Introducing the EX.P.E.R.I.E.N.C.E Framework

EX.P.E.R.I.E.N.C.E Framework

This is an essay (and work in progress) on my framework, which is based on more than a decade of study, research, and a practical approach. It integrates key game design theories, making it a robust digital and analog game development tool.

EXperience

The Cambridge Dictionary defines experience as "the process of gaining knowledge or skill from doing, seeing, or feeling things." More specifically, within game design, the experience can be understood as a sum of emotional, sensory, psychological, and neurochemical triggers that cause players to react (instinctive or pulsations), ending up in emotions and moods that finally lead to lasting memories. The “rational” game loop (e.g. see, evaluate, propose, decide, act) is affected by emotions.

Experience is the core of every ludic artifact. Breaking down its “time frames” there are two types of experiences: the immediate experience and the resulting memory of this experience, which will transform itself in the short, medium, or long term. For example, a win can make players feel good immediately, but if achieved without challenge, they will not remember it later as a good experience.?

Experience can also be understood as "making a good game", as presented in Bernard DeKoven's "The Well Played Game" (2002). Jesse Schell's “The Art of Game Design” (2008) emphasizes that the game is not just its mechanics but the emotions it elicits in players.

Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory provides further insights into how players stay engaged, balancing challenge and skill to create an optimal state of immersion. Michael Sellers’ Advanced Game Design (2017) expands on this by framing experience as an emergent property of systemic interactions, reinforcing the interconnectedness of game elements.

Player

Players are at the heart of any game. Understanding their motivations and playstyles is fundamental to effective design. Richard Bartle’s Player Type Taxonomy (1996) categorizes players into Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers, offering a foundational model for understanding different engagement styles. Scott Rogers’ Level Up! (2010) expands on this idea, emphasizing that the "attitude of play", the voluntary engagement in a game world, shapes experience.

Beyond Bartle’s taxonomy, contemporary game design incorporates psychological frameworks such as Jungian archetypes, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and the OCEAN model of personality. While some of these models lack scientific rigor, they provide valuable heuristic tools for understanding player behavior. The challenge for game designers is not just recognizing these archetypes but also confronting their biases, ensuring that game experiences are inclusive and engaging for diverse audiences.

Schell also warns us about the “five types of listening" in his book, highlighting that there must be a balance between them. Among them, "listening to the player" – their needs and desires, spoken or perceived – in line with "listening to the ego", which is commonly influenced by the designer's biases and perception of reality, must join forces in the process of understanding the player's profile. When creating a new game, every designer should pursue the answer to the questions: “How they play”, “What they play” and “Why they play”.

Ethnography

A game on the shelves, or in your hard drive, is not a game, but the “prospect” of a game. A game only becomes a game when played, and it is always played in a specific context, with specific actors. Playing can be seen as a “situated meeting”. The idea of situated meetings emphasizes context, emergent goals, and interactional dynamics. In other words, the cultural and social context of both the players and the game world matters.

Mary Flanagan’s Critical Play (2009) highlights the role of culture in-game experiences, advocating for inclusivity and critical engagement with design. In Rules of Play (2003) Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman introduce the idea of "games as cultural rhetoric," suggesting that games are not just entertainment but also reflections of societal norms. The application of ethnographic research allows designers to understand their audience’s lived experiences, informing more meaningful and contextually relevant designs.

Games can be seen as structured, goal-oriented interactions. Theories such as situated cognition, ethnomethodology, and social learning, though sometimes presenting contrasting views, collectively highlight that games are dynamic social processes. Notable works in this area include Weick's Sensemaking in Organizations (1995), B?dker's Goal-Directed Interaction (1991), Garfinkel's Ethnomethodology (1967), Lave and Wenger's Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (1991), and Suchman's Plans and Situated Actions (1987).

Therefore, although games can be studied as isolated artificial systems, this study happens in an abstract, maybe even logical-mathematical way. Playing, however, is always connected to humanities, and is mostly social, even when solitary (as Huizinga pointed out in 1949).

Rules

It’s common to perceive games as synonyms of their rules. In the vast majority of game designations, this element appears as one of the most prominent and relevant. Rules define the mathematical and systemic foundations of a game. There are many levels of abstraction through rules that can be studied. For instance, rules of Play classifies rules at three levels: operational (explicit rules), constitutive (underlying mathematical models), and implicit (social agreements).

Geoff Engelstein & Isaac Shalev’s Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design (2019) provide a comprehensive breakdown of rule structures, illustrating how rules shape emergent complexity. Michael Sellers’ systemic approach to game loops further emphasizes how well-designed rule systems generate compelling gameplay. Moreover, rules build the artificial system that is the game.

