This transfer of knowledge from one game to another is yet another type of learning in games. An internal play model can be built iteratively and this knowledge base can also glean information from beyond games themselves. What’s quite interesting is that just as non-game skills can generalize into gaming skills, so can the opposite be true. This is the heart of learning through play.
Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) is the personal and iterative process of achieving educational goals using a cycle of Forethought, Performance Control and Self-reflection.
Last year, I wrote a paper on Generative AI for Self-Regulated Learning and in it, I proposed a possible way to “healthily” integrate tools like ChatGPT into a classroom environment. GenAI is both Prometheus’ fire and Pandora’s box for students and teachers alike so it’s important to integrate such technologies so they don’t undermine foundational learning processes. The proposal was built on a vision of a dystopian future where schools have succumbed to economic entropy; in it, the remaining few teachers act as consultants and students need to engage in a cyclical process to learn academic materials.
For example, instead of simply asking chatbots to generate answers, students would use them to generate lesson plans to assist with SRL Forethought. Teachers would provide prompt templates and help students evaluate or modify whatever GenAI suggested. Similarly, AI tools would be used to assist students with Performance Control and Self-reflection with teachers reviewing and reinforcing each phase of SRL. For instance, students engage in Socratic learning with chatbots, verifying their knowledge of subject matter by asking questions about their understanding (instead of simply asking for explanations); these conversations are shared with teachers to ensure offloading is not occurring.
The proposal has some positive points such as customization at scale. With AI tools, each student can get a custom plan and evaluation, catered to their individual needs without overburdening their teacher. Indeed, if all elements of my proposal were to work out as I described, students would become lifelong learners, and teachers would be helpful guides and not authoritarians.
What is interesting here is that while GenAI tools need to be massaged with SRL to be effective, games naturally provide an environment for SRL! And video games (or computer games or any games built with software) support data manipulation that further strengthens SRL. Mission Objectives (goal planning), Rewards and Leaderboards (motivation support), and Scoring (performance monitoring tools) are features of video games that can be mapped to components of SRL.
It is fair to say that video games repeatedly cycle the player through the SRL process via the proverbial gameplay loop. Unlike other types of games, video games can offer safe failure, near-infinite retries, and immediate feedback and evaluation. Physical games like soccer, billiards or even pinball don’t easily support exact recreations of a problem; in video games, you can load and reload the exact level as many times as desired to easily test different hypotheses. Board games or tabletop games don’t support instant computation or telemetry that could be used for evaluation or monitoring. These games offer other benefits such as exercise and socialization but when it comes to supporting SRL attributes, video games are hard to beat. They offer systems that enable a player to easily run through the SRL cycle.
The irony as I see it is that video games have not evolved to reach their full potential. Video games don’t always contain material that is worth learning. They may have excellent learning mechanics but teach useless learning content, with most video games seemingly stuck in a carnival phase of glorified shooting galleries and random duck fishing. There may be exceptions but they are vastly outnumbered.
In defense of carnival-ish video games, a popular definition of games claims that games (of any kind) must not be productive. It is supposed to be a form of recreation after all. And yet, a lion cub playfully wrestles and eventually generalizes this play activity into powerful killing lunges (for its lunches). Arguably, because of learning, games are inherently productive. The exercise from playing sports is beneficial to the human body and research indicates that puzzles can help aging brains.
But when it comes to video games, the content is often lacking because skills taught by games don’t readily transfer to the real world in ways they can be useful. Playing thousands of hours of First Person Shooters will not improve actual gunhandling nor marksmanship; the environments are just vastly different. The input and output devices of video games do not match their real world counterparts; even with closely modeled proxies, it is difficult if not impossible to translate such skills out of the video game itself. Perhaps team-based FPSs might improve vocal communication and teamwork in real life situations but that would be fortuitous coincidence and not a goal accomplished by design.
With video games, one might develop strategic knowledge without acquiring the necessary skills to execute them.
And by design, educational video games are a whole genre dedicated to teaching useful skills, oftentimes conceptual and not physical. Unfortunately, they’re often games of low quality, or cater to schools’ needs as opposed to players’ needs (a great way to fail the motivational aspect of SRL). The phrase “chocolate-covered broccoli” was one I heard often working on an educational game which describes the unappealing nature of a product whose end goal is to teach academic content that was likely uninteresting to learn to begin with.
