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Sid Meier's Psychology of Game Design

31 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
4 HN users recommended this talk4 months2016–2019 score 4.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN people cite it when discussing perceived randomness, luck and player experience in games, and say more designers should heed it.

Civilization creator Sid Meier's GDC 2010 talk on applying psychology to game design. He discusses player perception, randomness, and win states, and why designers must account for how players experience events.

“More people need to listen to what Sid Meier has said on this.” (HN, 2018)

1 strong recommendations · 3 recommendations · Talks

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@mlindner Dec 2018 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Sandspiel – A falling sand game built in Rust and WebGL
Many games don't have win states or shouldn't have win states. More people need to listen to what Sid Meier has said on this. That HN article was written by someone who did not know what they were talking about. [this video]
Sid Meier on games and win states.
@timo614 Oct 2016 Recommends
on HN thread What Sid Meier’s Video Game Empire Got Right and Wrong About ‘Civilization’
Agreed; the point of the game is to make you feel like a God. Sid Meier gave a talk at the GDC: [this video] In it he explained how Civilization tested random negative events that could shape your world. He mentioned how this had a negative effect on the player experience and many times people would just grab a past save to avoid them IIRC.
Sid Meier on negative random events and player experience.
@codetrotter Mar 2019 Recommends
on HN thread How Designers Engineer Luck Into Video Games (2017)
> The anecdote about Sid Meier hard-coding a guaranteed "win on the third attempt" for a battle with a 1/3 victory probability was very interesting. You might enjoy these videos as well: [link] [this video]
Sid Meier on engineering luck in games.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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