Everything Is A Game (Here's How To Play) — Part I

Note: I'm not a game designer. But, I've played the crap out of video games since I was 5, and I study the intricacies of them deeply. Being a video game designer was a 'dream job' of mine when I was a little kid. I'd still like to design an official game some day, even if it's a solo indie project on Steam. I have no real game dev or design experience, but I have always loved creating game mods in Warcraft III's World Editor. I have a publicly released game that I've worked on (on and off) for 13 years. Mathog’s Arena, if you care to Google it.

Now, onto the article.

Video games are enjoyable. The good ones, anyway.

I think we can all agree on that.

But why? What is it about them that makes them so fun, sometimes to the point of even becoming psychologically addictive?

Who is behind the controller or keyboard?

A human.

What is perceiving everything about the game?

The brain.

What recognizes patterns, reacts, strategizes, discovers synergies, releases dopamine and feels a sense of accomplishment?

Again, the brain.

There is nothing exclusive to a video game that makes it fun — it's human psychology.

The problem is, most people don't see life as a game.

We attempt to escape the real world for just a bit by diving into a virtual world.

But if we step back and think for a little bit, we can take some knowledge and ideas from the virtual world to change our perception of the real world and what we're capable of.

When you turn to a video game to escape or avoid uncomfortable feelings, it doesn't feel like a big deal because it's 'just this once', 'I'll deal with it tomorrow'.

But you keep doing it 'just this once', and tomorrow ends up being next year, and you still haven't confronted your problems.

Imagine not using a game as a means to escape or ward off anxiety, and getting to enjoy the game in the purest sense — like you used to do as a kid.

Video games enhancing your real life, not detracting from it.

And real life reciprocating, and enhancing your gaming experience.

Feeling fulfilled in both. Excited to play games after a good day of work improving yourself. And even while gaming, excited to get back to the real world the next day.

So, how can we turn anything into a video game?

Let's dive in.

The Structure of a Game

Great games are structured in a way for human psychology and our reward pathways to enjoy them.

Some companies, especially recently with the explosion of microtransactions, manipulate human psychology in a dark way purely to squeeze more money out of their customers. This is the dark side of 'manipulating' human psychology.

Teaching someone how to play the game through slowly introducing new game mechanics, and showing or hinting at how to overcome the new challenge, rather than just telling the player 'light this torch and use it to burn down the brush so you can continue', is an example of a positive application of human psychology.

We get psychologically rewarded for connecting the dots ourselves — the game presents the dots to us as a puzzle to solve.

This is the same reason we laugh at a comedian's joke — it's much funnier when they leave out just enough for us to connect the dots ourselves, rather than explaining why it's funny to us.

How could the principles of making a great video game not be based on reality?

Games are made by humans, for humans. This means the core principles have to be based in the way we perceive information, which means these core principles are based in reality.

Since the human brain is at the root of us perceiving anything, we can transfer core concepts and principles from any one thing, to any other one thing.

I'm sure you can think of connections you've made in the past between two different interests you have. When we spend enough time doing any one particular thing, these patterns start to reveal themselves.

You can distill core principles of what makes a video game fun, and apply those principles towards working out, nutrition, music, meditation, journaling, doing chores, your job, business and more.

Sure, you can't exactly have loot explosions, flashing lights and limbs of dismembered demons flying around with ragdoll physics while you're doing the dishes, but that's not really what makes a game enjoyable. That is the quick, cheap dopamine side of things. It's the 'immediate fun' part of the enjoyment equation, but not the entire thing.

There needs to be progression, rewards that match the effort required to obtain it, pattern recognition, strategy, discovering skill/equipment/item/team choices that synergize with each other, feeling like your choices matter, a long term goal to progress towards paired with a sense of accomplishment when you get there, and more.

