Gameplay Design Lab

Diner Mode

2 min read

parents: Game Design Philosophy

children: How does an excellent diner mode behave

Definition

  • Diner: Taste the finished dish → use vague analogies to describe the experience → can only reproduce the sensory impression.
  • Diner mode: Judge and design by felt experience and analogy, not mechanics.
  • Opposite to Chef Mode.
  • Relies on Fast Thinking System.

Pros

  • The diner is the ultimate judge of the experience.
    • A game, as a form of art and entertainment, can only be truly judge by the diners.
    • A finished dish, no matter how good the cooking process is, is a failure if the diner thinks it make them feels bad.
  • Communication.
    • A game team is made up of specialists in areas of art, programming, marketing and audio. In such a complex collaboration, diner language which consists of analogies and descriptions of feelings is the most efficient form of communication.
  • Every chef starts as a diner. A chef’s creativity grows from tacit and internalized taste, about what works and what doesn’t.

Cons

  • Analogy-based creation can only infer the reasons and can’t control process.
  • Little innovation and much reskin.
    • There’re too many games with nearly identical design.
    • The market is weakening, and players’ attention shifts away.
  • Analogy is one of the oldest and effortless ways human learn. It aligns with our natural recognition patterns.
    • From this fruit is similar to the one I ate yesterday, to this game feels like Dark Souls.
    • Analogies Lower the Dimension of Information, turning complex ideas into simple and familiar references.
  • The game industry prefers xx-like pitches, as they stimulate human imagination.

When to use?

  • Early exploration
  • Team alignment
  • Pitching

When NOT to use?

  • Relying solely on diner mode without using chef mode, especially in strategic problems.

Best practice

By-products

Open questions

Graph View

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