Game Design
topic on 7 shows · 15 statements across 12 episodes
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 
Innovators & Investors 
Masters of Scale 
Lenny's Podcast 
WTF is with Nikhil Kamath 
the a16z Podcast 
20VC
15 statements about Game Design, every show
Memon: Game Designers Can Engineer Player Anger By Changing One Variable
“When you're doing game design or when you're doing behavioral design, one small incentive change, and I can engineer anger in a player. I can make two of you fight by just changing one variable, which might not even be important.”
Vohra: Business software should be built using game design principles
“Well, I strongly believe that we should make business software like we make games because when we make products, like we make games, people find them fun. They tell their friends, they fall in love with them.”
Kim: Game design is the weakest area in India
“Now, I would say that design is the weakest area in India.
So, finding a good designer, I don't even know where you go to learn that here.”
Wu: Some of the best product thinkers come from game design
“I think some of the best product thinkers actually come from game design.”
Elan Lee: Games should make players entertaining, not be inherently entertaining
“My fundamental premise behind all game design is that games should not be entertaining. Games should make the people you're playing with entertaining.”
Elan Lee: AI fails at designing games that spotlight player interaction
“Games should make the people you're playing with entertaining. And AI sucks at that.”
Stebbings: The best founders have backgrounds in gaming or game design
“The best founders I work with have a background in either game design or being exceptional, like, game players themselves.”
Vohra: Gamification does not work, but true game design does
“Gamification does not really work. Game design works, but game design is not gamification.”
Vohra: Game design requires five critical factors across four disciplines
“To create games, we need to draw upon the art and science of psychology, mathematics, storytelling, and interaction design. And in doing so, I've found five critical factors, and they are goals, emotions, controls, Toys, and this curious thing that we call flo…”
Rahul Vohra: Game design is distinct from superficial gamification
“Game design is not gamification. It is not simply taking your product and adding points Levels, trophies, and badges.”
Rahul Vohra: No single unifying theory of game design exists
“And as it turns out, there is no unifying theory of game design. To create games, we have to draw upon the art and science of psychology, mathematics, interaction design, and storytelling.”
Modern software product design has essentially become game design
“I think that the bar for product design, whether it's consumer or enterprise, has risen to such a degree that it has essentially become game design. Game design is one of the hardest types of product to create, and I would strongly suggest that any product des…”
Lantz: Close reading of difficult texts is the best intellectual proxy
“I don't know how to get smart, but I think that's the closest proxy we have, right? You know so we try to, like, incorporate that in, into the curriculum, that there's, that they're bumping up against things that they might not have encountered on their own. Y…”
Mobile game features should be designed around concentric rings of timescale
“If you think of it, sort of, concentric rings, if that's the thing you're doing every second, then what are you doing every 10 seconds, or minute or week, or month? And then, sort of, like, creating features that accommodate for those different, sort of, time …”
Slavin: VR games should embrace headset wearing and local asymmetric information
“Maybe what the materiality of the medium of VR should include the fact that you're wearing a fucking helmet, right? Like, you know, and you're in a room with other people, right? Like maybe that's not like maybe that's not something to write off. Like maybe th…”