Steve Swink

a game designer's guide to virtual sensation

Game feel

Haley Park

The perceptual field gives us a way to understand that game feel is as much about how players feel about a particular space and that space they keep in their minds to help them deal with and understand events in that game world. The dry details are important—they represent the player's understanding of the physics and rules of the game world and are a great way to find dissonance that causes player confusion—but they are not everything. 

Eyes, ears, tactile sense, proprioception—there's no separation when a person perceives something. 

The bodily space is different from the external space in that it exists only as long as there are degrees of freedom and a skillful use of this freedom. The bodily space is mainly given by the subject's specific potentials for action. 

The pianos (think input devices) of Ludwig Van Beethoven's day were flimsy, cheap things. In the course of his exuberant performances, he often broke 10 to 15 piano strings, sometimes damaging the piano beyond repair. It was not just is playing that destroyed the pianos, but the music itself: it was not written for the pianos of his day. Part of Beethoven's genius was his ability to look beyond the physical limitations of the piano and define a space of a greater virtuosity and musical expressivity than the one actually presented by the piano itself. When he looked at a rickety Viennese piano, he saw the robust grand pianos of today. 

What Beethoven was able to see clearly—and exceed—were the physical and mental limitations imposed upon him. He understood that a tool or instrument inherently shapes and influences the activities that can be carried out employing it, both physically and mentally. 

Game feel quotes

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