driven Content’. These features also leverage Mystery Box - wonder what’s up with that quest? A distraction is usually right up in your face, in an almost aggressive way - like Ads, bad User-Interface, or gratuitous, uninteresting story (I’m looking at you Red Dead Redemption).
Gigi
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I loved the discussion of player driven content. It is my favorite part of the games I have played.
My son and I watched the video together and we both agree that for our game, the feedback would be the most difficult. Since we want the game to be immersive for the role players, we don’t want feedback that doesn’t make sense in the environment. I think we have come up with a few unique ideas but it will take some testing to know what the players may like. Because we are trying to stay away from things like “numbers” we realize that we are really going to have to focus on this when we bring in testers.
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Loved it.
I am curious, why the change from balanced difficulty to just right challenge? Balanced difficulty seems easier to remember.
But you never do anything without a reason.
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Probably one of the better videos I’ve viewed in a long time, that’s got me interested in your podcast series now.
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Careful with expectations. When I built Tap Happy, I had 3 unique design concepts for an idle clicker game: progressive stories, single-tier upgrades, and an end state. I achieved my goal! New, unique mechanics. And, no one liked it. In the end, I pushed it too far. I violated expectations, which made it hard to connect to. It took me a long time to realize that my unique design ideas weren’t all that great.
Feedback is important - you can do it in unique ways, like Journey, Inside, and the Witness. And, if you do, it has to be super clear, really impactful, and masterfully done. Inventing something ‘new’ takes an extreme number of design iterations, compared to leveraging what people already know.
Gigi
3 Likes
Sometimes, my reasons are flawed. It is a journey of exploration. In this case, experience taught me that ‘Just-Right’ feels simpler than ‘Balanced Difficulty’. People seem to be able to grasp that the core concept that the trees were just right at age 7, where they won’t be at age 17. It’s somehow more intuitive than saying the difficulty was balanced, even though it means the same thing. Plus, it has fewer letters ;).
Gigi
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We have gotten a lot of feedback from our intended audience, which has helped a lot. They have helped us to fine tune the mechanics. If we focus on that audience, it should be fine. Since we are going for a niche audience, it is really impossible to know what will work and what will not work. The best for us is to release small mini-games to test the response to our ideas and focus the testing on the target audience. We plan to start testing as soon as we have something playable.
If our goal was to attract a broad segment of the audience, the approach would be different. Sometimes, I think it is okay to make a game for the sake of something new. Fortunately, our income does not depend on the game so we have the ability to do this.
Our audience complains about what they “already know” and they clamor for something different that focuses on their play style. I think if we put in what they “already know” we would lose our audience. In fact I know we would! They have told me this.
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whenever I hear “just right” I have that image of a master chef in my head, who kisses his fingers and has delight facial expression of pure satisfaction with the result of his cooking
kinda like this:
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