At the heart of any good game are mechanisms to help deliver enjoyment, the stuff that makes a game a game. They need to have what game designer Chelsea Howe describes as a "fractal elegance," which means "self-similar," that the pattern at the beginning of a game is the same at the end. That makes it eminently graspable to virtually anyone. Because we humans are, in Cook's words, "infovores" who "are wired to solve black boxes," a "fundamental aspect of our neurological learning wetware," these game mechanics play on our innate need to learn. They are "rule-based systems" that encourage a user to explore and learn through feedback mechanisms how to navigate a simulated environment. At its essence, a game is simply "a set of interlinked puzzles where solutions to one puzzle lead to clues that help on additional puzzles."
- Companies:
- Amazon.com
- Apple
- Fox
- Target
- People:
- Adam L. Penenberg