Sid Meier's Psychology of Game Design on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2016–2019.
talk · evergreen
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.
“More people need to listen to what Sid Meier has said on this.”
4 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
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
in “Sandspiel – A falling sand game built in Rust and WebGL” · View on HN
This talk by Sid Meier is a good description of the problem of true randomness, from a game perspective: ▶ this video
in “Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?” · View on HN
> 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
in “How Designers Engineer Luck Into Video Games (2017)” · View on HN
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.
in “What Sid Meier’s Video Game Empire Got Right and Wrong About ‘Civilization’” · View on HN