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Braden Ursa
Level Design
Best Practices for Affecting Game Feel through Design
My thesis project revolved around identifying a list of practices which a designer could follow to help improve the general game feel that a player will experience within a given level .
To construct my thesis , I conducted research on game feel for about two months and then built the artifact in four months . During my research , I learned a lot about game feel from a more objective standpoint .
I chose this project because game feel is an incredibly important concept to me . Some of my favorite games are my favorites simply because of how fun it is to control them . Understanding at a fundamental level how that game feel came about is , I believe , how we will take games further as a medium . I think learning to understand the psychological phenomenon of flow and how it can
be harnessed for game design could be instrumental for a lot of video game productions . The nature of flow helps to inform how we can be our happiest even when being challenged by trials . If all designers became strong practitioners of flow theory and leveraged it in their designs effectively , we would see massive dividends on engagement and immersion in even the most basic of products .
When it came to understanding what makes a game feel enjoyable to play , I was initially overwhelmed by just how many different factors go into it . However , after my research , I now know where to start looking . This gives me a solid baseline of understanding about how to push that threshold in all my future work .
74 LEVEL DESIGN