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Ingredients of Engagment

Skip the “Game vs. Story” and “Entertainment vs. Practical-Utility” Traps: The Anatomy of Compelling Experiences

I get tired of the games vs. story argument. Not to mention the entertainment vs. practical utility argument. In many cases these discussions come from assumptions that are wrong, and the problem is that if you get caught up in them, they can limit your options to making great experiences. Even some very smart experts have contributed to the confusion. "Video Games Are Better Without Stories" says Ian Blogost in a recent article in the Atlantic. While Robert Marks tells us that "Video Games Aren’t Just Better With Stories, They Are Stories" in another recent article at CG Magazine. I......

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3 Questions That Will Help You Make a More Engaging Experience

How can you make your game more engaging and effective? In a nutshell, by making engagement stronger at the different levels of the experience and by making engagement connect to your ultimate goals: monetizing, teaching, or changing behavior. There are 3 questions that can help you figure out how to best do that and they can be applied not only to games, but also to education, VR experiences, and other software that needs to engage users. Let me elaborate. I talked in a previous article how successful games and experiences need to first stand out so your target players notice......

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The 5 Ingredients of Successful Games and VR Experiences

What makes a game successful depends on your goals, sometimes it is revenue, sometimes it is number of downloads, impact on your players, etc. However focusing on these outcomes is usually not very helpful as a developer, it is much more helpful to define success in terms of engagement because engagement can be linked directly...Continue reading...

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