2 Comments

Do you believe Oxton deliberately chose Flathead's design based on the neuroscientific principles you discuss? I have an intuition that usually game design is formulated on a more *experimental* level of "hey, this works or doesn't"; which, if done correctly/"honestly" actually comes back to using those neuroscientific principles, just without knowing it.

Maybe analysis can help refine that sense of the "experimental", but ultimately I get the sense that game design is overall more elaborated around pillars "endogenic" to the circumstances of its elaboration/motivation, rather than "exogenic proven principles". I guess the more predatory/derivative a product, the less this is true?

Not sure if you have any thoughts on this, but thanks for the good read and analysis.

Expand full comment

I doubt that he intentionally designed the game like "OMG I'm soooooo gonna hack people's neurotransmitters," haha! I merely was interested in the WHY it works as an afterthought.

Expand full comment