You can quickly make a game unfun by throwing off just one of these principles:

How fun would a game be if you were killing monsters and playing well, and you lost XP every kill? "Great job! You have de-leveled from level 30 to 29!" Regardless of flashy graphics and engaging combat, how long would you actually play that game?

Or if a story-driven single player game builds up to this big climax — and then just ends? No resolution to the story, no epic final encounter or challenge. Every other component of the game could be top notch, and it would still leave you dissatisfied.

(Kind of sounds like Game of Thrones Season 8, doesn't it? It had a climax, I suppose — but flew through it at a million miles an hour and did not deliver.)

Recognizing a boss's attack pattern and learning to time your dodges, only to find out the game is bugged and the attack is impossible to avoid no matter what you do… Sounds like a surefire way to have your controller chucked at a wall.

You aren't being rewarded for recognizing a pattern, and you don't feel that you have agency because no matter how well (or badly) you play, the outcome is the same.

Game. Ruined. At least, that part of the game, anyway.

Let's dive in to what makes a game fun and enjoyable, and perhaps we'll see how we can apply these principles to literally anything else in life.

The Eight Principles of a Great Game

This list is by no means every aspect there is of a game, but these are some of the biggest ones that jump out to me as the most meaningful.

We're also not covering story elements here — just actual mechanics of gameplay. A good story, of course, mirrors life, which is why, when you combine all of the aspects below that make a high quality game with a well-written story, you get a true masterpiece of a video game.

I.Progression (Covered in this article)

II. Effort-Reward Match (Covered in this article)

III. Pattern Recognition (Covered in Part II)

IV. Strategy & Synergy (Covered in Part II)

V. Challenge-Skill Match (Covered in Part III)

VI. Agency (Covered in Part III)

VII. Meta Progression (Covered in Part IV)

VIII. Enjoyment (Covered in Part IV)

Notice how even this article series uses these principles. I've shown you in advance that there are eight principles to cover, and you will have completed Principles I and II by the end of this piece. That's progression.

I break it down into distinct, manageable chunks so that you feel rewarded for the time and effort you put into reading it, knowing that you completed reading two of the Principles — rather than just dropping a 10,000 word wall of text that has no structure or distinct parts.

When we progress to Parts II–IV, be mindful as you read for how some of the other Principles of a Great Game are being used within this series.

I. Progression

Progress and improvement can be found anywhere. We crave it.

Mowing the lawn, and seeing the parts that you have mowed looking much more well-kept than they did before you started. Doing the dishes, and seeing the (possibly overflowing) pile of dishes in the sink getting smaller and smaller. Completing a mission or quest in a game, and progressing through the story. Or gaining a level, and becoming stronger than you were before. Lifting 5 more pounds than last time, and becoming stronger than you were before.

Progress drives everything we do. That might sound obvious — but that's because it's so hard-wired in our DNA, for the purpose of survival of our species and to further improve our offspring's chance of survival. This is why we crave it.

Also just as obvious: nobody would choose stagnation or regression over progress in an area they want to improve, or something that will benefit their life.

Imagine a video game without progression. No 'completing a stage and moving on to the next, slightly more challenging one'. No levelling up. No upgrades to your skills, no progression through a story. Probably wouldn't be that fun, would it? Not for very long, anyway.

The point: enjoyment is partially tied to progression. This means if we can seek ways to improve, and approach any task with the intent of improving, that task will become more enjoyable.

Don't just mow the lawn. Actively pay attention and think of ways that you could do it more effectively, or get it done faster with the same quality. Do some research, and test it out next time.

Don't just do the dishes. Is there a faster way to get this done? How much do I need to pre-clean, if at all, and allow the dishwasher to do the rest? How can I best arrange the dishes in the dishwasher to fit the most in at one time without overfilling it and causing things to not get effectively cleaned?

Don't just do a workout. Track your workouts, at least to some degree, and push yourself to beat your previous best. It might not happen every single workout — but the intent is there. Think critically:

• Can I improve my form at all?

