Gaming has always been about exploiting human psychology. It's about making people have fun, fun is a psychological state and dopamine release is intrinsicly linked to that.
That doesn't mean that it has to be bad or destructive! Fun is a positive thing, and most game designers I've met from across the industry are in it because they just want to make people have fun.
Dopamine release is a bit of a curio, really. You don't make design decisions based on optimising dopamine release; there's no way of doing that. But it's interesting to know the physiological reasons why people think that things are fun, and it's useful evidence when building a framework such as Raph's.
>Gaming has always been about exploiting human psychology.
If you think about it from this perspective than it certainly makes sense to add elements of randomness with intermittent reinforcement (e.g. slot machine) to any game or quick rewards and exponential progression (e.g. Cookie Clicker). Meanwhile you have games like Shenzhen.io which have a PDF that you need to go through to solve programming puzzles and no hints. What part of human psychology is being exploited here outside of progression from solving the puzzle which you would naturally always have?
Or even look at Shenmue. While every game at the time was a platformer where you collected things, Shenmue made you take on a partime job doing fork lifting, yet it is a cult classic. Did they use a framework to make that decision? Doesn't seem like it when it defied all game design at the time.
> What part of human psychology is being exploited here outside of progression from solving the puzzle which you would naturally always have?
This and the other scenarios you mention are deliberately created to make the player have fun. They are all engineered to manipulate the player’s emotions, the intention is to trigger dopamine and other neurological reactions. As I said, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing!
You don’t have to think about it in terms of chemical reactions, but artificially creating fun is the goal, if you boil it down.
You do get that dopamine hit when you achieve a goal in Shenzen.io, or even a self-directed goal in Shenmue, whether the designers thought that way or not.
As Raph Koster says, fun is linked to progression and learning.
Progression applies to self directed goals too (you’re setting yourself a series of minor goals when driving the forklift in Shenmue).
Ironically, motivation theory tells us that the intrinsic fun of doing undirected chores in Shenmue or mastering facts about the systems in Shenzen.io is stronger than the onslaught of mostly extrinsic rewards generated by Cookie Clicker. You had less fun playing that game, that’s one of many reasons why.
The difference I am highlighting isn't that it is wrong to think about how to make your game "fun" but the perspective you are thinking about it from. You can try to treat creating fun using a scientific or neurological framework or you can think about it from a more artistic standpoint. When Shenmue chose to make you start doing forklifting (and while I can't prove it) I am sure this was more of a artistic decision and they weren't thinking about it in terms of extrinsic or intrinsic rewards. At least to me it is obvious when something is designed more by an artist and less by someone trying exploit human psychology.
That isn't to say there isn't any logic to the design of great games but also something much more intuitive to their design decisions that doesn't follow known principals or science.
and crucially, the observation in here that you can start with either end -- the experience you want or the systems -- but you gotta make them meet in the middle.
These days, game design is generally taught as "decide on your experience, and fit systems into that." But I favor being open to starting from either end, and also in general think that focusing so strongly on the experience has a LOT of dev pitfalls:"
Lastly -- starting at this end is just as artistic as starting from a chord progression, a cool synth sound, a color palette, or a piece of wood with interesting grain. Just as with any other craft-centric view on things, it's fine to start at a formal or an experiential end -- both are artistic.
Being a classically-trained musician and understanding music theory - or even the physics of how sound waves are received by the ear and brain - doesn’t prevent you from composing works of art.
A framework like this does, however, help you make better artistic choices. It helps to identify why something isn’t having the impact you thought it should and gives you some insight on how to fix it. It also helps you to deconstruct other works and understand why they do or do not work.
That doesn't mean that it has to be bad or destructive! Fun is a positive thing, and most game designers I've met from across the industry are in it because they just want to make people have fun.
Dopamine release is a bit of a curio, really. You don't make design decisions based on optimising dopamine release; there's no way of doing that. But it's interesting to know the physiological reasons why people think that things are fun, and it's useful evidence when building a framework such as Raph's.