- Author
- Raph Koster
- Published
- 3 November 2025
- Kind
- Personal blog essay, argued from experience with examples
- Original
- www.raphkoster.com/2025/11/03/game-design-is-simple-actually/
- Subject
- Games and game design
- Themes
- Rules that generate, Getting good
What it is
Raph Koster is a game designer and the author of A Theory of Fun. The essay is a cheat sheet in twelve steps. Each step ends with a bottom-line sentence. The aim is to show how fun, loops, feedback, pacing and motivation fit together.
What it says
- Koster says fun is basically about making progress on prediction.
- Koster says a problem is constraints plus a goal. Rules with no goal make a toy.
- Koster says games have an operational loop and a progression spiral.
- Koster says good feedback shows available actions, that one was used, and its effect.
- Koster says Pac-Man got solved, so Ms. Pac-Man added randomness to escalate.
- Koster says games nest, web and chain small loops into larger structures.
- Koster says people learn best when a problem sits just past their current ability.
What evidence it gives
The essay offers argument and worked examples. The examples include a stick-clicking game, Snake, Pac-Man, Tetris and Connect Four. It names theorists such as Nicole Lazzaro, Roger Caillois and Mark LeBlanc. It cites no studies and gives no data.
Interests and limits
The author is a working designer who sells books. The page carries affiliate links to them. The essay calls its own list a strategy guide that others may dispute. The original site refused the download. The text came from a Wayback Machine copy dated 19 October 2026. The essay claims to cover all game types without testing that.
Connections
These links are this wiki's own reading, not claims the sources make.
- The Coming Loop. Koster says rules with no goal make a toy. Ronacher says a harness loop needs only a useful signal to continue. Together they offer a test for any agent loop. Does it have a goal, or is it a toy that writes code?