Even with appealing content and motivated players, there may be other points of friction for learning. For example, video games that teach languages often have motivated students who wish to communicate with new groups of people. However, these games have a problem with SRL performance control. Products like Duolingo are inherently ineffective for learning to converse in new languages because quizzes and human conversation are not the same; the skills being evaluated will not generalize to the real world environment. You might be able to learn grammar and build your vocabulary but you likely won’t achieve fluency with just the software itself.
With poor skill transfer, goals that undermine SRL, and environmental mismatches, video games face an uphill battle in evolving into tools that can transform their players. Most video games optimize learning for mastery of the game mechanics contained within; should they break out and go beyond these mechanics, they could become tools that improve people’s lives significantly. And yes, learning amazing skills with game software is a popular trope in Science Fiction. The Animus in Assassin’s Creed could inflict a “bleeding effect” where parkour and other abilities in its simulations could transfer to an excessive user. We can’t quite accomplish The Matrix’s brain-downloadable Kung-fu in our current reality but the war simulators in Ender’s Game are absolutely within reach. By accepting that video games provide powerful environments for Self-Regulated Learning, game developers can push their games to new heights where what the player learns remains valuable even when the game is over.
]]>Don’t waste the player’s time¹
¹With the uncommon exception being when the player’s desire is to waste time.
The essence of Game User Experience design is enabling progression towards the player’s desired goal. When seen through this lens, many do’s and don’t’s in Game UX become immediately apparent. You won’t need to read a ton of literature to start making good UX decisions.
Take the humble Splash Screen flow. It’s THE first interaction when booting up a game and yet, it often supports the business needs instead of the player! It will consume seconds to fade in and out disclaimers, warnings, and logos of studios, technologies, and other business partners. Every. Single. Time the game starts. Don’t waste the player’s time. They want to play the game ASAP; don’t impede their progress with slow, repetitive Splashes.
Action Points:
What are we trying to do here? Not get in the way of the player trying to play the game!
Fast isn’t always good UX. Progress is.
It’s important to understand the nuance here. It’s not about speed nor implementing time-saving techniques; it’s about progression. And progression can be slow if the game calls for it. The real issue with most Splash Screen flows is they impede player progression towards playing the game.
UX design rules dictate many principles. But at the end of the day, the condition is the same: serve the user by helping them achieve their goals. It’s no different with games; substitute user with player. Always ask yourself: what is the player trying to do right now and does this design help them make meaningful progress toward it?
]]>This is the first game I’ve worked on that was advertised to the general public and not just traditional gamers. As such, it was an absolute treat to see it on display at Times Square.
Reframing is based in cognitive behavioral therapy and I’ve found it to be very effective. It does involves a few steps:
There’s a few more practices like labeling and reinterpreting events but a generalized take is to step back, assess the thought and respond differently. This has helped improve my mood considerably and I highly recommend it to all.
]]>This challenge, a solid bulk of titles includes first volumes of various manga, some graphic novels, and a few children’s books; there were plenty of other genres like horror, self-help, humor, and even college textbooks and romantasy. As usual, a lot of books were started and either paused or abandoned. Ultimately, it was a great year for reading.
Goodreads got on the yearly-recap bandwagon #GoodreadsYearInBooks. So here’s one of its images that showcases reading progress.
As with most recaps, December tends to be incomplete because the data is captured around the middle of the month. But I make the most progress towards the end due to the winter holidays.
Of the 150 books I read, notable titles included Stephen King’s Later, Kotaro Isaka’s Three Assassins and Elise Gravel’s Killer Underwear Invasion.
If you’ve been keeping score, you might be disappointed to learn that once again “As The Gods Will” remains unfinished. Maybe 2026 is the year! I did restart Gantz and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure so that was a fun return to the comics of my college days.
Here are some reading tips that helped me complete this challenge:
Juggle multiple formats. Reading paperback, ebook and audiobook versions of the same book helps maintain momentum. I did this with Culpability which I was dangerously close to abandoning.
Time is precious so use reading tools. Kindle’s Word Runner feature is fantastic for pure efficiency reading. It flashes each word in the same spot, so your eyes don’t have to travel across the page. Undoubtedly, some reading pleasure is lost from ignoring the physical configurations of text on a page but for weaker ebook titles, it’s the best way to power through. What Happened to Lucy Vale was 431 pages and if not for this feature, there’s no way I would have completed this title.
