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# Video game designers know the greatest playground is your brain.
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/video-game-designers-know-the-greatest-playground-is/
- Published: 2011-05-25T20:05:00.000Z
- Updated: 2015-11-17T15:53:43.000Z
- Description: The human brain is an elusive, enigmatic thing. It can produce stunning intellectual achievement or irredeemable inanity. It loves a good puzzle almost as much as it loves shiny objects. Dan Gould’s detailing of the psychological goldmine that are videogames shows how game designers know how to woo
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: News, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

![](http://killscreen.webfactional.com/includes/img/focus-areas/brainfun.jpg)

The human brain is an elusive, enigmatic thing. It can produce stunning intellectual achievement or irredeemable inanity. It loves a good puzzle almost as much as it loves shiny objects. Dan Gould’s detailing of the psychological goldmine that are videogames shows how game designers know how to woo our minds:

> *This “acquire, test, master” model is still intrinsic to game design. The recently released Portal 2, a brilliant, physics-based puzzler set in an abandoned science research facility, works in exactly the same way. Here, players wield a portal gun, a device that creates dimensional wormholes in walls, floors and ceilings – but they’re only introduced to one facet of the gun at a time, and when it has been mastered, new items such as super-bouncy gels are introduced. There is constant progress and a continually evolving challenge, but there is always room to experiment and to figure things out through intuition.*

This makes us wonder what GIRP creator [Bennett Foddy would have to say about this kind of thing](http://killscreendaily.com/articles/profile-bennett-foddy?ref=killscreen.com).

–*Lana Polansky*

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