One of my FarCry2 colleagues, Simon Charbonneau, directed me to this video produced by Silicon Knights to promote some of the game design philosophy behind Too Human. I'm not very familiar with the game -- sadly, more aware of the recent Unpleasantness between Denis Dyack and Epic -- other than its central hook of the Norse Gods as cybernetically enhanced humans. But it is interesting to see how much of this video is given over to tweedy academics talking about psychological models for gamer satisfaction. They get into Flow in very broad terms, and discuss something Dyack calls engagement theory as a rough formalization of elements that need to be present in order for Too Human to achieve its experiential goals.
On a completely superficial note: For a dev diary -type piece, I find it a little odd and over-stylized; heavily derivative of Errol Morris' documentaries down to the Philip Glass -inspired minimalist score. But you know what? Steal from the best, man.
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