• Can I push myself a little harder?

• Can I structure my workout more effectively, or choose better exercises for my goals?

• Can I do a bit of research to find an answer to these questions?

II. Effort-Reward Match

The more effort we put into something, the more we want (and even expect) to get out of it.

This is a huge part of game design.

Game devs can create multiple different endgame activities so players have variety in their gameplay.

But if most of them give you shitty rewards for your time and effort, basically nobody is going to participate in those activities. They're going to do the thing that gives them the most return on their time and effort investment.

The crazy part of this is — and as a gamer, you know this is true — it doesn't even matter if those 'less rewarding' activities are fun, or even if they are more fun than the 'more rewarding' activity.

It doesn't matter if they are more fun — they don't feel like they serve a greater purpose of progression — at least not effectively — so they become less enjoyable. It feels like a 'waste of time', and nobody wants to feel like they're wasting their precious free time.

That's how powerful Effort-Reward Match is. It takes something that was originally meant to be a fun use of our free time, like a video game, and urges us to often pick the 'less fun, but more effective' options. I get it; I fall into this all the time, too. I do my best to revisit the following idea:

"Time you enjoyed wasting, is not wasted time at all."

It's important to spend time doing things you enjoy doing, for the sake of doing them. This actually helps you recharge from more serious things, helps connect you to others, and allows your brain to make connections subconsciously, that you could not make if you were always in 'work/serious/go hard' mode all the time.

But, even if it didn't do all those things… Life is meant to be lived. Life is meant to be enjoyed. Even if that activity you spent time on did nothing for you except bring you joy, then it served its purpose.

There's often a middle ground, too. Can I find a way to play that is 'kind of effective' but still really fun to me? Rather than always going straight for the top shelf of 'most effective way to gain XP but incredibly boring/repetitive.'

It's no surprise that the best games — or even the most well-received content within a game — align this principle of Effort-Reward Match WITH the most inherently fun ways to play the game, and often intertwine different activities so that they offer distinct rewards from one another that are all valuable, and strongly incentivize players to partake in a variety of activities.

Is there an area of your life that you are trying to put more and more time and effort into, but are getting diminishing returns? Could you put in half the time/effort and still get 90% of the result, and now use that extra time and effort towards something else?

Is there a game you're currently playing that you unintentionally sucked the fun out of, because you are purely striving for 'optimal and efficient'? Can you think of a way to play the game that would make it more enjoyable for you, while still making decent progress or being decently effective?

Maybe you're casually playing a fighting game and you always pick the best character in the game so you can win, even though you don't enjoy that character. Don't pick Steve if you don't like playing Steve in Smash. If your goal is to have fun, anyway.

If you have the most fun playing Ganondorf, play Ganondorf. Even if he's the worst character in the game.

Or, maybe you really like playing Yoshi, who is a high-tiered character but not at the top. Now you can have fun and be a serious contender competitively (with lots of practice, of course). That is how you balance fun and effectiveness.

You can apply this to the way you approach fitness, too. Say your primary goal is currently to build muscle, or maybe it's to burn fat.

Box jumps are not at all effective at either of those things; but you like doing box jumps. Go ahead and throw them in at the beginning of your workout, do a couple sets of 5 box jumps. That's not going to negatively impact your workout, and in fact it might help a tiny bit by 'waking up' the nervous system, and it only took 2 minutes to do. Then you can move on to the actual workout that's going to move you closer to your goal.

Are the box jumps 'optimal'? No. But it didn't take long, it didn't take away from your workout performance, and it made you enjoy the workout experience more.

We will come to find out, in the final part of this series, that finding ways to enjoy a process more IS optimal, because it means you will be more consistent, you will try harder and you will keep doing that thing for years and decades because you LIKE to do it. But more on that when the time comes.

That's it for this one. Stay tuned for Part II, where we'll cover Principles III and IV: Pattern Recognition and Strategy.

—Shane