Designing Game Feel. A Survey

TL;DR

This survey comprehensively reviews research on game feel, categorizing design purposes into physicality, amplification, and support, and detailing techniques like tuning, juicing, and streamlining to enhance player experience.

Contribution

It introduces a structured framework and vocabulary for understanding and designing game feel, bridging research and practice in this domain.

Findings

Identified three core domains of game feel: physicality, amplification, support.

Defined key techniques: tuning, juicing, streamlining.

Provided a shared vocabulary to improve communication between researchers and practitioners.

Abstract

Game feel design is the intentional design of the affective impact of moment-to-moment interaction with games. In this paper we survey academic research and publications by practitioners to give a complete overview of the state of research concerning this aspect of game design, including context from related areas. We analysed over 200 sources and categorised their content according to the design purpose presented. This resulted in three different domains of intended player experiences: physicality, amplification, and support. In these domains, the act of polishing that determines game feel, takes the shape of tuning, juicing, and streamlining respectively. Tuning the physicality of game objects creates cohesion, predictability, and the resulting movement informs many other design aspects. Juicing is the act of polishing amplification and it results in empowerment and provides clarity of feedback by communicating the importance of game events. Streamlining allows a game to act on the intention of the player, supporting the execution of actions in the game. These three design intents are the main means through which designers control minute details of interactivity and inform the player's reaction. This framework and its nuanced vocabulary can lead to an understanding of game feel that is shared between practitioners and researchers as highlighted in the concluding future research section.