DEV Community: Ishan Manjrekar

Stop Over-Designing Your Games

Ishan Manjrekar — Mon, 11 May 2026 05:31:01 +0000

Welcome to Game Design Bites - a personal take on game design, straight from years of experience in the industry!

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Photo by John Barkiple on Unsplash

I was recently reading this post on ’ Substack about building tools with AI. He makes a point that really stuck with me: the real challenge isn’t figuring out how to build with AI tools, but deciding whether you should build the feature in the first place.

That really hit home for me. We’re often so busy worrying about the how (like getting the perfect difficulty curve, writing cleaner code, or making the UI look “just right”) that we skip the only question that actually matters: Do we even need to build this?

This line of thinking led me to explore the philosophy of YAGNI (You Ain’t Gonna Need It). While it isn’t a completely new or revolutionary concept, learning this specific vocabulary made me wonder how I could apply it to my own design workflow. It echoes familiar ideas like MVP, MDA framework, or just plain ol’ prioritization, but there’s something about its blunt, direct framing that acts as a real wake-up call.

🧭 The Design Trap

If you’ve spent any time in the “design weeds,” you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s that moment when you start thinking big. You’re mapping out a complex progression system, five different currencies, and a massive branching narrative before you’ve even figured out if the core movement feels good.

We love to over-design, usually out of fear. We get scared that our core loop is too simple, or we fall for the illusion that more features automatically equal better player retention. I’ve definitely been guilty of trying to mask a boring core mechanic with a complicated progression system, only to realize later that the foundation itself was completely broken. We convince ourselves that if we just add enough features, enough “juice,” or enough complexity, the game will somehow become better. But more often than not, we’re just reinventing the wheel because we think we might find a “cooler” way to spin it.

Honestly, you shouldn’t over-design something if you don’t know how much you’re actually going to use it. It’s so easy to trick yourself into thinking you’ve found a “better” way to do things, when you should really be asking if a solution was even needed.

🕹️ YAGNI: You Ain’t Gonna Need It

YAGNI is a simple philosophy, more common in programming circles: don’t build it until you need it. Note that this doesn’t mean writing bad code or completely ignoring future plans. It simply means keeping your current implementation focused solely on current needs, saving your future self from maintaining unused features.

Think about the actual cost of building something you don’t need right now. It’s not just wasted hours. Every unnecessary mechanic you jam in introduces new bugs, requires its own UI, completely messes with your balance, and worst of all, distracts you from polishing the actual core loop. Building things you don’t need actively harms the things you do need.

In game design, this means keeping your basics tight. If you’re making a single-player level-based game, or a multiplayer shooter, or a roguelike, those are your foundations. You can’t take those lightly. That’s the base of your structure.

But everything else? The exact racing speed, whether you have five obstacles or ten, and that shiny new power-up you just thought of, those are things you can experiment with later. As you level up as a designer, you start to develop a filter. You start to see what’s a “must-have,” what’s a “good-to-have,” and what’s just “not-important-but-I-feel-we-should-have-it-because-I-think-so.”

The last one is the one you should probably remove first.

📈 The Power of “Playable Now”

It’s frustrating to realize you spent hours, if not days, deep in the details of a system that isn’t even being used. Trust me, it happens to me every other day.

But the best way to get over that disappointment is to have a crystal clear view of what makes sense for your game and what doesn’t. Spend more time thinking through the core experience. Separate your “must-haves” from your “good-to-haves.”

Now, this exact mindset becomes a lifesaver when you’re up against an actual release deadline. You can easily get stuck in the nitty-gritty details of a system for weeks. But if you can’t actually ship the experience on time, all the hours you spent crafting what you thought was a “great” solution are just wasted. These days, whether I’m approaching my own work or reviewing something for the team, the very first question I try to answer for myself is: is this even necessary?

We shouldn’t just focus on “finishing” things. The real win is getting them in front of players as fast as we can. The sooner people play it, the sooner we can identify the parts that actually suck.

Players are inevitably going to interact with your game in ways you never even imagined. All those hypothetical, perfectly-designed systems you planned out for the future? They usually shatter the second they make contact with a real player. Getting to a “playable now” state prevents you from designing for a player that doesn’t actually exist.

🐝 Case Study: Beeline

I’ve been putting this into practice with my latest experiment, Playable Things. My goal is to work with AI tools to get something playable as soon as possible.

