Good Game Feel: An Empirically Grounded Framework for Juicy Design

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Hicks Kieran Dickinson Patrick Holopainen Jussi Gerling Kathrin
2018 DiGRA '18 - Proceedings of the 2018 DiGRA International Conference: The Game is the Message

Juicy design refers to the idea that large amounts of audiovisual feedback contribute to a positive player experience. While the concept is popular in the game design community, definitions of the concept remain vague, and it is difficult to analyze which elements contribute to whether a game is perceived as juicy. In this paper, we address this issue through a combination of industry perspectives and academic analysis to provide a more detailed understanding of contributors to juicy design. We present results from an online survey that received responses from 17 game developers, and create an affinity diagram to derive a framework that facilitates the analysis of juicy design rooted in developers’ perspectives. Through application to two commercially available games, we refine the framework, and contribute a tool that makes the idea of juiciness actionable for researchers and designers.