Adapt reading to the text. I’m still a speed-reading neophyte, but I’ve found some success with dynamic chunking where I sometimes read word-by-word, phrase-by-phrase, and clause-by-clause. This depends on the text itself. By “zooming” my attention in and out, I can filter out words without losing meaning and turn pages faster.
Hope to see you in 2026’s Book Challenge! It might not be as ambitious but I’m going to continue the endeavor: read as much as possible, read outside my comfort zone, and read for pleasure. Till next time~
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At their core, achievements (or trophies, badges, stickers, whatever noun your platform prefers) are goals defined outside the game, inside the ecosystem they belong to. Because of this externality, they are thought of as meta-goals. Typically, there is no in-game reward for completing these. Instead, the reward comes from “growth” in the player’s profile. So, in the case of Xbox, each achievement has a score which accumulates into the profile’s Gamerscore value. However, this is not the only type of growth that could motivate a player to earn achievements. Growth in the player’s profile comes in many flavors and also includes:
Personally, the kind of growth I enjoy from these systems is akin to scrapbooking. I simply like collecting achievements, flipping through them like a digital photo album of my gaming history. So many are tied to vivid memories: where I was, what I was doing, and with whom, when some janky achievement finally triggered. Because my profiles also track play history, the whole thing forms a surprisingly accurate portrait of my gaming taste and personality.
As the years have passed, different statistics have been used to generate different measuring sticks when it comes to achievements. External websites like TrueAchievements and PSNProfiles track all sorts of player data: ratios, rarity, leaderboards, streaks, and more. They host meta-competitions and other activities that creatively use this data. Entire communities now exist around achievement hunting, full of players ready to help each other perform obscure tricks or orchestrate elaborate boosting rituals.
Regardless of why people chase them, Achievements undeniably changed how many gamers play. The usual stance is that Achievements gently push players toward experiences they’d normally skip, stretching a game’s lifespan and value. But I have an interesting theory as to why Achievements came about the way they did.
Bragging rights are ancient. What was new and compelling was embedding that bragging system at the platform level. When Microsoft did this, they created one consistent truth: every game on the platform has the same intrinsic value in at least one dimension.
Not all games are equal. Some score 9/10, some score 1/10, and players behave accordingly. We spend money on good games and we avoid bad ones. Achievements are the great equalizer. Every game, no matter how obscure or mediocre, can increase your player profile value.
It wasn’t always consistent; early Xbox 360 titles had wildly different achievement totals until Microsoft standardized the 1000 Gamerscore baseline. So even if you buy a game you don’t like, you can still increase your profile’s achievement count and Gamerscore value. Of course, this means many gamers out there will buy and play anything for this growth; some publishers have capitalized on this, putting out games with achievements that are quick to earn.
To support the idea of Achievements being an equalizer, we should look at its forgotten subsystem called Challenges.
Challenges were time-sensitive achievements with tangible rewards like wallpapers or bonus items. They actually expired, never to be earned again, and there hasn’t been a new one since March 2024. Where Achievements say, “Everything has value,” Challenges said, “Buy now or miss out.” A few Challenges were built around playing within the first week of launch, with names like “I Was There” and “Day One Hero.” A lot of games these days survive on FOMO or Fear Of Missing Out, and the Challenges system would have thrived the same way.
Why didn’t they survive? A mix of possibilities: Xbox One’s rocky launch/poor adoption, unappealing rewards, poor dopamine payoff, or simply the fact that Challenges didn’t accumulate like Achievements do. They were ephemeral in a system built on permanence. Still, they reveal Microsoft’s dual motives: Achievements support broad value (“Get it anyway”). Challenges supported urgent value (“Get it now”).
Consider Evergreen titles: Fortnite, Roblox, and so on. These are massive games with long lifespans and huge player bases. If a single game becomes its own platform, then its in-game goals become meta-goals simply by being accessible externally. And if the game is free-to-play, the “ease the purchase decision” purpose of Achievements becomes irrelevant. An Evergreen title has very little incentive to support a platform’s Achievement system beyond the bare minimum.