Take my newest game, Beeline. It’s a strategic puzzle game I started by using a prompt from an older game jam. Using the prompt was my way of challenging myself with constraints to make me think about designing around them. My initial plans were ambitious. I wanted a massive level selection screen, staged levels, and some complexity added to the meta-game.

Instead, I built a quick prototype with bare-minimum UI just to see if the core mechanic worked. Since the game heavily depends on visual placement, I realized prompting an AI for level design wouldn’t be enough. I needed absolute control. So, I spent time also building a level editor, using AI to help me with building it. It was messy under the hood, but it allowed me to quickly test the limitations of the design and tweak it on the fly. Building the editor in this scrappy way was a YAGNI decision in itself: I didn’t need a perfectly scalable, beautiful editor, I just needed something to solve the immediate problem of testing the mechanic.

Once I actually played it, I realized a lot of my initial plans didn’t make sense. By cutting the “fluff”, like those extra power-ups, meta-game elements, and staged levels, I could focus on what actually mattered for me: building a solid amount of content that’s playable as soon as possible. I gave up on many of my initial “good-to-haves” just to get the game to a presentable, playable state.

Because of this brutal cutting, I actually had a game I could share. More importantly, it freed up my mental space to focus on the next thing to build. We all know how easy it is to ‘never-finish’ personal projects. But the more you can force yourself to reach an acceptable finish point, the sooner you can start working on new things equipped with all the hard learnings from your last project.

Try Beeline here

🛣️ The Path of Least Resistance

I’ve always believed that laziness is a game designer’s good friend.

When you approach a problem by being a bit “lazy,” you start looking for the path of least resistance. You find solutions that achieve the goal without building extra overhead for your future self to handle. Plus, extending the scope of your project just means it stays in “WIP mode” longer, and if there’s one thing I want to avoid, it’s being stuck in WIP purgatory.

Think about what your future self will thank you for. Design in a smart way. Always remember what problem you’re solving. As I’ve said many times before:

Great design is just a great solution.

If your design doesn’t solve a problem, it’s probably something that YAGNI.

If you’re interested, you can read more about my thoughts on good design. Or, if you prefer a visual format, you can watch my talk from last year.

📝TL;DR

Ask “Should I build this?” : Before you worry about how to build something, ask if it’s even necessary.
Embrace YAGNI : Don’t over-design features until you’re absolutely sure you’ll use them.
Focus on Foundations : Keep your core mechanics solid and leave the “nice-to-haves” for later.
Get to Playable Fast : The sooner you experience your design, the sooner you’ll know what’s broken.
Be Smart Lazy : Find the path of least resistance to avoid creating future overhead.
Design solves problems : If it doesn’t solve a problem, it isn’t good design.

Do you have any stories of “over-designing” that you regret? Or maybe a time where cutting a feature actually made the game better? I’d love to hear from you!

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Being Content With Content in the Age of AI

Ishan Manjrekar — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 05:30:58 +0000

Welcome to Game Design Bites - a personal take on game design, straight from years of experience in the industry!

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Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

AI replacing creatives? It’s the big scary question everyone’s throwing around right now. But as someone who actually sometimes makes things for a living, I keep coming back to a different question:

Would you really be content just letting AI make all your content?

Sure, it’s easy to say “yes” when you’re just looking at the finished product. Generating a slick image or a chunk of code is incredibly easy now. But what about the feel of it? Both for the creator and the receiver?

For the audience, there’s a clear difference between engaging with algorithmic “content” (the kind of filler designed purely to feed a feed) and engaging with actual creative work. We connect with art because we’re connecting with the human intent behind it. When that intent is missing, the result often feels hollow.

And for the creator? Does pushing a button to generate something actually evoke a sense of accomplishment? Making things is about expression, problem-solving, and personal growth, rather than just obtaining a final asset. It’s the messy journey that gives the output its meaning.

If you’re looking at this purely from a business sense, cranking out ads or churning out quick assets to make a buck, then yes, AI is likely going to replace that kind of work. The drive to maximize efficiency and profit is very real, and there are plenty of loud voices claiming that “creatives are no longer needed” just to sell you on the latest hype cycle. We’ve seen this kind of hyper-commercialization before with other tech trends, and now we’re seeing it with generative AI.

