“I got really lost in the pacing of the game, working out the best numbers to make it so that my pogo-stick thing fell over slowly enough for me to time my jump movements, the best way to make it possible to chain actions together, not controlling my character’s movement around the screen but nudging it now and again to direct it where I wanted”

This is basically the outline I created of ideal player experience: the enjoyable, meditative experience of tuning a game mechanic. And, of course, you clearly sponged the underlying lesson and understanding about why tuning game mechanics is difficult, what it’s like to do so, and how mechanic tunings relate to the spacing of ojbects in a game world (level design.)

I’m interested in your final comment, about how games might be good for learning about other domains. What other domains are you intersted in teaching? I’m currently wrapping up a project for Cisco systems, a game, which is intended to equip their sales staff with some very specific (and very dry) information about dealing with customers. It seems like there’s some parity there with what you’re talking about. I feel like if we can teach this dry, statistical info to a bunch of salespeople (which remains to be seen – I’ll let you know how it goes ) we can teach just about anything through a game. Drop me an email if you’d be interested in chatting about such things.

Also, I have some changes planned for Tune that I’d be interested to bounce off you, as someone who ‘got it.’ For instance, working with some different mechanics:

http://www.steveswink.com/Tune/Tune_D_01.htm

(Pardon the outdated, less than stellar UI implmentation there)

Thanks for playing!

– Steve