Building Games That Can Be Understood at a Glance

In this 2018 GDC session, developer Zach Gage explains how to make games desirable to someone looking over a player's shoulder on the subway, sitting next to...

Zach Gage takes a look at how to make games so readable that someone looking over your shoulder on the subway as you play on your phone can tell what’s going on and get excited to download the game themselves. The key is the principle of The Three Reads, an approach which ensures that useful information is prominent at the right time and in the right order - first the core of the experience that draws people in, then the key details that convey the high-level rules, then the contextual information that conveys less-central rules.