Maybe that’s what makes some people content. For some, the win comes from jumping on a bandwagon early and making the most of it. And honestly, that’s fine. We see that cycle with every new tech trend. People chase the hype, make their money while they can, and move on when the bubble pops. But once the dust settles, the tech usually sticks around because it actually does something useful. Unlike a lot of fleeting trends, there’s actual utility here beneath all the noise.

But if you’re a creative who actually enjoys the process of making things, AI probably doesn’t replace you. If you don’t feel that spark of accomplishment after generating some AI slop, does it even have value to you?

🤔 The Feeling of Cheating

I’ve tried AI tools. I’ve created the random, trend-generated AI stuff. It’s wild to see what it can do and how fast the tech has improved. However, after that initial surprise factor wears off, you don’t really get that feeling of actually creating something. You get that feeling of cheating.

You’re missing the messy process under the hood. You miss getting stuck in the weeds and figuring your way out.

But there’s a flip side. There are things AI actually helps you with. Sometimes it acts as a collaborator, helping you make your thoughts clearer and presenting them better. So it really depends on why and how you’re using it.

Is your goal just to prove you can easily generate what someone else spent years learning to do? Or are you using it as a bridge between your design intent and reality?

🎮 Prototyping With a Collaborator

I recently tried this by building my own game prototypes. I used AI to vibe some code and generate the visuals. I don’t understand code, and I’m terrible at artwork.

The result? It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, nor did I think it was the absolute best visual direction. I also know my code is probably bad because, well, I still don’t really understand it. I have plenty of friends and talented individuals who could do those specific parts much better any day of the week.

But the real accomplishment for me was upgrading my presentation skill. I wanted to get a playable form of my idea up and running as soon as possible. The AI helped me do exactly that.

It made sense for me. I was content with it because the tool helped me cross the gap between my raw idea and a playable prototype.

I’ve written a short breakdown of this experience if you want to dig into the details. Check it out at this link:

🎨 The Fulfillment Cost

It’s true that AI makes it easy for anyone to create things now.

But when it comes to any creative endeavor, there’s a specific kind of fulfillment in the actual making of the thing. The journey you take to get there.

For example, I follow a creator who has been making some cool digital artworks by combining different prompts and sharing the results. There’s another one who mixes genres and products together to create new takes on ads. You’ve likely seen many more like them if you scroll through your feed.

Most of this is technically possible with AI today. But is it worth it?

Forget the GPU cost for a second. Think about the fulfillment cost.

GPU costs will come down, and soon we’ll all be generating whatever we want from our phones. But will it feel the same? If someone is just looking to monetize copied, low-effort work, they’re going to lose the allure of making things pretty quickly.

From my own little experience, the fun is in the journey of making things. You like your output because of the thought journey you took to get there.

When I consider my photography, I love certain photos I’ve taken because I remember the experience, what it felt like to be there, how I achieved that specific look, and the good old-fashioned procrastination I pushed through to finally edit it. The viewer might not feel the same thing, but for me, the fun was in the process.

I feel the exact same way about designing features or mechanics in games. I feel accomplished when the thing I initially thought of finally works the way I imagined. Players might still have strong opinions about it, but getting it built? That’s the reward in itself.

🛠️ Tools Are Just Tools

The tech-bro claims that “artists are doomed” usually ignore one basic fact: AI tools are just tools. You still need to know what you want to make.

Think about Photoshop. It made painting easier and more accessible. Anything you could do on a canvas, you could suddenly do digitally. Did it mean understanding art was no longer necessary? No. It just made the skill more accessible and expanded the entire industry.

Call me an optimist, but that’s the kind of future I see for AI tech right now. I could be completely wrong, and maybe we are actually doomed, who knows!

But as a creative, I implore you to ask yourself this when you’re working: Does it spark joy?

Creative effort has a feeling of fulfillment attached to it. Making a really good Excel sheet can be fulfilling! Sure, AI can handle that part. But you can still feel that same sense of success when you use AI to help you build something that you intended to make.

So if you’re using AI to help you get your thoughts out and it brings you joy, then why not?

🤖 My Own AI Workflow

To close out this topic, I want to pull the curtain back on the exact workflow I used for this very post:

I dumped a long-winded, messy rant of random thoughts into my notes.
I used a custom skill using Google Antigravity IDE that takes those raw notes and turns them into a draft for Game Design Bites.
I fed the entire note to the AI to reframe the structure and make it more cohesive.
Of course, I still checked the output, went through the details, and fixed what I felt didn’t make sense.
I also spend time manually deciding on the final title, fixing the layout, and adding images and links directly in the editor. I use AI to help brainstorm headers and SEO details too.

