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Overview:
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Designers build games around player fantasies. These typically concern something the player "pretends" to be inside a game. But another kind of fantasy is often overlooked: "Player Mythologies". These are the narratives through which players view themselves as players. Explorer, spy, collector, artist - these archetypes don't just describe a character in a game. Remarkably, they sometimes describe the actual players, and how a specific game or genre fits into players' lives. By understanding these narratives, designers can gain profound insight into their players' mindset and motivation, reshaping traditional ideas of "good" and "bad" design.In this talk, Alex Jaffe introduces player mythologies, showing their impact and their root causes in subtle design choices. He then presents a case study on the player mythology of fighting games. He shows how this lens unlocked his work on Riot Games' 2XKO (formerly Project L), and illuminates the beauty of the genre along the way.
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