Glossary

The book's own terms, and everyday words it uses in a narrower or wider sense, each with the chapter that explains it. The basic definitions (design, game, play, fun, content and so on) are in full in My Definitions.

A to Z#

Abundance from the start

The player gets resources and abilities from the beginning instead of grinding out of scarcity. Scarcity only appears as a natural consequence or a campaign parameter, never as a design goal (Chapter 25).

Additive and multiplicative content

Additive content is used once and its novelty is gone. Multiplicative content combines with everything already in the game, so each new piece renews the old (Chapter 23).

Artificial difficulty

Difficulty added to make a game last longer through failure, rather than to serve its purpose (Chapter 18).

Barebones game first

Build a minimal version that's playable from start to end before adding anything else. It proves the whole structure, which a polished slice can't (Chapter 28).

Believable, not realistic

A game world needs consistent logic the player can trust, not a copy of reality. When realism and the player conflict, the player comes first (Chapter 22).

Buckets or a pipe

Carrying content by hand, piece by piece, versus building foundations that let content flow: five minutes of work that stays useful for years instead of five weeks for five minutes of play (Chapter 21).

Common mistake, the

Creating the final result directly (the vision, imitated as it is) instead of understanding its root cause and letting the result follow from it (Chapter 1).

Complete investigation

Listing every consequence a design decision could have, on the mechanics and on players' needs, and testing the unknown ones before building (Chapter 14).

Dependency chain

Computer performance > premise > natural laws of the game universe > environment > vehicle or character > the gun itself. Design in that order (Chapter 21).

Designer and developer

Two different jobs: the designer decides what and holds the blueprint, the developers build it with art, code and sound (My Definitions, Chapter 27).

Extrinsic goal

A reason for making a game that lies outside the game itself, like money, fame or influence. Fine as a secondary priority, doomed as the primary one (Chapter 6).

Feelings

The body's dashboard for needs: pleasant when a need is met, unpleasant when it isn't (Chapter 9).

Forking

Taking the good parts of something, dropping the bad and going your own way, like a road splitting. It replaces "competition" as what drives innovation (Chapter 30).

Four stages of learning

Unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, unconscious competence. Assume you know nothing about a new subject and you skip the first, most dangerous stage (Chapter 14).

Framework-driven design

"Don't make a desert. Make sand, harsh sunlight and heat." Build the forces that produce a result instead of the result itself (Chapter 22).

Fundamental human needs

The needs every human shares, whatever their strategies. Also called universal human needs (Chapter 9, Needs at a Glance).

Gamification

An interactive tool disguised as a game (Chapter 12).

Heuristics randomizer

Randomness arranged as a decision tree: higher choices lean the lower ones, so results differ in ways that matter instead of a thousand bowls of differently colored porridge (Chapter 23).

Holy Grail, the

Understanding of technology, understanding of human beings and a clear purpose, plus business needs as the fourth part that pulls against the other three (Chapter 7).

Infinite metagame

A structure that never has to end or reset: an infinite overarching goal that gives direction and context, producing finite local goals with a clear start and end (Chapter 24).

Interactive tool

Something that works like a game but openly has a real-life purpose, such as teaching (Chapter 12).

Mementos

A visible, living record of what the player has done. It celebrates and mourns, and never rewards or punishes (Chapter 26).

OFNR

Observation, Feeling, Need, Request: NVC's four steps, turned into a sentence for testing a game idea (Chapter 11).

One designer per project

The person with the driving vision decides; everyone else is an expert they listen to and give blueprints with leeway (Chapter 27).

Padding

Anything added out of fear to make a game seem longer or more valuable than it is (Chapter 18, The Padding Checklist).

Paranoid design

A design worked out and tested so thoroughly that problems come only from outside it, and only the implementation has to change (Chapter 28).

Perfecting your world

Long-term progression as making the world more personal and more of a masterpiece, rather than endlessly growing in power (Chapter 25).

Power over and power with

Getting people to act through force (rewards, punishments, guilt, pressure) versus getting things done together by meeting everyone's needs (Chapter 9).

Purpose

The needs a project exists to meet. Unmet needs + Strategy to meet those needs = Purpose of the project (Chapter 8, Chapter 11).

Purpose test

"Does this fulfill the purpose?" Yes, do it. No, don't. Don't know, find out (Chapter 13).

Restorative and retributive

Stopping harm and repairing it works. Making someone suffer for what they did doesn't (Chapter 9, Chapter 15).

Rewards and punishments

One tool pointed in two directions. Both move the reason for doing something away from the thing itself (Chapter 9).

Scope maximization

Charting the project's full possible scope on paper, where scope creep costs nothing, before building the smallest playable version (Chapter 28).

Self-fullness

What people are really doing instead of being "selfish" or "selfless": meeting their own needs, ideally with the least harm and the most benefit (Chapter 9).

Side-effect influence

A game can change real life, but only as a side effect. Any intent toward it turns the game into a tool (Chapter 12).

Spawn zones

Areas on a level where items, characters and structures can appear when it loads, so one level plays many ways (Chapter 23).

Strategy

Any way to meet a need. Every game, mechanic and feature is one, and it can be smart, dumb, useless or flawed (Chapter 9).

Throwaway game

A consumable thrill: years of work for content used up in hours, playable one way only (Chapter 22).

Time gating

Making real-life time a gate the player has to pass through. It makes the game more important than real life (Chapter 18).

Time never rewinds

Failure becomes part of the world's history instead of being erased by a reload. Saving to stop playing is fine (Chapter 26).

Unaware Beginner and Experienced Specialist

The book's two designers: one imitates what seems to work, the other finds the feelings and needs behind it (Chapter 2).

Wilderness

The chaotic, changing zone next to a stable regular world, with hardware limits treated as a law of nature (Chapter 26).

Zero-to-hero

Start weak, grind, end overpowered with nothing left to use the power on. A carrot that turns out to be cardboard (Chapter 24).