This workflow lets me think freely. I can dump my ideas in their rawest, messiest form, knowing I have a literal collaborator to handle the structural heavy lifting.

They say the final 20% of a task takes 80% of your time and effort. By using AI to make that first 80% easier, I can save my energy for the final 20%. That’s the part where the real craft happens, the polish, the nuance, and making sure my voice actually comes through. If I didn’t have this support, I’m pretty sure I’d have given up at the 80% mark and never bothered with that final stretch at all.

I still spend plenty of time tweaking and refining until I’m truly content with my content. But now, that effort goes into meaningful final touches rather than just agonizing over basic sentence flow.

I could have definitely done this without AI, of course. But having it there makes the process much smoother. The real reason I write these posts is to get my ideas out into the world. Effectively conveying those thoughts is what “sparks joy” for me. If a bit of help with the phrasing frees me up to just think and write, I’m all for it. At the end of the day, I’m just happy to be sharing my thoughts through this content.

📝 TL;DR

The AI panic : AI has become everywhere, leading to loud claims that creatives are dead and easily replaced.
The creative process : True fulfillment comes from the journey of making something, not just the final generated output.
The feeling of cheating : Generating complete work with AI often lacks the satisfying, messy struggle of traditional creation.
Tools as a bridge : AI is best used as a collaborator to connect your design intent with reality, like prototyping a game faster.
The fulfillment cost : While generating content is getting cheaper and easier, the personal reward of creation might be getting lost.
Knowing what to make : AI is a tool and it still requires a human to have a vision and understand the craft (for now, anyway).

Do you have any additional thoughts? Have you found a way to use these tools that actually makes you feel accomplished? I’d love to hear from you! And don’t forget to subscribe!

Thanks for reading Game Design Bites! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Introducing: Playable Things

Ishan Manjrekar — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 05:01:10 +0000

Welcome to Game Design Bites - a personal take on game design, straight from years of experience in the industry!

If this interests you, subscribe to get game design insights straight to your inbox for free!

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Photo by Sebastien Bonneval on Unsplash

I have a graveyard of ideas that never made it past rough notes in my notes app. I always thought I’d do something with them eventually, but never quite got there.

Not because the designs were bad. Because there’s a big difference between “I know exactly what this should feel like” and “I can show you what this feels like” (especially when you don’t code). Every prototype attempt would hit the same wall: a blank project, confusing documentation, and a vision that would take months to reach something testable. So I did the easy thing and gave up on most of them.

I started looking for a workaround. My earlier post on "vibe coding" was the first real experiment — one game, an AI, and a workflow that turned out to be more about communication than code. The clearer my intent, the better the output.

I’ve continued to experiment with new ideas using this workflow. One of those experiments has resulted in my itch.io page: Playable Things.

🧭 Exploring AI as a Designer

It’s hard to ignore the pace of AI development. I’ve been hearing about new models and tools everywhere lately, and I wanted to read and try a bit more of it myself—not as an engineer, but as a designer looking for better ways to express my ideas.

I’ve heard the names like Claude Code, GPT Codex, Cursor, but I hadn’t really used them. The setup I eventually landed on was Google Antigravity and Google Stitch , mostly because it was free and approachable. I could install it and start playing around without a subscription gating every experiment. It felt less like fighting a tool and more like working with an incredibly fast, if very literal, collaborator.

The process is fairly straightforward: when I have a mechanic I want to test, I use Antigravity to build it out using the tools it provides. Once it’s in a playable state, I host it on itch.io to see how it feels.

Here are the first few prototypes I’ve managed to publish.

🕹️ YAWG: Definitions Meet the Grid

The latest and perhaps most polished experiment in this series is YAWG (short for Yet Another Word Game).

The design of YAWG focuses on a straightforward loop: you’re given a list of dictionary definitions and a shared grid of tiles, and your job is to fill in the blanks. If you want to try different combinations for a word, you can do so freely. The only constraint is the timer in Arcade mode.

The project has allowed me to attempt to solve problems related to building an easily scalable word bank and level design with least manual effort. I used CEFR-tiered word selection (A1 to B2) to ensure the game respects the player’s vocabulary, creating a curated progression that gets tougher as you go.

