Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
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I
ntroductIon
Video Games
If you are reading this topic, chances are you are in some way involved
in their creation, appreciation, or consumption. They touch all of
our lives in one way or another, compelling us to play for hours and
hours, providing us an income, or making us write angry letters to
the editor. How we perceive games, how we play them, and most
importantly, whether or not we enjoy them
is guided heavily by our
psychology. That said, you don't need a degree in psychology to make
good video games. Shigeru Miyamoto showed us that with the right
combination of creativity and zaniness, you can mold an entire indus-
try and have a meaningful and profound impact on literally hundreds
of millions of people. Similarly, you don't need a degree in psychology
to train a dog: take a look at a professional dog trainer, for exam-
ple. She uses techniques to make man's best friend just a little more
friendly. The one thing that binds these people is that both Miyamoto
and the trainer are making use of psychological principles to serve a
purpose—whether that purpose is to entertain us or make our dogs
better companions.
Let me start by saying that reading this topic is in no way a good
substitute for having a degree in psychology/education/human fac-
tors. The knowledge I am going to give you here will just scratch the
surface of all of these disciplines, but will do it in such a way that it is
relative to game design, and peppered with enough explanation and
relation to game mechanics to be directly implemented in your games.
In this topic, I am going to let all of you in on some secrets. Not in
the “self-help book” secrets kind of way, but rather, I am going to
link game design principles with psychology through something we
are all familiar with and that most of us despise: the game tutorial.
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