Achievement Relocked Loss Aversion And Game Design Geoffrey Engelstein

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· 24 ratings · 5 reviews

Start your review of Achievement Relocked: Loss Aversion and Game Design

I read this for my consulting job at Latitude, as I'm having to make a lot of game design choices and I want more theory to guide me. This is a surprisingly in-depth examination of one principle of game design-- that most people really dislike losing something they already had, even if functionally it is the same as not getting the thing in the first place or there is a higher expected value on a gamble they could trade it for. He teases out a lot of consequences of this and shows how it plays o I read this for my consulting job at Latitude, as I'm having to make a lot of game design choices and I want more theory to guide me. This is a surprisingly in-depth examination of one principle of game design-- that most people really dislike losing something they already had, even if functionally it is the same as not getting the thing in the first place or there is a higher expected value on a gamble they could trade it for. He teases out a lot of consequences of this and shows how it plays out in a lot of games.
It made me do some introspection about why I dislike competitive games so much. I wonder if my strong irrational aversion to losing games has held me back from taking some risks in my life that I would actually have had a pretty good chance of coming out ahead on. ...more

May 16, 2020 Jamie rated it it was amazing

Loss aversion is one of the closest things that psychology has to a law. The idea is that people feel more pain from a loss than they do pleasure from a comparable gain. And they tend to do all kinds of irrational things to avoid losses.

It's a great little book if you're a game designer and want to be aware of how this feature of human nature can be leveraged to make better games. Or worse ones, if you're into that. Each chapter covers a sub-topic of the larger concept: loss aversion, endowment effect, framing, utility theory, endowed progress, and regret. For each of these, Englestein shares some supporting research and then provides several illustrations of how the topic shows up in the design of board and/or video games. It's fun to see it laid bare and made so plainly understood what's going on when we play these games.

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A concise, illuminating treatise

With this book and 2019's Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design (which he co-authored with Isaac Shalev), Geoff Engelstein has swiftly established himself as the preeminent academic author on game design.

Achievement Relocked is a thorough introduction to the underlying psychology of decision-making in games. Starting with a basic exploration of Loss Aversion--the idea that people dislike losing more than they like winning--and then expanding into related concept

A concise, illuminating treatise

Supporting examples are scattered throughout: from academic studies in psychology, to breakdowns of popular games such as Catan, Hearthstone, and Deal or No Deal.

Essentially a primer for students and designers, Achievement Relocked isn't exactly ground-breaking. Nevertheless, by deftly relating these (often underappreciated) topics through the lens of game design, Engelstein has created a new a foundational text in the field of ludology, comfortable on the shelf next to works like Huizinga's Homo Ludens and Koster's A Theory Of Fun.

I am confident that this book will inspire a new generation of game designers to think more deeply about the experiences they are crafting. I highly recommend it.

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Dec 27, 2020 Alexander rated it really liked it

Very intresting and well laid out. Reads like a Textbook but in a way that anyone can read and enjoy. I enjoyed connecting my own experiences with the games mentioned within to the concepts presented. Would recommend to anyone looking to design a game.

Apr 19, 2021 Taweewat rated it really liked it

Great quick read about human psychology through examples of video games and board games. The examples are fun to read. It feels even better if you are familiar with the games. I would love to read more about other aspects of psychology through more game design.