The brain is actively hiding the real world from us.

It’s the thing that builds approximations of reality.

This means that it’s easy for the player to get bored before the end of the game. After all, people are really good at pattern-matching and dismissing noise and silence that doesn’t fit the pattern they have in mind.

The definition of a good game is therefore “one that teaches everything it has to offer before the player stops playing.”

One of the releases of chemicals triggering good

Thinking is, in fact, mostly memory, pattern-matching against past experiences.

The brain notices a lot more than we think it does.

Practicing can keep a game fresh for a while, but in many cases we’ll say, “Eh, I get it, I don’t need to practice this task,” and we’ll move on.

When you watch kids learn, you see there’s a recognizable pattern to what they do. They give it a try once — it seems that kids can’t learn just by being taught.