Every game you’ve loved went through a stretch where someone built a crude version, played it, felt that something was off, changed one thing, and played it again, over and over, until it clicked. Designers call that search “finding the fun.”
Everything around that search is getting cheaper. With AI tools we’re able to skip a timesink in scaffolding that used to come first. That’s a real gift. It’s also a trap, because a game that runs is not a game that’s fun. Players will open something perfectly functional, give it thirty seconds, and leave, and nothing in the build will tell you what went wrong.
Fun isn’t a feature you implement. Legendary Game Designer Raph Koster said it cleanest: fun is the dopamine your brain pays out for learning a pattern. You enjoy a game while you’re still figuring it out, and you put it down the moment you’ve mastered it. So finding the fun is hands-on work. Build the smallest version that plays, feel it, change one variable, feel it again, and keep going until the loop won’t let you stop.
Doing that well takes three unglamorous things.
- Iterating has to be cheap, or you’ll quit before you get there.
- You have to remember what each attempt taught you.
- And a second set of eyes, someone who’s watched a hundred games die the same way, saves you months.
We’ve really honed Minds by Animoca Brands to help fulfill these requirements so aspiring Game Designers can just jump right in and feel secure that there’s the right AI agent that’s got their back.
Cheap to try. A Mind costs nothing to spin up. No install, and CLI tools that are launching soon will be optional. You just talk to it over email or Telegram like a teammate. That’s the whole point: finding the fun is mostly throwing ideas in the bin, and you only throw freely when each idea is cheap to make. Spend a week on a prototype and you’ll defend it. Spend an hour and you’ll happily kill it.
It doesn’t forget. A Mind isn’t a chat that wipes itself every morning. It remembers your pillars, your last playtest, why you killed that mechanic back in build three. Your design gets sharper over time instead of starting from zero every session.
It’s not alone. Minds live in Circles, which means they connect to each other. Your design Mind can hand work straight to an art Mind and a code Mind, like a tiny studio that fits inside your inbox.
And here’s the part that levels the field for anyone who’s never shipped a game: you can borrow a veteran designer’s instincts off the shelf. Soon you’ll be able to spawn a ready-made Game Design Mind that already knows the playbook, eleven things a great designer would catch that you’d miss, sitting in your corner from day one.
Get the idea right
- Concepting turns one sentence into a real pitch. The whole game on a page before you sink a week into it.
- Pillars lock down what your game is actually about, then call you out when you start bolting on stuff that doesn’t belong.
Make it feel good to play
- MDA names the kind of fun you’re chasing, so you’re aiming instead of guessing.
- Skill Chain maps how players get good, and catches the exact spot where they’ll get bored or rage-quit.
- Fun Diagnostic is the one you’ll lean on most. “This feels boring” goes in, seven specific reasons why come back out.
- Schell’s Lenses is 100 questions the best designers ask their own games. Now you can point them at yours.
Keep them coming back
- PENS checks whether your game scratches the three itches that build loyalty: feeling free, getting better, and playing with other people.
- Octalysis shows what’s really pulling players in, and flags the cheap manipulative tricks before you accidentally ship a slot machine.
Make the economy hold up
- Balance runs the math you’d rather skip: fair prices, no broken cards, a real rock-paper-scissors instead of one obvious best pick.
- Value Chains map your economy so there’s always a reason to keep earning and spending.
- Faucets & Drains spots inflation and hoarding before your players are raging about it in Discord.
As games become easier and cheaper to make, knowing how to make it fun is the part that used to take years, the part you couldn’t shortcut. Now you can drop a designer’s brain next to yours, one that remembers everything and works while you sleep. Use it. Find the fun first.
