Concept

Target experience

You might say: the feeling to test

A target experience is a concise statement of the situations, feelings or choices the player should have, used as a touchstone for playtesting.

What it does
Keeps iteration anchored to a human outcome rather than a list of features.
Ask
What would we see a player do if the target were achieved?

Sources

  1. Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek, MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research, pp. 2–4Aesthetics describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts
  2. Ernest Adams, Fundamentals of Game Design, ch. 4, p. 81We’ll begin with a way of looking at what kinds of feelings different players like to experience as they play.
  3. Tracy Fullerton, Playcentric Design (ACM interactions, 2008), Playcentric Design, pp. 42–47: player-experience goals and testingCalled ‘playcentric’ design, it involves setting interesting player-experience goals, building a rough paper or digital prototype that attempts to achieve those goals, testing the prototype with players, evaluating the results and integrating feedback, and then doing it again.
  4. Robert Yang et al., The Level Design Book, Layout: specific player experience goals are easier to designWhat should the player learn, feel, or do, in this level?
  5. Celia Hodent, How We Introduced UX to Epic Games’ Production Pipeline (GDC16), slides 3 and 44–45: experience intended for users and testable reasons for featuresit entails what it is like for the targeted user to interact with a software, including how engaging the experience is (cf. Isbister and Schaffer, 2008), relative to the design intentions.
  6. Celia Hodent, How We Introduced UX to Epic Games’ Production Pipeline (GDC16), slides 3–7, 43–45it entails what it is like for the targeted user to interact with a software, including how engaging the experience is (cf. Isbister and Schaffer, 2008), relative to the design intentions.
  7. Steve Swink, Game Feel: The Secret Ingredient, Context; Polish; Rules: desired feel and sustained interactionlonger-period objectives to give additional meaning to the sensation of control and mastery.
  8. Ian Schreiber, Game Design Concepts, Level 5: Mechanics and Dynamics, The Process of Design; The Process of Playthe ultimate goal the designer has in mind
  9. Tynan Sylvester, Decision-Based Gameplay Design, Decisions; Decision Recognition, Evaluation, and DesignGame designers need to not only understand how decisions create a computer gaming experience, but also need to be able to create an experience that includes lots of unique, difficult decisions with strong feedback.
  10. Christopher W. Totten, An Architectural Approach to Level Design, Introduction, p. xxxivBy studying spatial arrangement techniques utilized in great architecture and the kinds of experiences these create, level designers will be able to create similar experiences in their own work

Use it on your project

teardown-apply: hold "Target experience" (target-experience) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/game-design/ against my project

Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.

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