Chapter 1 - The Role of the Game Designer

Some of the questions are answered partially to reduce the content length.

Exercise 1.1 - Become a Tester

Take on the role of a tester. Go play a game and observe yourself as you play. Write down what you’re doing and feeling. Try to create one page of detailed notes on your behaviors and actions. Then repeat this experience while watching a friend play the same game. Compare the two sets of notes and analyze what you’ve learned from the process.

Marvel Rivals

As I open the game, I immediately feel immersed in its world. The intro screen’s design pulls me in, and the interactive animation as I click to enter the main menu makes it even more engaging. But beyond the visuals, there’s a specific feeling that stands out—excitement for the brand.

Marvel is well known for its movies, TV shows, and comics, but not as much for its games. This game feels like a major step into a larger gaming space, aside from mobile titles and RPGs like Marvel’s Avengers (2020). However, we need to acknowledge that the bias plays a big role in the excitement—seeing the classic Marvel intro, but this time for a game, makes the experience feel fresh and important.

When I open the store section, I feel relaxed and curious to see what extra content is available, like character skins, bonus items, and emotes. Each item stands out with detailed animations, poses, and outfits that match the game’s theme. It’s clear they’re aiming to impress, and honestly, they’re doing a great job at it—everything feels well-designed and fitting for the game’s style. I appreciate the fact that, despite being a free-to-play game, it doesn’t prioritize microtransactions as its main focus. Instead, it emphasizes delivering a fun and engaging experience first, allowing monetization to occur naturally as a byproduct of player enjoyment.

The game is multiplayer PvP, almost like Overwatch (controversially almost like Overwatch, but that’s a whole other discussion). It offers different game modes like Quick Match, Competitive, and Arcade, where you queue up with other players to form teams and face off against opponents—unless it’s a last-man-standing mode, where the goal is to eliminate everyone. What really surprises me is how fast the matchmaking is. Most of the time, it takes less than three seconds to find a party, which is honestly impressive. It also gives me a sense of security—knowing that the game still has a strong player base makes it feel relevant and alive.

While inside the match, as a seasoned gamer, I find the controls (keyboard) comfortable since they are nearly identical to other similar games in terms of genre, game type, etc. I feel satisfied with the gameplay overall, specifically with the sense of familiarity provided by the standardization of the design.

Content-wise, the game triggers a range of emotions, but the most stand-out ones—expectedly—are focus, a sense of achievement/accomplishment, anger, and joy. If I’m playing Competitive, my emotions are tied to my role. As a support, I feel the need to keep my team alive. As a vanguard (colloquially known as Tank), I focus on keeping my duelist/strategist in check. And as a duelist/strategist (or colloquially, DPS—Damage per Second), my priority is to clear the way for my team. Winning a match brings a sense of satisfaction, knowing that everyone played their part, making me want to queue up again. But if I lose, my instinctive reaction is to blame my teammates (not that it’s necessarily a good thing, but it happens). Frustration kicks in, and I often lose motivation to continue playing—unless another feeling takes over: the need to win. When that happens, I’ll queue up again, out of spite.

Exercise 1.2 - Inspiration

Seek out inspiration for a game by doing something new: go to play, read a new genre of book, watch a documentary, follow the news, or go for a walk and look at your neighborhood with “beginners eyes.” What did you find that might be the basis for a playful system?

Definition

To me, what defines something as “Play” is the ability to create ‘fun’ out of any activity. However, this is more of an instinctive answer, rather than a logical one. If we say that ‘play’ can only evoke fun, we’re omitting the other feelings, which I reflected in exercise 1.1 such as Frustration, Pride, Focused…etc. So, I guess, the ‘correct’ definition would be: Play is the ability to reframe the feelings of an activity, most often towards fun.

For instance – cleaning my room. It’s boring because it’s a repetitive, mundane chore. Deep down, I know that no matter how clean the place is, I’ll have to do it again after a period of time. What makes a routine task feel repetitive is its lack of variation. I’m practically doing the same thing over and over again. I feel that there’s nothing new coming out of it – nothing innovative. However, any task promises a reward after, it’s just that it’s not enough to compensate for the process I have to go through which essentially makes it ‘boring’.