As with any long-running system, age is the quiet predator. Achievements have existed for almost half the span of commercial video gaming. New players entering the ecosystem simply can’t compete with hunters who have built profiles for a decade or more. That makes the primary metric almost meaningless to newcomers; they’ll seek growth elsewhere. With spending habits shifting (many players buy only a handful of titles a year now), the Achievement ecosystem may eventually reach a new equilibrium. Maybe per-title achievements will matter more than platform-wide ones. Maybe growth will shift toward status systems built directly into individual games.
Before I wrap this up, let’s talk about building achievement sets. I’ve never designed one from scratch, but I’ve implemented a few, and I’ll say this with absolute confidence: make your achievements easy to test. You do not want to debug a broken achievement that requires hours of specific gameplay steps.
If you’re on a tight budget, keep your achievement set small and technically simple. That doesn’t mean making it completable in five minutes. You can absolutely craft challenging goals that rely on player skill, knowledge, or mastery while still keeping their technical conditions easy to validate. A clean, compact achievement list makes your dev life easier and makes achievement hunters happy.
In conclusion, I don’t know what the future holds. Achievements might be here to stay, or they may slowly fade away as players shift their value systems toward other metrics: the rarest skin, the coolest user-generated world, the biggest follower count in some in-game social network. Gaming evolves, and so do the systems that support it. Maybe the next great meta-system is already here but we just haven’t realized it yet!
]]>My first class of the Spring semester was Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and I’ve found its principles are applicable (no pun intended) in the realm of both Game Design and UX Design.
ABA is a form of therapy that involves understanding and changing behavior through observable, measurable principles. It’s often used to help young children with development disorders learn new skills. But beyond its clinical use, the ABA framework offers powerful tools for shaping behavior in any system including video games!
What is Applied Behavior Analysis?
As I progressed through the class, I started to see game mechanics, player loops and First-Time User Experiences in a new light. Many of the concepts we studied such as Reinforcement, Generalization and Extinction, showed up constantly in game systems I’ve built or played. The scientific rigor of ABA offers a new language for understanding why players behave the way they do and how to design systems that support, shape, or redirect that behavior. So without further ado, here are a few key ABA concepts and how they show up in games!
Reinforcement is everywhere in games and I mean everywhere. In ABA, reinforcement is the strengthening of a behavior by delivering a consequence after it occurs. There are two types - positive and negative; the former involves adding(+) a desired stimulus, the latter removing(-) an aversive stimulus.
In games, reward systems and positive feedback loops are forms of reinforcements. Various sensations that we often call “juice” are also reinforcement. Player actions are reinforced by sound effects, particle effects, character animations and more.
Punishment is when a behavior is weakened by delivering a consequence. Like reinforcement, there is positive punishment and negative punishment; the former introduces(+) an averse stimulus while the latter removes(-) a reinforcing stimulus. Note that positive and negative does not mean “good” or “bad” but more like Mathematics, it’s addition and subtraction. Regardless of “polarity,” the goal of both types of punishment is to reduce the likelihood of the behavior recurring.
In games, Punishment includes failure states, removal of user input or introduction of time-outs. Players who prematurely quit multiplayer battles may be punished by increasing matchmaking time. Roguelikes thrive on punishment by removing all items and progress on failure which in turn, discourages reckless behaviors. Cooldowns kick in to discourage spamming emote inputs that might irritate other players.
The effectiveness of both Reinforcement and Punishment is influenced by Immediacy, Contingency, Motivating Operations, Magnitude, and Individual Differences.
Immediacy links a behavior to a stimulus based on time. If there is a delay, the link is weakened and so is the effectiveness of the reinforcement or punishment. In games, immediacy significantly helps with clarity. When an experience progress bar fills up right after defeating an enemy, it is clear what action helped improve the player character and will reinforce similar actions.
Contingency is the consistency of the stimulus occurring every time the behavior occurs. Without contingency, behavior modification will not occur as the stimulus will seem randomly applied. A player must be punished with a Game Over each and every time they fall in a pit in a platformer. If they only “died” sometimes when they fell in a pit, it wouldn’t be clear what behavior should be avoided. Fortunately, contingency in games is easy to implement due to their systemic nature.
