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Sid Meier's Psychology of Game Design

GDC Festival of Gaming · 137K views · 2016-10-16 · 1:17:21

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

HN people cite it when discussing perceived randomness, luck and player experience in games, and say more designers should heed it.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2016–2019

Topics

Game designPsychology & human behavior
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sid meiergdcrandomnessplayer psychologycivilization

What people said

mlindner · 2018-12 · Strong recommendation

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. [VIDEO]

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ringshall · 2019-07 · Recommendation

This talk by Sid Meier is a good description of the problem of true randomness, from a game perspective: [VIDEO]

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codetrotter · 2019-03 · Recommendation

> 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] [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by GDC Festival of Gaming, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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