Toward a Game Design Engineering Process Centered on Player Experience

Central to a game is the player experience, a relation characterized by the indirect nature of how the experience emerges through play. This second-order design problem of games introduces a significant challenge for the game design engineering process. In this paper, we propose a model of the game design engineering process emphasizing the player experience as the primary concern. By facilitating a comparison between a system as-it-is and a system as-it-should-be, this approach has the potential to shape future endeavors for planning, validating, and refining player experience in the context of design engineering.