Motivating Operations are preceding events that change the effectiveness of the reinforcer or punisher which in turn affects the promotion or reduction of the behavior. Recently, games often use Daily Login bonuses which grant various bonuses or currency to improve play sessions and encourage daily play behavior. Various collectables in a survival game can become more enticing to collect if the environment is tuned correctly. For example, if the player dies from starvation, collecting food becomes important and so hunger is a stronger reinforcer.
Magnitude means that the intensity of the reinforcement or punishment influences how effective it can be. Oftentimes, rewards and punishments are proportional to player behavior. Health points are often removed based on the magnitude of mistakes. For example, slow moves might be more damaging since they should be easier to dodge. Or defeating multiple enemies in a row is rewarded with more points or bombastic acknowledgment from an in-game announcer.
Individual Differences means that everyone assigns different values to stimuli and that what might reinforce and punish one person might not equally affect another. Basically, don’t assume everyone is the same! Leveling up might motivate one type of player in an MMORPG but another player might not care about their character as much as social interactivity with other players.
Extinction is the removal of a reinforcer to decrease a behavior over time. In order to use extinction procedures, the specific reinforcer must be identified and eliminated.
Farming weaker enemies in order to defeat the final boss is often not possible in RPGs because extinction is implemented by awarding less experience or granting less and less loot. This encourages the player to move to new areas and explore the rest of the game. Extinction is often used to nudge players into using newly introduced mechanics by reducing the effectiveness of older ones.
Generalization is when a behavior that occurs in one context successfully occurs in another similar context. Typically, the former context is the training environment while the latter one is a non-training scenario. And if you thought of in-game tutorials, you would be right! Tutorials are attempts at generalization as skills learned in the tutorial are used to conquer progressively difficult challenges in the levels that follow it.
These are the antecedent stimuli that are present when a behavior can be reinforced. Think of these as cues. Glowing collectables, telegraphing attack danger zones, NPC quest indicators, subtle vibrations when near a hidden item, all of these are examples of SDs. They tell the player that a desirable interaction is available and they should go do it.
Prompting is when Discriminative Stimuli is presented before the desired behavior has occurred in order to assist or guide the subject to perform said desired behavior. Prompting provides an opportunity for reinforcement. Tutorial pop-ups and hint systems are examples of prompting. Think of it as the provision of the cue. It’s particularly important for good UX design as prompting increases the probability of correct responses and prevents frustration. It also aids learning through guided practice.
It’s important to note that prompts go beyond teaching new skills. Prompts can involve appropriate timing and usage of existing skills. For example, a player may already know how to jump to clear obstacles in a platformer but might need prompting to learn that jump can be used to stomp enemies or break overhead blocks.
Fading is the gradual removal of prompts as the learner becomes more independent. The idea behind fading is the player can perform a behavior without any assistance. Typically you would start fading once the individual shows progress. Many games show an input guide in the HUD and once a player has performed enough actions, it is literally faded away as a form of ABA fading. Fading can go beyond this into level design with steady removal of environmental hints in platformers or puzzle games. If prompting is implemented, fading must be used to ensure long term learning and independence.
An interesting form of fading is gradual progression across different prompt types. There are actually different types of prompts such as visual, verbal and modeling prompts. Different prompts can have different levels of intrusiveness and this is important to consider. For example, some games might stop player input and show an NPC Ghost or a video on how to perform new moves. This would be a modeling prompt and to fade this, we might transition to a verbal prompt where an NPC might simply announce what to do. This could be further faded into an in-world contextual icon in the UI.
Shaping is the reinforcement of successive approximations of the desired behavior. Basically, a complex behavior is broken down into simpler or easier ones and these are reinforced gradually. A key aspect of shaping is differential reinforcement where closer approximations of the behavior are rewarded while mistakes are not. Shaping is immensely important for building momentum and confidence; it’s the reason why difficulty curves exist. Initial levels often focus on teaching the game’s rules and idiosyncrasies; eventually the player graduates into harder levels that introduce more challenges and newer concepts to apply their skills towards.
In ABA, a token economy is a behavior modification system where tokens are used to reinforce desirable behaviors by assigning value to them using backup reinforcers. In other words, exchangeable tokens are used to encourage behaviors. Also, undesirable behaviors can be discouraged by removal of these tokens, adversely changing the exchange rate or reducing the availability or value of backup reinforcers.
