about players making sense

narrative in all its forms is nothing but an ultra-effective strategy for generating meaning in our brains.

humans tend to group knowledge and remember through the connection of ideas, and nothing is better than narrative to aid this process.

those of us who have designed many games throughout our lives are hyper-aware of this.

Brian Upton managed to synthesize it better than anyone in his book Aesthetics of Play.

a game is not merely the rules, or in the case of stories, the events that happen, nor even the dynamics and argumentative arcs.

no, half of the game is the player’s interpretation of everything that is happening: the process of meaning generation.

we have a great tool at our disposal if we can master semiotics.

exploration and iteration are the bases for finding unique things, but it is good to have a framework to guide these explorations.

next time you sit down to write a scene for your game, why not think about what the player knows at that moment and what they should know next,

then you can try exploring different paths to arrive at the same destination of meaning generation in their head.