there are lots of ways of framing games. We can think of games as stories. We can think of them as, um, challenge and frustration. We - I think it’s important to be able to think of them in terms of pleasure and desire as well. Um, sometimes when I’m working on a game I really think about what I’m doing is sculpting a player’s sense of pleasure and desire. You’re giving them short term, and medium, and long term goals. You’re - you’re trying to give them challenges to overcome that are - that are, you know, not too big and not too small. Um, you’re trying to - to give them something which is going to, you know, want them to keep on playing. Games can be very experimental. They can be very, um, weird and unusual. But games are a little bit like cuisine, like cooking in the sense that a chef can be very experimental. They can make the, the oyster look a banana or whatever - whatever you want to do. But if it tastes like dirt, no one will eat it. Right, that there’s - I’m not saying that there’s one good taste, but there’s - there’s kind of a range and you can go outside of it. You can make something so spicy that no one is going to eat it, right, except for maybe a very, very tiny set of connoisseurs. Um, and in general even though you might have to do a lot of things with food and think about the cultural references that you’re making and the aesthetics of the dining experience and the - the visuals of the plate that, you know, how it’s presented, but - but it also has to taste good. And I think that games are similar. So, there’s always a component of what we do where we are playing with a player’s sense of desire. And I actually think that, um, you know, there’s this interesting Jiro Dreams of Sushi. And he talks about how the, uh, a chef has to cultivate their palate. And that, yes, you can learn technique, but you also have to, um, have a palate that allows you to really, uh, differentiate the sort of subtleties of - of flavor. And I think that game designers need to cultivate their palate which is really their own libido. Their own sense of pleasure and desire. As you’re playing your game and other games, you need to - you need to have your own sense of pleasure, and frustration, and challenge and - and excitement, become like a - a dousing rod for - for water, right. Like how - can you really be sensitive to when it’s coming up, when it’s coming down, why - why and how are you feeling at all of those moments. I think that’s a really important sense for game designers to cultivate. So, yes, game designers you could say manipulate the player’s pleasure, but to me it’s, it’s much less like a scientist with a lab coat and a check box doing some kind of behavioral study and it’s much more like your own personal investigation of your own sense of pleasure and becoming sensitive to how it is that human beings feel things. And observing your players and seeing all the things that is happening with them. And you’re sort of in a dance with your players as you’re developing a game and play testing it, talking to them, why did they feel this way, why did they do it that way. You know, how - what would make them feel differently? What would give them, uh, a more narrow focused experience or - or perhaps instead a richer, broader palate of experiences for them to have. So, so, so, yes, pleasure is important, but for me it’s a very intensely personal part of, uh, of the game. And, again, you can study behavior of psychology and - and use reinforcement schedules in - in where you drop, you know, resources in your games so players get them at a certain period of time. Those concepts can be useful, but, but you know, if - if they’re useful at certain moments, but at other times you may need to abandon them and work in a more intuitive and personal way.