Token economies are utilized in so many games. Think of activity punch cards, free gacha pulls, Achievements or Trophies, materials for item crafting, in-game currency or experience points and you pretty much know what a token economy in a game looks like.
An important aspect of token economies that I rarely see in games is the fading of the tokens. Designers must fade tokens or generalization may fail to occur. A good time to fade tokens is when players are consistently earning a huge amount of tokens. When this happens (assuming there’s no cheating or token counterfeiting), it means the player’s target behavior is consistently reinforced by the tokens. When this happens, it’s a good idea to fade the tokens in lieu of the game’s natural reinforcers. When a game does not fade its tokens, it might mean it lacks natural reinforcers which is a whole different problem, one that I would personally categorize as catastrophic. In other words, I believe your game should not be the token economy itself; the token economy should support the game and not be the game!
To understand these and how they relate to games, we must first know about Unconditioned Stimulus (US) which is a stimulus that automatically triggers a response without prior learning. Dust in the nose is a US that causes sneezing, which is an Unconditioned Response (UR). We don’t learn to sneeze; we just do it.
A Conditioned Stimuli (CS) is when a neutral stimulus is paired with a US to invoke a response identical (or similar) to the UR. This response is learned so it is a Conditioned Response (CR). The classic example of this is Pavlov’s bell (CS) which made dogs salivate (CR) without the presence of food (US).
This technique is also called Respondent Conditioning and repeated pairing of US and CS can be used to affect player behavior and invoke emotional responses. For example, sudden, loud noises (US) tend to startle us and we might jump or gasp (UR). By pairing these loud sound effects with enemy appearances or attacks, they can now become Conditioned Stimuli. With enough repetition, it might be possible for a player to feel a fear response (CR) to the enemy even without the loud noises (US). A similar example works for Invincibility music which might hype someone up at the gym while they’re working out.
Desensitization is the process of increasing a specific behavior response by gradual, repeated exposure to a stimulus. It’s often used to treat fears but it’s possible to use in the world of gaming too. Think of intense multiplayer matches with other human players; many successful titles usually have you playing with easy bots first and slowly reduce the bots and introduce more human players. This is a form of desensitization that is called In Vivo Desensitization because we’re working with a gradual exposure to the actual difficult situation. The other form is called Systematic Desensitization which deals with imagining or simulating the scenario while maintaining a relaxed state. The intention is to replace the fear response with the relaxation response. Video tutorials or streamer gameplay is an example of this; you’re not playing with humans but you’re seeing how a game could go down and this can help increase your confidence when it’s time to play against others.
In order to change behavior, one must first observe and record them. Many games are run on computers that are connected to the internet so this is actually possible. Using telemetry, we can collect player behavior data and measure their dimensions to draw different conclusions.
There are four dimensions of behavior: Frequency, Duration, Intensity, and Latency. A handy mnemonic can be FIDL, said aloud as fiddle, where each letter represents the starting letter of each of the four dimensions.
Frequency can be defined as the rate at which the behavior occurs. It is measured by tracking the number of instances of the behavior that happened over a period of time.
Duration is how long a specific instance of the behavior lasted. It is the time between when a behavior started and when it stopped.
Intensity is the measure of physical force or magnitude of the instance of the behavior. Intensity requires some sort of scale where values can be rated and relativity can be understood.
Latency can be defined as the time between an event and the start of the behavior. It is helpful to think of it as the “lag” between what stimulates the behavior to the actual occurrence of the instance of the behavior.
The most important takeaway here is these dimensions are measurable aspects of behaviors. Because they can be tracked, they can be studied and used for creation and assessment of behavior modification procedures.
In games, we add telemetry hooks so we can record various actions in the game: how long game sessions are, what level players might quit at, which tools were used the most, etc. When we update the game, we can collect the data again and see how effective our changes may have been.
I believe ABA can be used to make better games. We can use Prompting, Fading and Shaping to build adaptive user interfaces that let all sorts of players enjoy the game and improves its accessibility. By understanding Reinforcement and Punishment, we can build better game loops and balanced mechanics. Extinction can gently push gamers to explore new gameplay systems. When it comes to Live Ops, Motivating Operations and Token Economies are instrumental in keeping a game engaging over a long period of time. The science of ABA can help us understand gamer behavior that we innately know but can’t explain easily.
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