To ‘play-ify’ these dull activities, we need to understand the components that make up a ‘play’:

• Objectivity: A play must have a predefined and underlying goal or an artificially created one on the spot (this includes a final reaching point or the stimulation of an emotion during the process…)
• Defined Rules: A play must contain a set of defined regulations to establish control over other residual factors such as Motivations, Fairness…etc
• Obstacles: A play must have some sorts of obstacles to be overcome by performing activities that follow the defined rules so that we can reach the objective.

CLARIFICATION: What I meant by ‘an artificially created one on the spot’ could be better explained with examples. For instance, a sandboxed game like Minecraft, there isn’t a predefined goal in the game but there is an unwritten goal that everyone who downloads the game knows – which is to build things, but what to build is entirely up to the players. Hence, the goal(s) will be created ‘on the spot’ (to build a house, a skyscraper…etc). Or, even as simple as a child running around a playground. This is technically still ‘play’. The kids are running around to create a sensation of fun by chasing the other kids, to get from one area to another…etc and these mini ‘goals’ can be changed at any moment, but the underlying goal to create the sensation, stays the same which technically makes it the goal.

FUN FACT: Obstacles are often the byproduct of the rules. For instance, in a bike race, the rule is to maintain a speed between 40km/hr - 60km/hr on a hilly terrain within a defined map. The obstacle? Trying not to crash because of the unpredictable slopes. An easy way to distinguish between an obstacle or a rule:

• Can I do that? → If no, it's because of a rule.
• Why do I have to do that? → Likely because there's a rule, and the thing that you have to do is to overcome the obstacle(s) (within that rule)

Playful System

Okay, phew, now that we have a definitive view on what ‘play’ is, we can systematically play-ify any activity by analyzing the play’s components. Previously, I’ve based the definition of a play on 3 items: Objectivity, Defined Rules, and Obstacles.?

Let’s revisit me cleaning my room earlier, by applying the play-ification based on the 3 components, we could have something like this

• Objectivity: To…make my room clean?
• Defined Rules: I can set a timer to assert an artificial feeling of a ‘deadline’ but then we don’t really have any factor to solidify this assertion.?
• Obstacles: My obstacles are basically the dirt I have to clean, so not that complicated.

You can kinda start to notice where I’m going with this. By asserting the time limit for cleaning my room, I’m confined within that constraint which means I have to strategically come up with a way to clean my room. Here, I can maybe start by listing down what I need to clean, what I should clean first, how I should clean it…etc. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to finish it within the time on the first try, but by optimizing my ways, I’ll somehow manage to do all of that within the timeframe, and will have successfully created a sense of achievement, not because of the cleaning, because of how I came up with the way to clean. This is gamification.

With this, you can see that I start to feel more inspired to clean—not just because I have to, but because I’m now curious about how efficiently I can do it. The smarter I get at optimizing my approach, the more satisfying it becomes.

And that sounds like an idea for a new game for me! (Making people clean in creative ways within a time limit)

Exercise 1.3 - Your Life as a Game

List five activities in your life that might make interesting game systems. What seems playful about them? Do they have rules or objectives? Describe the “verbs” that make up these activities. Briefly describe a possible game based on several of these verbs.

Driving to Work

Is it playful?

>> It can be, sometimes. Sometimes, the usual road you take to work would be closed, so you’d need to drive through the other streets, and you could discover new places you didn’t know existed, or that the street you’d be taking was a better route…etc.

Are there rules and/or objectives?

>> Uh, yes. The objective: get to the office. The rules are:

• You need to have a transportation method
• You need to arrive to your office within a time limit (depending on what time you take off from home)
• You need to drive under a certain speed limit…etc (if you’re driving, of course)

Describe the base ‘Verbs’ used to construct the sentences for expressing this activity

• To have a transportation method implies that you need to somehow figure how to find it, whether that be ownership, public transportation, tagging along with someone…etc
• To arrive to the office within a time limit implies that you need to get to your destination within a range of certain hours with your chosen transportation method
• To drive under a certain speed limit implies that there’s a constraint you must follow, given that you’ve chosen one specific type of transportation

Possible games

• A game that tasks you to find the optimal route that will get you to the location based on the current hour you’re in, traffic, and other environmental variables

Finding similar songs to the one I like

Is it playful?

>> Okay, this is the most playful one, without a doubt.

Are there rules and/or objectives?