On the technical side, it features an offline-first lexicon and a system designed for remote balancing. I can tweak the difficulty or the game economy without having to push a full update. I can now iterate on these details directly with the AI, figuring out the schema as we go.

Try YAWG here

🃏 Dice Poker: From Physical to Digital

The next one is a revamp of an older exploration I shared here in the newsletter. If you remember my post sharing a FREE Card & Dice game, you’ll recognize the core mechanic.

The original was a physical game with a standard deck, and a dice. Something about it worked in that setting. The tension of deciding which cards to hold, which to toss, was real. I wanted to find out if that could survive the jump to digital.

So I built it. The core loop stayed intact: 6 decks, 15 rounds, 5 rolls per hand. You pick which cards based on your luck with the dice and hope to build the strongest poker hand you can in every round.

The trickier part was the layout. Playing cards physically is different from playing on a phone where you’re usually holding it with one hand, scrolling with your thumb, half-distracted. I worked with Stitch to design the interface, sketching layouts in Figma first to give it enough context to work from. Getting from “this works in the physical world” to “this actually feels right one-handed” took more back-and-forth than I expected, but that process was the most interesting part.

Try Dice Poker here

🏏 Book Cricket Champion: The Nostalgia Trip

Finally, there’s Book Cricket Champion. This was my very first exploration with hosting on itch.io, and it’s actually an updated version of the game that started this whole AI experimentation journey.

For those who didn’t grow up in South Asia in the 90s, “Book Cricket” was the ultimate bored-in-class activity. You’d take a textbook, flip to a random page, and the last digit of the page number would be your score. 0 was a wicket, 8 was a single, and 2, 4, and 6 were the big hits.

I wanted to start playing with building something using AI, and this seemed like an easy design to try. In this version, you can play using content from over 100 literary classics, where every book uses its actual page count to determine the score.

This project was a pure “vibe coding” experiment. I used Google AI Studio to figure out the basic loop and then brought it into Antigravity to polish it. It features a local PvP mode so you can pass your device to a friend, exactly like we used to pass textbooks around. It’s a tribute to a simpler time, built with the most advanced tools we have today.

Try Book Cricket Champion here

📈 Why Am I Doing This?

There’s value in building smaller prototypes even if they aren’t “production ready.”

In my opinion, AI is going to be an important part of our process, and as designers, it’s worth understanding the basics of how these tools work. From what I’ve tried so far, the speed jump is real — you can get from idea to something playable faster than I expected, though “easy” certainly doesn’t mean “automatic”.

I am perfectly aware that these games aren’t 100% production-ready. They aren’t going to top the App Store charts tomorrow, and I don’t intend for them to. That’s a task for the pros, the engineers and artists who spend years mastering their craft.

For me, these AI-assisted prototypes are the next step beyond pen and paper, or Miro and Figma presentations.

When explaining a design to a team, a static document can only go so far. A playable thing, even one with messy code under the hood, could communicate intent better than a long spec document. It lets you test the “feel” of a feature before a single line of production code is written.

I’m using these smaller experiments to build my own understanding of technology and, hopefully, get better at my skills as a designer. I want to continue trying more stuff and posting more prototypes here.

💭 The Feedback Loop

At the end of the day, the AI is just a tool for exploration.

When you play these, don’t look at them as finished products. Look at them as a window into a designer’s thinking process. I’d love to hear what you feel about them. Is the logic in Dice Poker too punishing? Does YAWG need more specific categories? Is the AI in Book Cricket too good (or too bad)?

Drop a comment on the itch.io pages or here. I want to know your thoughts. AI has compressed the development time, which means we can spend more time on the thing that actually matters: making the games fun.

Stay tuned for more. I’m genuinely curious to see where this goes next — and I’d love for you to come along for it.

📝TL;DR

Playable Things : A new section available on the newsletter featuring prototypes and design experiments.
AI as a Tool : I’m playing with AI tools to turn design intent into something playable.
YAWG : A word game focused on scalable level design and automated word banks.
Dice Poker : A digital version of a physical card game, built for mobile-friendly play.
Book Cricket Champion : A simple nostalgia-themed experiment to test AI-assisted building.
Design Communication : Using interactive prototypes as a possible step beyond static design documents.

It’s been a while since I posted. I’m going to blame it on these experiments, which is only partly true (the rest is just good old-fashioned procrastination). If you’ve played any of these, or you’ve been doing your own experiments with AI, drop a comment or reply to this. I’d genuinely love to hear what you’re building. And if you haven’t subscribed yet, what are you waiting for?