Donella Meadows also emphasizes in her book Thinking in Systems: A Primer (2008) that systems are more than the sum of their parts, highlighting the importance of feedback loops and the underlying rules that govern system behavior. Whenever we design a new game, the other areas mentioned in previous sections (and the ones that will come next) should also be thought of as part of the system, further expanding the rules' interdisciplinary condition. Also, thinking about "behavioral rules", "etiquette rules", "house rules" and even "rules for defining the project" (also known as meta-design) can be crucial for developing better games.

Inputs

How players interact with a game, through mechanical inputs, gestures, or strategic decisions, defines their level of agency. Scott Rogers postulates the importance of intuitive controls and clear signifiers, ensuring smooth interaction between player and system.

Jesse Schell’s Lenses of Game Design (2008) provides multiple perspectives for evaluating input mechanisms, ensuring they contribute meaningfully to immersion. In mobile and social gaming, Tim Fields’ Mobile & Social Game Design (2011) highlights the importance of frictionless inputs to maintain player retention. This area connects directly to Consequences, and without a good feedback loop, players may perceive their inputs as meaningless decisions, which leads to frustration, followed by boredom, and finally to exiting the system (i.e. stopping playing).

Elements

Every game is built from a set of technological, artistic, and mechanical components (often called “assets” in the game development industry). Heather Maxwell Chandler's Game Production Toolbox (2020) details how these elements, from assets to physics engines, come together into a cohesive whole.

In tabletop gaming, elements are more visible to players, as they act as “moving” parts that rely on the player's mechanical movement to produce an outcome. Tabletop Analog Game Design (2011) explores how physical components – such as dice, cards, and boards – influence playability, accessibility, and depth. Game elements bridge the gap between abstract rules and tangible real-world player experiences.

Narrative

Narrative structures range from linear storytelling to emergent narratives shaped by player agency. Michael Breault (2020) explores how game narratives differ from traditional media, emphasizing interactivity and systemic storytelling. Salen & Zimmerman describe narrative as a "mode of play," suggesting that even non-narrative games have an implicit sequence of events.

Flanagan’s Critical Play (2009) introduces the concept of subversive storytelling, where games can challenge dominant cultural narratives. Narrative shape experience, however, players can avoid narrative and deal directly with the system. This cuts them from the complete experience, however, it is a mode of playing that appeals to some.

Consequences

For a game to be engaging, player actions must yield meaningful consequences. On a cognitive level, players need to understand why they’re doing it and what they’ll get from it. As Salen & Zimmerman define "meaningful play" as interactions with clear, discernible outcomes.

Here, things like feedback loops, as discussed by Scott Rogers, ensure players understand whether they are succeeding or failing, which leads to one of the structuring elements of games according to Jane McGonigal (2011): Goals. Although these are often inserted in the context of the rules, without their correct understanding, and above all, perception of progress, the playful experience becomes irrelevant.

Tim Fields’ Mobile & Social Game Design (2011) illustrates how feedback mechanics (visual effects, sound cues, leaderboards) enhance engagement and retention (and monetization). Game states must communicate the impact of player choices.

Expanses

Games exist within defined spatial boundaries, whether physical (a board game or a football field), digital (an open-world game or a mobile game) or conceptual (a role-playing session). Jesse Schell discusses spatial storytelling, where level design enhances immersion. Engelstein’s work in tabletop design explores how different board layouts create varied play experiences. But perhaps Johan Huizinga's (1949) concept of the "magic circle" – the conceptual space where the game takes place – is the most significant contribution to thinking about games, and it was subsequently explored by several authors.

The beauty and power of the magic circle is undoubtedly its capacity for immersion and otherness that it promotes in players. Upon entering the magic circle, players leave behind the problems, fears, and responsibilities of the “real world” to experience cathartic, cognitive, and emotional processes through the endogenous elements that permeate it. Many say that games are escapist, but they are intrinsic “returnists”: upon leaving the magic circle, the player perceives meanings and closes the cycle of experience construction. They are profoundly changed, even if they don't realize it yet (or never realize it).

Conclusion

Metacognition, the awareness and control over one's own thought processes, makes me believe that this framework is far from complete. Much of the knowledge presented and used in its construction falls into the category of “I know that I know,” accompanied by elements that trigger the feeling of “I know that I don’t know.”

But there are certainly aspects yet to be uncovered, as there are things I “don’t know that I know,” such as how to define a game’s differentiating factor – that unique quality that sets it apart. How can this be taught through the framework? How can a structured method be developed to achieve it?

And what about the things “I don’t know that I don’t know” (as Henrique Vieira once said in Emicida's song, "I don’t know, and I cannot know")? In future work, I hope to develop a set of guiding questions or tools to explore each area presented here, providing resources for game designers to create better games, of any kind, without losing sight of what I see as the ultimate goal of game design: making the world a better place.

Acknowledges

I'd like to thank my colleagues at LUDES at UFRJ for their contributions, especially Geraldo Xexéo – mentor and great friend whose life provided me – and who contributed significantly to the text of this article.