>> The goal: to find other songs that ‘sound’ similar to a certain song I like. The rules:

• I have to do it fast
• I have to be focused and alone

Describe the base ‘Verbs’ used to construct the sentences for expressing this activity

• Having to do it fast implies that I will lose interest in finding the songs if it takes too much hassles
• Having to be focused and alone implies that I will not be able to categorize the new songs to be ‘similar’ since I’m not all myself

Possible games

• A game that tasks you on identifying the characteristics of a song – for instance, its tempo, its rhythm, its genre…etc

Exercise 1.4 - Game Journal

Start a game journal. Don’t just try to describe the features of the games you play, but dig deeply into the choices you made, what you thought and felt about those choices, and the underlying game mechanics that support those choices. Go into detail; look for the reasons why various mechanics of the game exist. Analyze why one moment of gameplay stands out and not another. Commit to writing in your game journal every day.

[ EXTRACTED FROM: https://www.uhdpaper.com/2021/10/tiny-tinas-wonderlands-4k-8071e.html ]

Why did I do that?

The game has different types of chests. For instance, ammo chests, gun chests, money chests, etc. Usually, when I encounter a chest in the game, I can open it by clicking on “E” (default) – it literally says “Press E to open the chest.” However, while playing, I discovered other hidden ways to unlock the chest. One is to melee the chest, and the other is to do damage to the chest by slam attacking it (jump from above + melee).

I usually unlock the chests using these unconventional methods instead of clicking “E” because it feels way more satisfying than just clicking “E” to unlock it. The reason why it’s more satisfying has to do with the additional content I can visually see and hear when I do it (a.k.a kinesthetic feedback). When meleeing to unlock the chest, I can see the animation of my character swinging to open it. However, surprisingly enough, it also depends on the melee weapon I’m equipping—if the ‘swinging speed’ is too slow, I’ll feel a bit annoyed instead. So, it also has to be at the right speed. By slam attacking to unlock the chest, it’s even more satisfying to see a different type of animation being played while hitting the combo correctly. You can see your character dropping from the high ground and literally slamming into the ground. If the hit area is close enough, the chest unlocks.

Why do those mechanics exist?

• By having these hidden mechanics or combo mechanics to allow for chest unlocking, I actually feel satisfied to have found them. In terms of game design, I’m pretty sure that it’s intentional, but hiding them like this so that players discover them on their own adds a passive emotional trigger of satisfaction. It gives a sense of agency to me. By this, I mean that when I open the chest just by clicking “E,” it feels a bit lifeless—only the chest opens, and nothing else happens. However, if I use one of the two hidden mechanics, I feel even more immersed.
• By having these additional mechanics hidden, I guess the designers are hoping to seed the idea of experimentation in players by making them think: Since these hidden mechanics exist, there must be something else I haven’t discovered.

Exercise 1.5 - Your Childhood

List ten games you played as a child, for example, hide and seek, four square, and tag. Briefly describe what was compelling about each of those games.

Hide and Seek

Off the top of my head, the most compelling reason to play this—or really, any childhood game at all—is the yearning to connect with my friends, the craving for social interaction. But if we’re looking at it technically, the second most compelling reason to play Hide and Seek is the shift in roles—the sense of authorship and power as the seeker, or the anxiety and need for strategy as the hider.

If you’re playing as the seeker, you have this weird feeling of authority. People are literally hiding because of you. They’re doing whatever they can to avoid being found, meaning, in a way, they fear you. But it’s not really about fear—it’s more about the thrill of pursuit, that rush of knowing someone is out there, waiting to be found. The challenge is tracking them down before they slip away. So, the feeling you get isn’t just authority, but also pressure, which makes every discovery satisfying.

If you’re playing as a hider, it’s all about strategy and tension. You have to assess the environment: Where should I hide? Is this spot already known? Should I hide alone, or blend in with the others? But more than that, the real thrill comes from those near misses—when the seeker gets so close, but doesn’t spot you. That moment when you’re holding your breath, trying to stay perfectly still, heart pounding—that’s what makes Hide and Seek exciting. It’s like a real-life stealth game.

What keeps Hide and Seek engaging over time is how it evolves. The environment always changes (new hiding spots, new play areas). The players adapt—you learn which spots are obvious, how different seekers behave, and how to outsmart them. It turns into a sort of meta-game, where the best players start predicting patterns and breaking them to stay ahead. That’s why Hide and Seek never really gets old—it grows with the players.