Thanks for reading Game Design Bites! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Effective collaboration in game development hinges on shared vision and clear communication across all roles. Recognizing each team member's motivations and tailoring your approach is key to success. ✨Check out some of my thoughts about this here:

Ishan Manjrekar — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:50:41 +0000

Is Game Design A One-Person Show?

Ishan Manjrekar ・ Feb 19

#gamedesign #gamedev #indiegames #productmanagement

Are you stuck in the weeds of mechanics or lost in the clouds of 'player experience'? Learn how to bridge the gap using my Design Tiers framework.

Ishan Manjrekar — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 22:54:57 +0000

Ishan Manjrekar

Feb 4

What Tier Are You Designing At?

#discuss #gamedev #gamedesign #creativity

Comments

6 min read

Retention in a Low Attention Economy

Ishan Manjrekar — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 07:31:07 +0000

Welcome to Game Design Bites - a personal take on game design, straight from years of experience in the industry!

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Photo by János Venczák on Unsplash

Retention matters more than ever. Not because games suddenly got worse, but because players got busier, distracted, and harder to bring back.

In mobile free to play, retention is no longer just a health metric. It is a daily fight for attention. Every tap, every session, every return competes with infinite alternatives, not just other games.

That pressure has quietly reshaped how games are built and sustained. LiveOps is no longer a post launch support system. It has become the primary way games manufacture reasons to return in a world of shrinking attention spans.

This post looks at how declining attention, retention pressure, and LiveOps design are colliding. And how that collision is pushing mobile games toward denser, faster, and more relentless engagement strategies.

🧩The LiveOps Retention Engine

LiveOps , short for Live Operations, refers to the continuous delivery of content, updates, and events to sustain engagement and revenue over time. Instead of treating launch as the peak, LiveOps turns it into the beginning of an ongoing cycle.

In free to play mobile games, LiveOps is fundamental to survival.

Its primary goals are straightforward.

Extend Player Lifetime Value by creating repeatable engagement loops
Maximize revenue through time bound offers, events, and systems
Stabilize the player base after the initial churn heavy weeks post launch

Most churn happens early. LiveOps exists largely to slow that bleed and give players reasons to stay.

🔄Engagement and Retention

A strong LiveOps strategy aims to increase both engagement and retention. It keeps the game familiar, but constantly refreshed.

Over time, through events and feature updates, the original game often evolves into something far richer than its launch version. Games with consistent updates show more resilient revenue curves and longer lifecycles.

Sustainable revenue is a byproduct of strong retention. Without engagement, aggressive monetization collapses quickly.

At its core, LiveOps is about building behavioral loops. In free to play games, longer engagement increases the likelihood of conversion. Retention is not just about returning tomorrow, but about staying longer today.

🧠The Attention Span Drought

The abundance of content competing for attention has reshaped how people consume entertainment. Everything asks to be checked, scrolled, tapped, and abandoned. Even while writing drafts for this, I drifted off more than once. 🥲

This attention economy is not new. The idea has been discussed for years, especially in the context of media and advertising. What has changed is the pace. The number of things demanding attention has increased dramatically, while the available attention per person hasn’t changed proportionally.

As a result, attention per experience has shrunk.

“It is no coincidence that ours is a time afflicted by a widespread sense of attentional crisis, at least in the West, one captured by the phrase ‘homo distractus,’ a species of ever shorter attention span known for compulsively checking his devices.”

― Tim Wu, _ The Attention Merchants _

This shift cuts across age groups, regions, and player types. It directly affects how games are discovered, played, and remembered. Sessions are shorter. Breaks are more frequent. And returning to a game now requires an active reminder, not just a good memory.

For mobile free to play games, this changes the retention problem fundamentally. Players do not leave because the game is bad. They leave because something else interrupts the loop. And once broken, that loop is harder to restart.

This is where LiveOps becomes less about content and more about recall.

Events, timers, milestones, and limited windows act as external memory aids. They do not just give players something to do. They give players a reason to remember the game right now. In a low attention environment, freshness alone is not enough. Urgency and visibility matter just as much.

I explored similar ideas earlier through the lens of the “brainrot” effect on mobile game design. The core observation remains the same. Games are increasingly designed not just to entertain, but to survive inside fragmented attention. If you’re interested, you can check it out on the link below.

