Experience vs. Memory: How We Remember Games

Geoffrey Engelstein’s excellent book Gametek has a number of interesting essays and insights. I’m looking at one of these today.

The insight relates to how we remember our gaming experiences, according to psychological studies that track such things. I’m going to paraphrase the findings and discuss them below, but I’d encourage you to read Engelstein’s original work for a different angle and additional details on the studies.

The high-level takeaway is that we tend to base our memory of a game experience primarily on two things:

1. How we felt during the highest emotional state of the game.
2. How we felt at the end of a game.

This has implications for game design, and also for curating our play experiences with others.

End of Game

The most memorable individual sessions of games I’ve ever had were ones that ended in a dramatic fashion at the very last moment.

The War of the Ring (2nd Edition) session that came down to the final chip draw from a bag, as Frodo stood on the precipice of Mount Doom.

Or the session of Dune that saw an 11th hour reversal wherein the Bene Gesserit turned a 2-player alliance win into an individual win, stabbing their ally (me) in the back at a point where they could do nothing in return.

Or a session of Cyclades: Titans where I needed to win four straight head-to-head dice rolls to win the game, while my opponent only needed to win one of the four, yet I prevailed. This was against the same friend who betrayed me in the Dune session above, so it was particularly satisfying.

Crucially, these sessions involved me as a possible winner, even though I didn’t win each of them. I don’t imagine they were quite as memorable for others at the table (in the multiplayer games, at least; one of them as a 2P game), although anecdotally I know that my other friends do remember them years later to some extent.

This matches with the takeaway listed at the top. One of them, at least.

It’s the same reason we remember the birdie putt on the 18th hole to win a Major Championship from our favorite golfer. Or the Hail Mary touchdown pass that solidified the upset of our favorite college football team. The birdie or touchdown that happened an hour prior was just as important to the final outcome, but we don’t remember them as vividly.

These stand out in our minds, and indeed become somewhat legendary in their respective sports. Games we play over a table are no different.

Emotional Highs

This one is tougher to assess, because I don’t always clock the exact moment I’m most immersed, or most nervous, or most excited during a game. And I’m unsure to what extent these moments are what I remember most about a game, or how much they influence my overall impression of a game.

However, broadly speaking, I tend to enjoy games more when they push me across the emotional spectrum. Give me surprise, delight, fear, uncertainty, hilarity, and so on.

That’s me, though. The even trickier aspect here is that I know gamers to whom this doesn’t seem to be the case. The games they play are fun in a lot of ways, but they don’t tend to produce the same emotional spikes that I personally search for in my games. Indeed, those with the widest emotional swings tend to negatively correlate with enjoyment for others.

Ok, but Engelstein’s point is that we remember this moment the most. It doesn’t necessarily mean we enjoy that memory.

Maybe this is me creating a caveat that doesn’t really exist, psychologically speaking. I have a tougher time reconciling this particular takeaway with my observations and experiences, but I do think there’s something to it. So I’m willing to take the findings at their word and agree that the most emotionally intense moments lead to stronger memories, particularly because I know this to be true outside of games as well. We know from the scientific study of memory that emotional fluctuations create more pronounced memories for us in any endeavor, though it again doesn’t necessitate that the memory is a pleasant one. Traumatic experiences can be as memorable – or more so at times – than happy ones.

Design and Play Implications

So what does this mean for game designers? Or for players?

Well, it can be interesting to know, first of all. Awareness of a psychological phenomenon makes us more likely to be able to identify it when we see it.

For designers, perhaps the takeaway is that you should be designing for a dramatic finish.

Easier said than done though, right?

There are different ways to do this, and I’d argue that not all of them feel equally satisfying. However, that may just be my subjective opinion talking. Let’s look at a few of them:

1. Catchup mechanics. These are explicit mechanics that allow some who are behind in the middle-game to make easier progress. Theoretically, this leads to more close finishes.
2. Sudden win/loss conditions. The drama of these can ratchet up considerably when a win is on the line at a particular moment.
3. Similar point structures. If various mechanical paths result in similar amounts of points, the margins of victory will tend to be small.
4. Encouraging player collusion. If one player is winning and the game is interactive enough, the others can band together to close the gap even if they’re ultimately also competing with one another.
5. Randomizing key outcomes. If you can calculate point totals, it may be less dramatic than if victory is partially due to strategy and tactics, but can also be tied to the draw of a particular card or roll of a die.

Each of these has pros and cons. Each of these will be praised as good design by some and decried as poor design by others. I’ve seen passionate rants against catchup mechanics, and passionate rants against player-balancing uneven game states (i.e. the collusion example above). I’ve seen both called lazy design and brilliant design, and most of the other examples as well.

These relate to preferences, not hard-and-fast truths about what Good Design is.

But it’s worth deciding what type of experience you’re trying to create. Or as a player, what type of experience elicits the most memorable moments for you. If you design any of these types, try to bring out the most of them for maximum dramatic effect. If you’re a player, look for games that deliver the rawest and/or most robust form of the dynamics you tend to enjoy.

This will lead you in the direction of crafting and living memorable experiences.

Again, this is easier said than done. But I do get annoyed when some will assume, for example, that games should all have catch up mechanics. No, they shouldn’t. But a subset of them absolutely should. However, if you’re predisposed to this type of game, or playing with others who are used to such mechanics, you’re likely to encounter this as a default assumption of what “good design” looks like. For that particular group, they’re right. But it’s not a universal truism.

The brutal beats of combat games are the most dramatic and memorable for others, where the only catchup mechanic is “get good.” They’re willing to accept occasional lopsided outcomes for these experiences, and their experience would be made worse with explicit ways to catch up despite poor play or unlucky dice rolls.

The Fateful Dice Roll

An amusing and good metric for this is a short thought experiment:

You’ve been playing a game for two hours. Strategic and tactical ideas have gone back and forth and now it’s approaching the endgame. Scores are close, and the players are roughly evenly matched. The winner will be decided by a single dice roll at the very end.

The question is: does that possibility excite you? Or frustrate you? Do you feel cheated that it’s not the strategic play determining the final outcome? Or are you amped at the uncertainty that will spell ultimate victory for one person and defeat for one or more others?

This isn’t the only thought experiment I could use, but it’s a useful one. There isn’t a right or wrong answer. But there likely is for you personally.

To throw a wrench in the works, I’ve seen games with the possibility of “a single dice roll to win the game” that worked great for me, and others that didn’t. Execution matters even if it’s a type of game you’ll generally enjoy or dislike.

So there aren’t universal truths here even for individuals. However, there are certainly generalized takeaways that are true more often than not.

Give me that dice roll. Or pull from the bag. Or a shocking 180-degree twist that rearranges my idea of who’s winning. Don’t always give me that. But usually it’s what I want, and what I’ll remember the most.

You may be different, though, or as a designer your audience may be different. It’s worth keeping this in mind to create the most memorable experiences possible for that audience, and for yourself.