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Category Archives: design

  • Angry Birds.  Undoubtedly one of the most addictive time-sink video games ever produced.  If you haven’t played, you should.  Aside from [...]

    F = ma, Angry Physics

    April 15, 2013
  • In the prior post, I talked about how actions can map onto cognitive learning.  In this post, I’ll extend this and look at tool use in [...]

    Tool use in video games: extending cognition

    April 5, 2013
  • In several previous posts, I talk about the idea of creating motivation (here, here and here).  If a player comes to a game expecting to like [...]

    Inducing habit and fabricating motivation: from Farmville to algebra

    February 28, 2013
  • The basal ganglia are is a group of structures nestled under the cerebral cortex.  What exactly the basal ganglia do remains controversial and [...]

    Meet the basal ganglia. . . a substrate for motivational scaffolding

    January 16, 2012
  • Motivation is a complex concept with a long history in psychology and neuroscience.  I am going to sketch a notion of ‘motivational [...]

    Motivation and action: a chicken and egg problem?

    January 8, 2012
  • With games like Farmvile, Mafia Wars and Cityville, Zynga has helped expand the traditional game market and captured an absurd number of monthly [...]

    Is Fun really a good design principle?

    December 19, 2011
  • It’s natural for video game designers to think of their competition as other video games.  But video games, especially among people who are [...]

    CityVille Genius: A narrative account of the first 15 minutes

    December 5, 2011
  • No one can question the success of Zynga, but the value of its contribution to the video game industry seems highly controversial.  On one hand, [...]

    Zynga: sinner or saint?

    December 4, 2011
  • Who says advertising never contributed anything of worth to humanity? After playing this game, I went out and bought a pack of Trident vitality [...]

    Falling Stars. . . by Trident

    November 6, 2011
  • I loved this game.  It exemplifies for me the strip-bare-and-put-back-with-deliberation-only-what-is-essential-to-the-experience principle.  In [...]

    Sword and Sworcery

    October 29, 2011

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