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📊2025 LiveOps Trends

LiveOps is evolving to support these changing attention patterns.

Industry reports from the past year show a clear shift toward denser and more frequent event schedules.

In 2025, the average number of LiveOps events per month increased from 73 to 89. This growth is driven more by tighter scheduling than by new event types.

Duration strategies vary by genre.

Casual games use shorter and more frequent events to monetize quickly before disengagement
Midcore games favor longer events and fewer launches, averaging around 76 events per month
Hybridcasual games remain relatively inactive outside peak seasonal windows

Mechanics are also adapting.

Short term albums are replacing long running collection systems
Milestone based progression and repeatable tournaments dominate LiveOps calendars

Scheduling itself is becoming more experimental.

Proven formats are reserved for Q4
New formats are tested heavily in spring
Events are increasingly always on, rather than weekend focused

This reflects a move away from sparse appointments toward continuous engagement.

🔍 For those who want to go deeper

The data related mentions in this post come from a compilation of recent game industry reports, curated using NotebookLM. If you’re curious to explore the source material or use it for your own research, drop a comment and I’ll share access to the Notebook.

💭My Take

Unlimited entertainment is now available on tap. Platforms like TikTok & Instagram did not invent this behavior, but they perfected it. You arrive for a few scrolls and stay far longer than intended, chasing that familiar “one more scroll” feeling.

Mobile free to play sits in the same entertainment space. It is snackable by nature, and increasingly competes with every other form of short form content. If you are making a mobile free to play game and want it to be a business, your competition is TikTok.

This shift has changed player expectations. People enter games expecting short engagement. Whether they stay depends on how quickly the game delivers value and momentum. Recent industry data shows that overall retention for mobile games has dropped over the past year, making the first 10 to 15 minutes critical. If a game fails to create a strong impression in that window, the player is often lost for good.

For snacky core loops like match, merge, or runner games, retention is now increasingly decided inside the session. The meta, progression, and rewards need to work immediately, not later. The goal is no longer just to make players come back tomorrow. It is to make them stay longer right now, riding the same “one more turn” instinct that drives modern content consumption.

🎮Notable LiveOps Shifts in Practice

Modern LiveOps increasingly optimizes for moment to moment retention rather than delayed return incentives.

Older free to play models relied heavily on hard session limits, appointment mechanics, and artificial stopping points. Lives ran out. Chests locked behind timers. Progress slowed deliberately to create a reason to return later. For a long time, this worked because remembering to come back was enough.

That assumption no longer holds.

Today, many successful mobile games operate under the expectation that once a player leaves, they may not think about the game again. LiveOps has adapted by shifting value into the session rather than postponing it.

A common pattern seen across multiple top performing titles is front loaded generosity. Early and mid game sessions are intentionally more lenient, not because designers want to remove friction entirely, but because extended sessions build familiarity, habit, and emotional investment faster than forced breaks.

Royal Match is a strong example of this shift. Unlimited lives are frequent and generously distributed, especially through LiveOps events. While lives still exist as a limiter, they are softened during key moments. New players, returning players, and event participants are often given just enough freedom to stay longer than intended. The short term nature of unlimited lives creates a subtle urgency. You want to use them while they last, even if you originally planned to play for only a few minutes.

Monopoly GO! approaches the same problem differently but with a similar outcome. Its most valuable reward is the core action itself. Dice rolls are both the progression currency and the primary reward. When LiveOps events give more dice, they are effectively asking the player to keep playing. What makes this sustainable is that progression feels achievable and visible. Even passive or auto driven play still feeds into meaningful advancement, which encourages longer sessions without feeling stalled.

Clash Royale provides a useful historical contrast. A decade ago, it perfected hard session limits. Progress was capped after a small number of wins, and chest timers created a strong incentive to return later. This model shaped an entire generation of free to play design.

In recent years, however, Clash Royale has loosened many of these constraints. Players can now continue playing and progressing across multiple vectors. Chest timers have been reduced or removed through systems like instant lucky boxes. Rewards are delivered immediately rather than deferred. This shift aligns with one of the game’s strongest recent revenue periods, suggesting that extended engagement now outperforms strict appointment based retention.

Across these examples, the pattern is consistent. Modern LiveOps is less about telling players when to stop and more about giving them reasons not to. Retention is increasingly manufactured through session momentum, visible progress, and short term urgency rather than long term promises.

