Alexandre Mandryka is a creative strategist and game design consultant with over 20 years of experience in the game industry. He worked as a design director for Ubisoft and Relic, where he took game design to another level. He is credited with 24 games that sold over 50 million copies and have been involved in numerous AAA brands, including Assassin’s Creed, Farcry, Rainbow Six, Prince of Persia, and Splinter Cell.
Alex is the founder of Game Whispering Inc., a company through which he offers consulting services in the fields of design and creativity. His clients include Relic, Sega, Good Shepherd, Virtuos, Gameloft, and Jamcity.
1) You have described peak fun in gaming as being achieved by alternating between periods of increased challenge and enjoyment of mastery — the journey of leveling up. How can the mechanics of leveling up to be successfully used in real life in a similar fashion to maximize fun in endeavors outside of gameplay?
I look at this question in the reverse because, for me, games are learning machines or teaching machines. They are designed to help a player learn something, and “fun” is the fuel of this machine. Without fun, you are just facing a lecture. In a way, a game is a microcosm of reality that is abstracted in a way to help you learn more efficiently.
You have probably seen the meme of the kid that is playing in front of his window, and the caption says, “Reality sucks. It’s the worst game ever.”
The mechanic of what fun delivers in terms of motivation and engagement for you to learn is most identifiable in a game, but it is basically the same in reality. It’s just more obfuscated in reality because learning dynamics are more complex. You can observe the effects of fun in a game and apply those principles in real life; it’s just a bit blurrier. You take the principles working for you in a game, and you figure out how to apply them to your real life. Fun, to me, is the motivation to learn. It’s the fuel that engages us to learn. So, we should ask, “how can we apply meaningful fun in real life?”
The most basic form of this is gamification, right? The use of game mechanics to drive motivation, engagement. However, you can observe when game mechanics are devoid of fun; it’s not as efficient. Let’s say you get a loyalty card and accumulate points for rewards. It’s shaping behavior the same way you shape behavior in games, but arguably it’s not that fun, and there are more effective methods.
Boredom is your DNA telling you, “Move on, you’re not learning right; you’re losing an edge.” Fun is the opposite of this. It’s your body saying, “This is good for you.” This is intrinsically good for you. It’s the ultimate layer of motivation. Fun applies to coaching people, it applies to building your habits, going to the gym, etc. Fun is the upper bend, the most valuable asset in creating habits and motivating people. Games are machines that teach you, and fun is the fuel. This fuel can be used in real life as well.
In games, fun is the indicator that you are learning something. So, in a real-life setting, reverse engineer this if you want to direct your life in an impactful way. Seek ways to include fun in your life. It is the best fuel to motivate you.
2) I was recently asked this question: On some level, does fun need to be spontaneous? Is choreographed fun inevitably contrived? You have indicated that another element of fun is uncertainty. Given this, what is your answer to this question, and why?
My first impulse to answer this is that it has already been answered by Roger Caillois when he talks about the different types of fun: Agôn, ilinx, agôn, alea, and mimicry. So, let’s say, in all of these different ways to experience a game, you have an element of uncertainty because agôn, the question is, “I’m playing chess, who will win?” There is that element of uncertainty. There is a choreography that we’re supposed to perform. Yes, it is scripted, but the fun aspect comes from the fact that you still don’t know, “Will you be able to perform to perfection or not?” So, your attention is here, and you’re still exploring that element of uncertainty, which makes it fun.
If you play Tic-Tac-Toe, the role of Tic-Tac-Toe as a game for me is to teach the players that you can solve games. It’s so simple that, let’s say after half an hour of playing Tic-Tac-Toe, you should reach that point where you solve the game. By the moment you solved it, there’s no more fun to be had because all of the possibilities are explored. You know exactly how to win. Now, you still might be able to derive some pleasure from beating your younger brother or sister, but again, that’s the distinction between fun and pleasure.
Back to a game like chess, the choreography of gameplay that we try to perform, it’s still engaging in fun because there’s still that uncertainty of being able to perform. So, the fact that it is pre-scripted doesn’t eliminate fun.
In games, you have two types of challenges. You have decision-based challenges, and you have execution-based challenges. Some of the decision-based challenges have a clear answer like Tic-Tac-Toe has, because there’s always one optimal play. In execution-based challenges, you have other types of decisions that include dilemmas when there’s no clear cut right or wrong answer. Am I playing to end the game quickly? Am I trying to play the long game? A more complex system will provide you a decision that doesn’t have a clear answer and introduce uncertainty in execution. When you have uncertainty in execution, it is fun. Tic-Tac-Toe, it is prescribed what you should play to win; the uncertainty of execution is nil. You just know where you put your mark. In my opinion, without uncertainty, you cannot have fun. However, even in a scripted path to success, if there is an element of execution that remains uncertain, then you can still have fun.
3) In addition to what we’ve just discussed, what have you learned as a game designer about having fun that can be applied outside of gaming in order to have more fun outside of gameplay?
This is quite a big one for me. Of course, I make games. I design games, but now I also manage people and coach people to make games. We just discussed that it is a good idea to have uncertainty for players to have fun. To make games is a creative process. The creative process requires you to be looking for something that doesn’t exist yet, right? You are creating something, but sometimes that can be scary because our brains are wired to save energy by sticking with the familiar.
We learn solutions by heart, and that feel comfortable. Our brains are fueled by glucose, and evolution has taught us to be conservative with this energy. We learn not to answer a hard question. If you ask someone seven multiplied by two, they’re going to spit out 14 right away because they knew the answer by heart. If you ask something more challenging, like 13 multiplied by 16, most people are going to laugh. This is their way of avoiding the question because they don’t want to spend the energy.
