Players, Motivation, and Agency
Key concepts about why people play games and how designers create meaningful decisions.
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Questions Covered in This Set
10 cards to master
What is agency in game design?
The feeling that your decisions actually matter — built from comprehension, consequence, and attribution.
Name Bartle's four player types.
Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers.
What motivates an Explorer?
Finding out what's in the game — poking at edges, breaking sequences, reading everything.
What are the three needs in Self-Determination Theory?
Competence (I'm improving), autonomy (it was my choice), and relatedness (with people who matter).
What is 'flow' according to Csikszentmihalyi?
Peak engagement when challenge sits just above current skill — too easy is boring, too hard is anxious.
What are the three ingredients of agency?
Comprehension, consequence, and attribution — if any is missing, the feeling collapses.
Why is Tic-Tac-Toe boring for adults despite full agency?
It's solved — no meaningful uncertainty remains, so every game is a draw.
What is 'fake agency'?
Choices that don't matter, like a dialogue tree where every reply leads to the same scene; players sniff it out and lose trust.
What is illusory difficulty?
Losing for reasons you can't perceive, which breaks attribution.
Why does agency reappear in repeated Rock-Paper-Scissors?
Across many rounds you read your opponent's patterns, so your reasoning affects outcomes.
