Game Design

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 172

Best how-to-make-fun

The Art of Game Design

This is by far the best guide ever written for designing games. All kinds of games, simple and traditional, but of course video games, too. This fat book is packed with practical, comprehensive, imaginative, deep, and broad lessons. Every page contained amazing insights for me. The more I read and re-read, the more important I ranked this work. I now view it as not just about designing games, but one of the best guides for designing anything that demands complex interaction. My 13-year-old son, who, like most 13-year-olds, dreams of designing games, has been devouring its 470 pages, telling me, “You’ve got to read this, Dad!” It’s that kind of book: You begin to imagine your life as a game, and how you might tweak its design. Author Jesse Schell offers 100 “lenses” through which you can view your game, and each one is a useful maxim for any assignment. — KK

• We must be absolutely clear on this point before we can proceed. The game is not the experience. The game enables the experience, but it is not the experience. This is a hard concept for some people to grasp.
• Lens #1: The Lens of Essential ExperienceTo use this lens, you stop thinking about your game and start thinking about the experience of the player. Ask yourself these questions:
  • What experience do I want the player to have?
  • What is essential to that experience?
  • How can my game capture that essence?If there is a big difference between the experience you want to create and the one you are actually creating, your game needs to change: You need to clearly state the essential experience you desire, and find as many ways as possible to instill this essence into your game.
• Let’s review the list of game qualities we have picked out of these various definitions:Q1. Games are entered willfully.
  Q2. Games have goals.
  Q3. Games have conflict.
  Q4. Games have rules.
  Q5. Games can be won and lost.
  Q6. Games are interactive.
  Q7. Games have challenge.
  Q8. Games can create their own internal value.
  Q9. Games engage players.
  Q10. Games are closed, formal systems.
  The thing that really seems to bother people about calling puzzles games is that they are not replayable. Once you figure out the best strategy, you can solve the puzzle every time, and it is no longer fun. Games are not usually this way. Most games have enough dynamic elements that each time you play you are confronted again with a new set of problems to solve. Sometimes this is because you have an intelligent human opponent (checkers, chess, backgammon, etc.), and sometimes it is because the game is able to generate lots of different challenges for you, either through ever-advancing goals (setting a new high score record) or through some kind of rich challenge-generation mechanism (solitaire, Rubik’s Cube, Tetris, etc.)
  Specifically, that the player puts their mind inside the game world, but that game world really only exists in the mind of the player? This magical situation, which is at the heart of all we care about, is made possible by the game interface, which is where player and game come together. Interface is the infinitely thin membrane that separates white/yang/player and black/yin/game. When the interface fails, the delicate flame of experience that rises from the player/game interaction is suddenly snuffed out. For this reason, it is crucial for us to understand how our game interface works, and to make it as robust, as powerful, and as invisible as we can.
• Experiences without feedback are frustrating and confusing. At many crosswalks in the United States, pedestrians can push a button that will make the DON’T WALK sign change to a WALK sign so they can cross the street safely. But it can’t change right away, since that would cause traffic accidents. So the poor pedestrian often has to wait up to a minute to see whether pressing the button had any effect. As a result, you see all kinds of strange button-pressing behavior: some people push the button and hold it for several seconds, others push it several times in a row, just to be safe. And the whole experience is accompanied by a sense of uncertainty — pedestrians can often be seen nervously studying the lights and DON’T WALK sign to see if it is going to change, because they might not have pushed the button correctly.What a delight it was to visit the United Kingdom, and find that in some areas the crosswalk buttons give immediate feedback in the form of an illuminated WAIT sign that comes on when the button has been pushed, and turns off when the WALK period has ended! The addition of some simple feedback turned an experience where a pedestrian feels frustrated into one where they can feel confident and in control.
• For all the grand dreams of interactive storytelling, there are two methods that dominate the world of game design. The first and most dominant in videogames is commonly called the “string of pearls ” or sometimes the “rivers and lakes ” method. It is called this because it can be visually represented like this:The idea is that a completely non-interactive story (the string) is presented in the form of text, a slideshow, or an animated sequence and then the player is given a period of free movement and control (the pearl) with a fixed goal in mind. When the goal is achieved, the player travels down the string via another non-interactive sequence, to the next pearl, etc. In other words, cut scene, game level, cut scene, game level…Many people criticize this method as “not really being interactive, ” but players sure do enjoy it.
• If 10 choices sounds kind of short, and you want to have 20 opportunities for three choices from the beginning to the end of the story, that means you’ll need to write 5,230,176,601 outcomes. These large numbers make any kind of meaningful branching storytelling impossible in our short life spans. And sadly, the main way that most interactive storytellers deal with this perplexing plethora of plotlines is to start fusing outcomes together.
  
