1) Write a 1-2 paragraph summary of the assigned reading. (6 pts)

“Good Game Feel: An Empirically Grounded Framework for Juicy Design,” by Hicks, Dickinson, and Holopainen seeks to create a defined understanding regarding the elements of juicy game design. The authors make an important point to state that this is a concept that is widely felt in an intuitive manner and is very popular in academic game communities, but has historically had very vague definitions, making it is difficult to analyze. In other words, there’s an understanding that juicy design incorporates large amounts of visual/audio feedback—that in turn creates a positive player experience—but it’s difficult to know which specific elements contribute to juiciness. Another important point the authors wrote about in this paper is the relationship between game feel and juiciness. Juicy design is an important part of good game feel, which has 7 key aspects, including predictable results, good feedback, low skill floor with a high skill feeling, and appealing reactions, just to name a few.

In an effort to create a more unanimous, industry-standard definition of juiciness, the authors set out to write an online questionnaire exploring the concepts of game feel and juiciness, asking 17 developers how they understand and design for game feel and juiciness. The survey focused on 2 games that are often described as juicy: Candy Crush and Downwell. This survey returned many interesting results, such that too much feedback is not good and very overwhelming. Additionally, that good game feel is a lot more than just juiciness. Highly relevant aspects for analyzing juiciness include the: game state conveyed, exaggeration of elements, and focus of attention. Some final interesting takeaways from this paper and the questionnaire is that due to the intuitive understanding of juicy design, developers struggled to put juiciness into words. This provides the notion that perhaps not everything, such as a clear definition of juiciness, is meant to offer straight forward advice for analysis. Additionally, this natural, intuitive understanding of juicy design can be ascribed to perhaps the shared (cultural) experiences of game developers.

2) What, if anything, did you find exciting or inspiring about the reading? What do you feel the

authors did well? Were there any points that you agreed with? (2 pts)

I was intrigued by the ways in which juicy design can play an important role in educational games. It was interesting to learn that in these kinds of games, regular performance feedback increased learning. This is a good argument for the necessity of juicy design in educational games, as having the player/user learn is of utmost value and priority in this genre. I thought that the authors did a good job of doing their best to really unpack what goes into juicy design. Their affinity diagram analyzing approach let the different words and beliefs of developers speak for themselves. I also appreciated how they ideated their questionnaire as they progressed so that the questions could be as useful as possible. I agreed with many points in the paper. I ultimately am a huge advocate for juicy design and think that it enhances the player experience in an important and foundational way.

3) Was there anything that was confusing or unclear? Were there any points that you disagreed with? (2 pts)

Some of the different ways they split up the questions or sections of questions in the questionnaire felt a little unclear to me. I could use a little more of a definition on “Worldness,” “Visceral,” “Focus of Attention,” and “Slickness.” Off the top of my head, there was nothing I disagreed with! Perhaps as I learn more about juiciness, and experiment with it myself, this answer will be revised :)