Naturally, many of us have built resistance to uncertainty. This is especially true in working with a team. As a manager, you’re paying people, and your role is to reduce uncertainty in any industrial process. So, there is tension; you need to reduce the uncertainty, but you cannot be creative without bathing in the uncertainty.
Understanding fun, understanding fun lies in uncertainty showed me that you use the levers of fun to create an environment that promotes creativity. To be creative, you need to find ways to become at ease with uncertainty. To strive as a creative person and build a creative process for people to strive in, you need to make uncertainty palatable. You need to make people indulge themselves in uncertainty, accept uncertainty, and not be afraid of it.
There is this remarkably interesting talk from one of the leaders of the Monty Pythons, John Cleese.
In the talk, Cleese discusses an open mindset and a closed mindset as it pertains to creativity. You need to possess both to create something new. You need a mix of the two. At the start of a project, you need the open mindset to dream, to think of a direction that hasn’t been explored yet, and to pave the way. Then you need a closed mindset to focus out distractions and got the work done.
A great tool for this is play. You can turn whatever activity you’re doing with your team into play. You say, look, we’re in abstract space that is not reality. We’re going to operate in an abstraction of reality, which you simplify. You state the rules of winning as clearly as possible for that specific task, which again is an abstraction compared to reality. Then you close up the abstraction and let the team get to work in this creative space.
In the end, what you do to foster creativity is you create a game where the input and output are going to be clear. Then you put the people that you want to be creative in that game, and you suggest, “Just play.” Games are a safe space to be open-minded. You want to make sure that your people feel safe because you cannot play without feeling safe.
4) Through neuroscience, we now know that a lot of the perceived thrill of fun — the reward of dopamine — is anticipatory in nature, as opposed to the event. A common example is people experience more fun pulling the slot machine handle than learning the outcome of their pull. What are the implications of this when designing a fun experience, and what are the pitfalls?
This is a topic that makes me sad for the following reason: these are the psychological biases and levers that we know we can pull to create engagement and to create a positive response. I label this pleasure, right? Dopamine, for me, is pleasure, right? You get a bit of chocolate or a bit of glucose; it gives you pleasure. Why? Because evolution rewards you for seeking glucose. I can get some pleasure drinking Coca-Cola all day. It’s not going to be fun, though.
Rats that have their pleasure centers hooked up to a lever will keep pressing the lever, and they will keep pressing it on and on, even at the expense of them starving to death! When we motivate people with pleasure, it throws them into an addiction loop similar to the rats that would rather starve themselves to death because they just want the pleasure.
The key guidepost for me is, “Am I learning something?” If I’m not learning something, then I’m not challenged. Since I equate fun with learning, that’s the distinction to pleasure; fun is exerting. After a lot of fun, you have to rest because learning takes energy. The point of pleasure from an evolutionary standpoint is to motivate you toward an activity that will be beneficial for you. Now, of course, with neurosciences and biochemistry, we can bypass this and say, “We can deliver you pleasure from a lever or slot machine handle.” But pleasure without learning leads to addiction because we can keep pushing the lever, pulling the handle, keep drinking Coca-Cola, it’s not exerting. All these actions do is to push us toward addiction. The goal of a slot machine is not to teach you something, it’s just to keep you in that loop, so you keep pumping money into the machine.
What you described in your question is largely understood and used mainly as a framework to build all of these attention-catching, time-wasting games, apps, and experiences. In my opinion, it’s almost criminal that it’s allowed. At least slot machines are regulated. If you look at Facebook or free-to-play games, it’s still not regulated, although it’s almost the same. They are using the same levers, and it’s hurtful. People waste time, people waste money, it can lead to depression. It makes me sad because it’s oftentimes way more profitable to deliver something that is just going to deliver pleasure instead of delivering learning, growth, and fun.
5) In all the wisdom you’ve amassed as a master architect of building experiences, what has surprised and/or intrigued you the most about creating fun and setting the stage for peak experience?
We talked earlier in the discussion about the evolutionary pressure of learning. I got obsessed with all the research on the topics we have been discussing, and I built a couple of workshops around these topics—feeding into my understanding of game design and teaching game design—and I got obsessed with learning as much as I could.
I would work and read until midnight, go to bed, wake up at 3 a.m. in the morning, and be compelled to go back to reading or writing. I was obsessed with it. Then I started reflecting on all the knowledge I was acquiring and asked myself, “OK, so obviously I’m interested in engagement, motivation, reward, learning, and I’m consumed by this, right? I am fully motivated. I’m in the zone, right? I’m in that flow channel, right?” I started wondering, what does that mean? It should mean something because it’s so all-engulfing to me. I started pondering on this, and the answer that came to me was it doesn’t mean anything. I remember that day clearly because the room literally started to spin.
I’m so engaged. It is my life. It is my life purpose. But what does my life mean? It doesn’t mean anything. Jacques Monod is a French and American scientist, and his breakthrough book was called “Chance and Necessity.” In his book, he analyzes the evolutionary pressure put on biochemistry and how it translates into behaviors. Monod makes a case that we’re the result of chance from random mutations and random environmental variables. In addition to that, that much of our form emerges from situations dictated by necessity and survival.
Jean-Paul Sartre and his existentialism theory make a good case for the fact that our life has no meaning per se, but meaning is made through our actions, decisions, and the environment we live in. Our actions and decisions are based on necessity-driven, random mutations, and selective pressure. What does that mean? Some people enjoy lying on their couch, watching TV. Some people enjoy going to the gym. Some people enjoy waking up at 3 a.m. in the morning to do research. The variation is so wide that it shows that random mutation dictates, in large part, what gives anyone pleasure (or not).
So, from that perspective, what has surprised me is the revelation that my DNA drives me to do this. Now the question is, is it sustainable or not? I have decided I’m going to continue to pursue this question and prove or disprove the validity of my random mutations.