• Problem #3: Multiple Endings DisappointOne thing that interactive storytellers like to fantasize about is how wonderful it is that a story can have multiple endings. After all, this means the player will be able to play again and again with a different experience every time! And like many fantasies,
  the reality tends to disappoint. Many games have experimented with having multiple endings to their game story. Almost universally, the player ends up thinking two things when they encounter their first ending in one of these.1. “Is this the real ending? ”
  2. “Do I have to play this whole thing again to see another ending?”There are exceptions, of course. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic featured a novel type of player choice — did they want to play the game on the “light side ” or “dark side ” of the force — that is, with good or evil goals? Depending on which of the paths you choose, you have different adventures, different quests, and ultimately a different ending. It can be argued that this isn’t really a case of two different endings on the same story, but two completely different stories — so different that they are each equally valid.
• Problem #4: Not Enough VerbsThe things that videogame characters spend their time doing are very different than the things that characters in movies and books spend their time doing:
  Videogame Verbs: run, shoot, jump, climb, throw, cast, punch, fly
  Movie Verbs: talk, ask, negotiate, convince, argue, shout, plead, complain
  Videogame characters are severely limited in their ability to do anything that requires something to happen above the neck. Most of what happens in stories is communication, and at the present time, videogames just can’t support that. Game designer Chris Swain has suggested that when technology advances to the point that players can have an intelligent, spoken conversation with computer-controlled game characters, it will have an effect similar to the introduction of talking pictures. Suddenly, a medium that was mostly considered an amusing novelty will quickly become the dominant form of cultural storytelling. Until then, however, the lack of usable verbs in videogames significantly hampers our ability to use games as a storytelling medium.
• As the character tries to overcome the obstacles, interesting conflicts tend to arise, particularly when another character has a conflicting goal. This simple pattern leads to very interesting stories because it means the character has to engage in problem-solving (which we find very interesting), because conflicts lead to unpredictable results, in other words, surprises (which we find very interesting), and because the bigger the obstacle, the bigger the potential for dramatic change (which we find very interesting).
  Are these ingredients just as useful when creating videogame stories? Absolutely
  and maybe even more so.
• One focus group I witnessed was trying to determine where the average mom drew the line about what videogames were “too violent ” for their kids. Virtua Fighter was okay, said the moms, Mortal Kombat was not. The difference? Blood. It wasn’t the actions that were involved in the games that bothered them (both games are mostly about kicking your opponent in the face), but rather the graphic bloodshed in Mortal Kombat that is completely absent in Virtua Fighter. They seemed to feel that without bloodshed, it was just a game — just imaginary. But the blood made the game creepily real, and to the moms in the interviews, a game that rewarded bloodshed felt perverse and dangerous.

A large pile of silliness

Silly Putty by the pound

Silly putty — even the newer varieties like the thinking putty here — has long been sold in small amounts in the classic plastic egg. But this stuff is best enjoyed in bulk. The technical name of this now generic substance is Dow Corning Dilatant Compound 3179. Five pounds of it is…. well, pretty silly. Ten pounds of the stuff is enough to transfer a whole page of comics, or to make a humungous superball, or to lighten up the dour faces in a boardroom after being parcelled out. The surprise for our family has been never ending amusement of watching a huge ball of this compound slowly melt over whatever you set it on, like the blob from outer space. Hand out some at your next birthday party. Don’t ask why. — KK

Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.

Retro Recomendo: Career

Recomendo - issue #496

Our subscriber base has grown so much since we first started nine years ago, that most of you have missed all our earliest recommendations. The best of these are still valid and useful, so we’re trying out something new — Retro Recomendo. Once every 6 weeks, we’ll send out a throwback issue of evergreen recommendations focused on one theme from the past 9 years.

