Sid Meier's Psychology of Game Design
GDC Festival of Gaming4 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2016–2019
talk · general · evergreen · 2016–2019 on HN
Civilization creator Sid Meier's GDC 2010 talk on applying psychology to game design. He discusses player perception, randomness, and win states, and why designers must account for how players experience events.
HN people cite it when discussing perceived randomness, luck and player experience in games, and say more designers should heed it.
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4 comments from Hacker News
Many games don't have win states or shouldn't have win states. More people need to listen to what Sid Meier has said on this. That HN article was written by someone who did not know what they were talking about. ▶ this video
This talk by Sid Meier is a good description of the problem of true randomness, from a game perspective: ▶ this video
> The anecdote about Sid Meier hard-coding a guaranteed "win on the third attempt" for a battle with a 1/3 victory probability was very interesting. You might enjoy these videos as well: link ▶ this video
Agreed; the point of the game is to make you feel like a God. Sid Meier gave a talk at the GDC: ▶ this video In it he explained how Civilization tested random negative events that could shape your world. He mentioned how this had a negative effect on the player experience and many times people would just grab a past save to avoid them IIRC.