The first level is what we call conscious thought. It’s logical and works on a basically mathematical level, assigning values and making lists.

As we learn more patterns, more novelty is needed to make a game attractive.

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

It’s worth asking ourselves what skills are more commonly needed today. Games should be evolving towards teaching us those skills.

Based on my reading, the human brain is mostly a voracious consumer of patterns, a soft pudgy gray Pac-Man of concepts. Games are just exceptionally tasty patterns to eat up.

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.

The brain is hardwired for facial recognition,* just as it is hardwired for language, because faces are incredibly important to how human society works. The capability to see a face in a collection of cartoony lines, and interpret remarkably subtle emotions from it, is indicative of what the brain does best. Simply put, the brain is made to fill in

the more rigidly constructed your game is, the more limited it will be.

Games that fail to exercise the brain become boring.