Rahul Vohra: commitment

Transcript context

…Perfect. That is exactly what our next question was going to be, which is in some ways the crux of the matter here, which is what is a good game? Of course, the classic definition of this is the previous Acquired guest, Nolan Bushnell from Atari—Bushnell's Law, that a good game is something that is easy to learn, but difficult to master. How does that fit into your stack? There's a phrase for this. That is necessary, but not sufficient. There are plenty of other things that are required in order to make a good game. You could go so far as to list hundreds of attributes. There isn't a minimal subset, but it does involve more than those two factors. There are seven principles that we think of when it comes to what makes a good game at Superhuman. Those seven principles, we think of them across roughly five different factors—things like goals, emotions, controls, toys, and flow. Bushnell's Law talks a bit about goals and it talks a little bit about a related concept of mastery. But it doesn't talk about how you feel when you're going through a game. It doesn't talk about the nature of interaction with a game, whether it's truly a video game or it's a board game, or it's a piece of software that it's designed to feel like a game. It doesn't talk about the childlike sensation of wonder that you experience when you're playing with a toy. And it doesn't talk about the psychological phenomenon of flow, which I personally think is one of the most important factors of what makes for a good game. You do have to draw upon the art and science of all kinds of fields—whether it's psychology, mathematics, storytelling, interaction design—when it comes to making a great game. You're super well-read on this front, but you have some serious credit, too, which you don't often talk about. You were a game designer before Superhuman and Rapportive. You were specifically a game designer at RuneScape, the legendary OG MMO. Is that where you honed these principles?…

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