How to do great work

Last year, Paul Graham, a renowned programmer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist known for co-founding Y Combinator, wrote an essay titled “How to Do Great Work.” He covered a wide range of topics, from choosing what to work on to cultivating originality. This week, I came across Peter Schroeder’s terrific visual representation that maps out the main ideas from Graham’s essay. It’s useful even if you don’t read the essay. — MF

Productive meetings

This 1-minute video by John Cleese is all you need to know about how to have productive (vs unproductive) meetings. One minute! Applies to zoom meetings, too. — KK

A guide for daily “professional” interactions

How to professionally say is a list of things you might feel like saying at work — along with a more professional alternative for how to express them. Example: Instead of saying “That sounds like a horrible idea,” you can say “Are we confident this is the best solution, or are we still exploring alternatives?” While some of the phrasing might not flow naturally for me, I’m inspired to adopt more neutrality and directness in my professional language. — CD

Good advice for applying for jobs

I am a big fan of YouTuber Ali Abdaal. In this video about Resumes he condenses a whole book of information presenting the best advice for applying for a job into 30 minutes. It’s the same advice I gave to my kids when they started working. Whether you are looking for a job, or hiring someone, this is worth your time. Forward it to a young person. — KK

A Two-Minute Burnout Checkup

This Two-Minute Burnout Checkup helped me understand the primary factors of chronic stress and burnout. I can sense physically when I am nearing burnout, but before this I didn’t understand that it’s more than just feeling exhausted. This checkup evaluates six sources of chronic stress: workload, values, reward, control, fairness, and community. You rate your level of stress from 0–10 for each one and add up the numbers to get a score out of 60. This could be especially helpful if you track your score over time. Here’s a link to the survey. — CD

Ryan Holiday’s career wisdom

Writer and entrepreneur Ryan Holiday has had a varied career, from Hollywood agent assistant to marketing director for American Apparel. He’s put together a list of 37 pieces of hard-fought career advice that’s useful for anyone who works. Examples:

• Find what nobody else wants to do and do it. Find inefficiency and waste and redundancies. Identify leaks and patches to free up resources for new areas. Produce more than everyone else and give your ideas away.
• Always say less than necessary. Saying less than necessary, not interjecting at every chance we get — this is actually the mark not just of a self-disciplined person, but also a very smart and wise person.
• Your creative output, your personal relationships, and your social life—balancing all three is impossible. You can excel in two if you say no to one. If you can’t, you’ll have none.
• When people compete, somebody loses. So go where you’re the only one. Do what only you can do. Run a race with yourself.

— MF

Book Freak #192: Arrow

The Power and Poison of Story

Get Arrow

Drawing from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and Buddhist philosophy, Arrow explores how storytelling became humanity’s defining superpower, and reveals how the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves can either liberate or imprison us.

Core Principles

We Are Story Animals

Different cognitive faculties — consciousness, emotion, episodic memory, mental simulation, language, and theory of mind — converged in human evolution to create a new ability: storytelling. This capacity became a tool for communication, a mechanism for self-regulation, and a means of social connection that shaped who we are.

The Self Is a Narrative Construct

What we call our “self” is not an objective reality but a story we continuously tell ourselves. Our identity comprises interconnected narratives: our origin story, our present identity, and our anticipated future. As Gadea writes, “Story is a tool that became its inventor. What we call our Self is a Story.”

Story as Medicine and Poison

The book’s title references a Buddhist parable about a monk struck by a poisoned arrow. Like that arrow, our storytelling ability is dual-natured — it enables powerful human connection and meaning-making, but it can also foster discontent, self-deception, and suffering when we forget our stories are just stories.

A Path Beyond Narrative Dependency

Rather than abandoning stories entirely, Gadea suggests developing a different relationship with them — constantly remembering that they are constructions rather than fixed truths. This awareness opens a pathway to being steadier, stronger, more connected, and more content.

Try It Now

1. Notice one story you’re telling yourself right now about your life (e.g., “I’m not successful enough” or “Things always go wrong for me”).
2. Write it down as if it were a plot summary for a movie about someone else.
3. Ask yourself: “What evidence would I need to write a completely different story about the same events?”
4. Practice saying to yourself: “This is a story I’m telling, not necessarily the truth.”
5. Notice how your emotional relationship to the situation shifts when you hold the story more lightly.

Quote

“The stories we don’t pay enough attention to are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. My practice isn’t about losing those stories — it’s about constantly remembering that they are just stories.”

Busiest Air Routes/Best Headphones/TSA + Staples

Nomadico issue #187

Busiest Air Routes of 2025

I’ll spare you all the “best travel destinations of the year” and “where to go in 2026” slop that you’ve probably seen all over. Here’s a listicle based on real data: the busiest air routes of the past year. One glance at this list will make it obvious that the supposedly busy flight paths in North America have nothing on Asia. New York to London barely cracked the top 10 and that route had 3.97 million seats sold compared to 6.83 million for #1 Hong Kong to Taipei. Seoul had 2 of the top 5 (to Tokyo and Osaka) and there were 5.57 million seats sold for the short hop from Kualu Lumpur to Singapore. I’m guessing that Allah is responsible for the #2 route in the world: Cairo to Jeddah.

