Three foundations every screen game we ship stands on. Read each lesson, mark it complete, and you're warmed up for the exam.
Engagement isn't a feeling — it's a four-beat loop.
Every game we ship runs on the same pattern: a trigger pulls a person in, they take an action, they get a reward, and they make a tiny investment that pulls them back next time. Miss a beat and the loop dies on the first play. Hit all four and the same player comes back without being asked.
Takeaway Trigger → Action → Reward → Investment. We design every mechanic against this.
The screen decides the mechanic, not the other way around.
A trade-show kiosk is 60 seconds of standing-up attention. A bar TV is 90 minutes of group play. A subscriber app is 30 seconds per day for a year. The mechanic must fit the surface — same brand, very different game design. We start every engagement by pressure-testing where, how long, and with whom the player will actually play.
Takeaway Booth, big screen, bar, in-product, web — each one wants a different game.
If you can't measure it, it's decoration.
We design backward from the business outcome: leads captured, dwell time per visitor, weekly active subscribers, social posts generated. Every game ships with a dashboard so the marketing team sees exactly what the mechanic is producing. Iteration is baked in — we tune for the metric that matters, not the metric that's pretty.
Takeaway Pick one north-star metric per build. The game lives or dies by it.