What you need to know about why games are engaging!

Have you ever looked at a game and thought “what makes that game so appealing?" or “why does my kid spend so much time playing video games?”

The answer is that games designers understand human psychology, they understand how to motivate and engage.

Lets explore some of the key features of successful games.

Exploration

Exploration is a key feature of any game. Whether it is exploring a world, or a system, games pique our curiosity and create a place where we want to explore. These environments can be hyper realistic, or completely abstract, but techniques such as lighting, animations and narrative design provide small hints, or cookie crumbs that draw our attention and encourage us to keep exploring.

Rules

All games have rules. These are rules of engagement with the game world itself. “If your wings break you will crash”, “If you step on a landmine it will blow up”, or “if you run out of cash you will go bust”.

Objectives

An objective helps the player ground themselves and understand what they can do. For example in Mario your objective is to “save the princess ”, or in a business simulation it could be to “double your turnover in 3 years”.

Interaction

Games are active activities - they can not be played passively. Everything that the player does, or does not do, has an effect and are thus they are highly experiential.

Outcomes

Games always have clear outcomes; “You were shot…you are dead”, “You have run out of cash and have been closed down”.

They provide meaningful and relevant feedback (e.g. because of your actions or lack of actions, the plane crashed, the cash ran out, the employees quit) to show the player the consequences of their decisions and actions.

This is important because the user knows explicitly why a particular outcome happened and allows them to assess different approaches to the problem in an informed manner.

They light up a players brain!

Games require (and foster) a high level of cognitive application from the user that far exceeds reading text and then regurgitating facts. Players analyse huge quantities of information from a variety of sources. Games encourage, for example, problem solving, creative thinking, lateral thinking, investigation and trial and error, all of which are valuable skills in the workplace.

Enjoyable - (and not just fun!)

Games are enjoyable, but don’t confuse enjoyment with fun. Games can be incredibly challenging. Sometimes your heart rate will increase in a ‘stressful’ situation - you wouldn’t consider that fun, but the adrenaline hit, and dopamine release once you have overcome that difficult situation creates an enjoyable experience. The balance between challenge and success leads to longer attention spans, improved attentiveness and positive feelings.

Games are incredibly complex systems and there is so much more to explore. What else would you add to this list?