World’s Best Headphones

It’s hard for any normal person to judge “the best” over-ear headphones since few of us ever have the chance to compare a bunch of them side by side with the same music. Wired magazine did that though, with real audiophiles, and compared their blind test answers. Third place went to the most expensive (Apple Airpods Max) and second to the Nothing Headphones, but the one that came out on top had the lowest price of the six. That would be the Soundcore Space One Pro, currently going for just $149 on Amazon.

Better Guarantees From Vrbo

If you know a lot of people who book through Airbnb, you have likely heard at least a few horror stories about late cancellations by hosts, bad communication, or misrepresentations of listings. It might be worth taking a new look at Vrbo because they recently revamped their policies to become much more renter-friendly. Changes include active help when a hosts cancels (90 days out even) and stricter “Premier Host” qualifications to highlight rentals without complaints. See the full story here.

TSA Pre-check at the Office Store

Don’t want to make a trip to the airport to get approved for TSA Pre-check? Well it turns out you can do it while shopping for Sharpies and ink cartridges: Staples has an arrangement with the government to approve you for the expedited TSA security lines in the USA. You might want to check with your credit card if reimbursement for this is one of its perks (and it’s included in Global Entry), but see the details here.

A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.

What’s in my NOW? — Magnus Ojala

A construction professional based in Sweden, currently working with residential projects. Interested in flow, systems thinking, and practical ways to ...

A construction professional based in Sweden, currently working with residential projects. Interested in flow, systems thinking, and practical ways to manage complexity at work and in life. Uses simple tools to stay focused, learn continuously, and protect long-term capacity. — Magnus Ojala

PHYSICAL

• Beal clean grip liquid chalk:Recommended to me by a more experienced lifter when I started weight training in 2010. Every time I’ve forgotten it since, lifting has felt like trying to hold onto the bar with soapy hands. One bottle lasts for years.
• Any A4 spiral notebook:
  I’ve used an A4 spiral notebook to plan my weeks since 2014. One notebook per year, one page per week. Each page follows the same structure: a numbered list of ten projects or focus areas for the week. Not tasks, but the things that will compete for my attention. Seeing all ten on a single page gives me a realistic sense of capacity. If something is tied to a specific day, I simply write the weekday—like “Tue”—on that line. I sometimes add small circles next to an item to indicate how many pomodoros I want to spend on it. It’s a simple, manual system. It doesn’t help me do more—it helps me decide what actually matters this week.
• Oral-B iO electric toothbrush:
  The difference in feel between a manual toothbrush and an electric one is real. The difference between a standard electric toothbrush and the Oral-B iO feels just as big. You notice it immediately when you run your tongue over your teeth. Once you’ve gotten used to that level of clean, going back—when traveling without it—always feels noticeably worse.

DIGITAL

• Readwise (and Reader):
  I’ve used Readwise since 2020. I’m currently on a +1,700-day review streak, with over 30,500 highlights—mostly from Kindle Paperwhite/Kindle app and Reader. What keeps me coming back isn’t the streak, but the habit it supports. Highlights resurface when I’ve forgotten them, often at exactly the right time. Readwise Reader has also become my default place for PDFs and (long-form) articles. It’s the best app I’ve found for turning things I read into things I actually remember.
• A personalized Todoist setup based on Tiago Forte’s video series:
  I’ve adapted my Todoist system around Tiago Forte’s approach to managing projects and commitments (from his excellent video series). Instead of treating Todoist as a task dump, my setup helps me distinguish between what I’m committed to and everything else. I find this framework far more useful than a generic inbox-to-zero workflow—the structure gives direction, not just an empty inbox. The method has become the backbone of how I actually work with Todoist.https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/cg-29pZUFcs?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

INVISIBLE

Herbie, the bottleneck

From The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. In the story of Herbie, the slowest boy in a hiking group determines the pace of the entire line. Even if everyone else walks faster, overall throughput cannot exceed the speed of the bottleneck.

The insight is simple: system performance is governed by its constraints, not by the individual speed of its fastest parts.

