Why is psychology important in game design?

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It’s important because it gives us the tools to reach our purpose in our design, since its almost always user centred. By studying the user’s behaviours, we are able to understand the correlations between elements in the game and the user brain while interacting with them, allowing us to take decision and “designing” a tailored experience.

Even if it is usually due to observation and trial and error from testing, knowing general psychology concepts allow us to take the right direction from the start, and interpret the feedback data that users give us.

 

Choose an advert image you feel successfully employs a principle of psychology

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image of the advert

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The advert I choose is trying to sell mints, and it does it in interesting effective ways.

As a first glance, you can clearly feel a sense of freshness coming from the light blue and vibrant white dominant colours. This is reinforced by the sharp edges and shadows of the font, which recalls ice in some way, but all of this is delivered in a “clean” way, which is also one of the feelings the ad is trying to convey.

You have then this big, easy to read text that tries to attract your attention with the shadow contrast and his big size, that in a few words sells you this product in a fun and engaging way. Let’s first analyse the keywords:

“BECAUSE YOU CAN’T CHEW DEODORANT”

“Because” answers a why, which is subtly making you think of it: “Why would I want that? Why should I buy it?”;

“Chew” tells you it’s something to eat, or at least bite, which is weird to see on a blue colour as it’s not really great with food, but since the food part is not really its selling point, is fine;

“Deodorant” tells us that this makes something smell good.

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Grasping only the keywords we already know that it’s probably a mint, but the whole message introduces some depth:

“Since you can’t chew deodorant, you need something of your mouth that does the same function”, this is exposed with a confidence that makes a quick reader take it as granted.

Deodorant is good for me, so this has to be as well. And the fact they are answering an invisible question, you can’t just read and skip through, but you have at least to spend a moment thinking about what they are trying to tell, which is the main purpose of this quick ads.