The Philosophy
For me, Put The Player First is more than just the company or the brand. It’s a philosophy that I believe EVERYONE will adopt one day.
The Put The Player First philosophy has three principles:
- Everything is an adventure.
- Put the player first.
- Play the infinite game.
Everything is an adventure.
In the early days of my journey, I didn’t know much about game design. I was a gamer, and I loved playing games – but I didn’t know how to make a game.
I was absolutely in love with adventure & roleplaying games such as Diablo 3, Fable, Bioshock, Ragnarok Online – and I tried to copy bits and pieces and make it work.
It didn’t.
Starting from there, I started doing all the research I could. I spoke to game designers (so few in India!), read forums, blogs and all the books I could find.
Slowly, I started understanding the core ideas behind games, and started diving deeper into the psychology, motivation and design aspects of games.
I discovered the work of Joseph Campbell, the Monomyth & The Writer’s Journey. I dove deep into storytelling, worldbuilding and lore. This helped me understand and build better experiences focused on role playing games.
In 2019, on a whim, I picked up the boxed set for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition in Oslo, Norway. I devoured those books and completely immersed myself in becoming a better Dungeon Master. I studied courses, scoured subreddits, read more books and ran tons of games.
A long time later, it all clicked.
I wasn’t just trying to build a game.
I was building an adventure.
Looking back, I was able to connect the dots and see how the different modules clicked into place. I was able to see how my love for video games, my understanding of storytelling and my skills in experience design could work together.
Iteratively, I experimented and understood that anything can be an adventure.
Getting fit.
Being a better dad.
Making friends.
Learning to cook.
All of these are adventures.
Put the player first.
When it comes to video games, they’re designed to hack our neurochemistry to give us a steady drip of chemicals that keep us hooked.
They do that by designing the experience around the player. They carefully balance the sound, the quests, the pacing, the story, the rewards, the sights, the colors and more to create the most immersive experience possible.
Outside of the video games industry, we see similar thinking when design thinking is applied. But, in my opinion, that too falls short.
Design thinking keeps the user in mind while designing solutions for them – user centric design or human centric design, it’s called.
I say we need to go one step further and adopt player centric design.
What’s the difference?
We’re not just building an experience.
We’re tapping into the wealth of knowledge and research in the video game industry to make the experience we build fun, sticky, engaging.
We’re making the experience more game-like.
We’re putting the player first.
Play the infinite game.
In my quest to level up as a Dungeon Master & Game Designer, I did a course on Adventure Building by John Fourr of RolePlayingTips.com, I encountered the phrase: “Play the infinite game.” in the context of Dungeons & Dragons.
In that context, John taught me how to design my adventures so that players keep coming back week after week.
That advice, in a business context, means that there is no winning or losing. It’s all about playing the game for the love of the game.
We win by building something that we want to come back to everyday.
We win by building something that our customers want to come back to everyday.
We win by playing the Infinite Game.