The Wolves of Currumpaw / Sinatra 100

Issue No. 99

THE WOLVES OF CURRUMPAW – A TRUE STORY ABOUT LOBO, A WOLF FROM THE OLD WEST

The Wolves of Currumpaw
by William Grill
Flying Eye Books
2016, 80 pages, 9.7 x 12.1 x 0.6 inches

Buy on Amazon

In the early 1800s, half a million wolves roamed North America, but by 1862 settlers began pouring in from Europe and the landscape started to change. “These were the dying days of the Old West and the fate of wolves was sealed in it,“ begins The Wolves of Currumpaw.

The Wolves of Currumpaw, released today, is a true story about a wolf named Old Lobo, and a skilled hunter, Ernest Thompson Seton. Lobo was part of notorious pack of wolves in 1893 who, for five years, raided the ranches and farms of the Currumpaw Valley in New Mexico. Nobody was able to catch the stealthy wolf, and the locals began to think Old Lobo, or the King as they called him at the time, possessed supernatural charms. The locals finally offered $1000 to anyone who could catch him. Expert hunters set out to track him and hunt him down, but like the Terminator, Lobo couldn’t be killed – until Canadian-raised Seton came into town.

SPOILER paragraph: The story ends tragically, and might not be appropriate for more sensitive children. Seton does succeed in taking Lobo down, a section of the book that was hard for me to read. But then Seton has deep regrets and becomes a changed man. As a writer and sudden activist, Seton devoted the rest of his life to raising awareness about wolves. He was also one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America.

Like William Grill’s other picture book, Shackleton’s Journey, Wolves is beautifully illustrated on thick textured paper with colored pencils. Wolves, which is based on Seton’s short story, Wild Animals I Have Never Known, is powerful, told as much by Grill’s narrative as it is by his illustrations. Grill has chosen two interesting, not commonly taught histories as the subjects of his first two books, and I look forward to seeing what he brings us next. – Carla Sinclair

A LUSCIOUS TOME OF FAMILY STORIES AND PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN PHOTOS TO CELEBRATE FRANK SINATRA’S 100TH BIRTHDAY

Sinatra 100
by Charles Pignone
Thames & Hudson
2015, 288 pages, 11.2 x 13.9 x 1.3 inches

Buy on Amazon

Sinatra 100 encapsulates the legendary performer’s life through text and previously unseen photographs from the family archives as well as classic images from various photo shoots. After forewords by two friends who knew him best, Tony Bennet and Steve Wyn, as well as an introduction by book author Charles Pignone, the book is broken into three long sections: The Voice 1915-1952, Chairman Of The Board 1953-1972, and Ol’ Blue Eyes 1973-1998. That leads readers into afterward sections by various family members and other items of interest.

Frank Sinatra, the man who would be known as “The Voice,” was born in Hoboken, New Jersey on December 12, 1915. Singing in his Dad’s bar led to a lifetime in music. The pages of that first section detail in photographs and text how difficult his early career was as well as his personal circumstances. After having some very early success, by the early 1950s Sinatra could have easily been relegated to a brief footnote in history. It was those early days that taught him what loyalty meant to both himself and others.

While the early fifties were ugly, things changed fairly rapidly. Winning the Oscar on March 25, 1954 was a pivotal point in that turnaround and a small taste of what was to come. In Chairman Of The Board 1953-1972, that turnaround is thoroughly detailed. Sinatra quickly became a box office superstar while his deal with Capital Records made him a major business success. His personal life was another matter as marriages came and went. All of this is detailed in both text and pictures though it is the pictures that really tell Sinatra’s story by way of Hollywood movie sets, recording studios, award events, and more.

The final section, Ol Blue Eyes 1973-1998, covers the later years of Frank Sinatra’s incredible life. He had found peace and had gradually returned to singing by way of touring. Along the way the awards and accolades came to him from a worldwide audience as he continued to entertain people everywhere. While the text is important, the pictures truly tell the tale and are the real story of the book. Often the photographs capture other well-known figures such as Orson Wells, Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, etc. As such the photographs not only give readers a glimpse back in time of Sinatra, they also serve to showcase other legendary talents and others who just happened to be in the right place at the right time to be immortalized. They serve as a window into history, not only of Frank Sinatra, but of our history and culture over decades of American life.

It is worth noting that the coffee table-sized book is very heavy. Beyond the sheer weight of approximately six pounds is the fact that the text in captions and elsewhere in the book is very small. The caption text is even smaller than the main text with the result being a very well done book that could be difficult to read for those who have eyesight issues. Published by Thomas and Hudson this tome is meant as an all-encompassing historical visual record to commemorate the singer’s 100th birthday. – Kevin Tipple

Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair. Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.

What’s in my NOW? — Magnus Ojala