🗝️Key Takeaways for LiveOps Design

Modern LiveOps reduces friction early to keep players in the game long enough to form memory and habit
Extending session length often beats forcing players out and hoping they return. Hard appointment mechanics belong to another era
Generosity works as a retention tool only when paired with meaningful sinks. Rewards without spend quickly lose impact
Visible, valuable progress is what keeps players playing. If progress is unclear, sessions end early
You are not competing with other games for attention. You are competing with infinite scroll.

📜TL;DR

Retention is no longer just a metric; it’s a daily fight for player attention.
Shrinking attention spans are reshaping how sessions, progression, and rewards are designed.
LiveOps has shifted from post-launch support to the core retention engine.
Modern LiveOps prioritizes session momentum, immediate value, and short-term urgency.
Early generosity, visible progress, and meaningful reward sinks increase engagement.
The first 10–15 minutes are critical; failure to impress often means losing the player forever.
Snackable core loops must compete with infinite scroll, not just other games.
Successful games balance habitual loops with instant gratification to sustain long-term retention.

Design thinking and approach is never one-size-fits-all, and your perspective matters. Did these thoughts resonate? Do you agree, or want to throw in a playful counterpoint? Drop a comment, share your thoughts, or even share this post if it made you nod.

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How Player Habits Shape Games Today

Ishan Manjrekar — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 06:00:40 +0000

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Photo by Jaehyun Kim on Unsplash

I’ve been making games for about 15 years, mostly in free-to-play mobile. Recently, I read about a trending game called Peak (which I haven’t played yet), and it sparked a conversation with friends. That chat made me reflect on the state of the industry, why certain kinds of games are breaking out, how audience expectations shift, and what feels different about hits today.

These are my musings, not a full analysis, but a way to make sense of the patterns I’ve seen.

📱 The Early Days

Mobile arrived much later than consoles and PCs. Back then, internet speeds and hardware were limited. Most games were single-player, with multiplayer existing only in small niches or basic modes.

What mobile offered was accessibility. Always in your pocket. Quick to pick up. A perfect fit for short bursts of play. But because devices could not handle the fidelity of console or PC games, designers leaned on other ways to create stickiness: leaderboards, clans, and light PvP.

These features made mobile feel social in a way that single-player console or PC titles did not at the time. Players could connect with others without committing to long sessions. This created a split: if you wanted long, immersive play, you turned to console or PC. If you wanted short, social bursts, you picked up your phone.

This transition was visible in the rise of early mobile hits. Social Facebook games gave way to mobile titles like Clash of Clans, Words With Friends, and Game of War. All of them built engagement around quick sessions tied to social loops.

⏩ As Platforms Evolved

Technology caught up. Better devices and faster networks opened the door for more complex mobile games. Multiplayer was no longer a technical hurdle. Mobile games layered in richer features and higher fidelity.

Meanwhile, something big happened on consoles and PCs. Fortnite and Roblox did not just entertain. They introduced a whole generation of young players to the idea that games are communities. Playing together, creating together, and being in the same virtual space became the default experience.

Mobile evolved in a different direction. To maximize engagement and monetization, games leaned heavily into single-player progression systems. Puzzle games and RPGs offered long, structured tracks that kept players engaged even if they were not playing with others. It was a way to extract value from highly committed players while still layering optional multiplayer where it made sense.

So while console and PC shifted toward community play, mobile found ways to extend and monetize solo experiences.

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🦠 The Pandemic Bump

Then came the pandemic. People were stuck inside, with more time on their hands and a stronger desire to feel connected. Console and PC titles became social spaces, virtual playgrounds where friends could hang out. Among Us went viral precisely because it delivered that feeling in the simplest possible way.

At the same time, the Roblox generation was maturing. Kids who started by building worlds in Roblox moved on to Fortnite. Players who spent their early years learning that gaming means community now carried those expectations into everything they played.

For older players like me, console and PC were traditionally solo spaces. For younger players, those platforms were where you met people. That generational divide changed how games were received, and what felt normal in terms of design.

⚔️ The Attention Contest

Meanwhile, mobile was facing a different kind of threat. The rise of TikTok and short-form content rewired how people used their phones. Suddenly, mobile games were not just competing with other games. They were competing with the entire attention economy.

This did not necessarily push games toward deeper design. Instead, it pushed them toward variety. Players might not want to sink into one game for hours on mobile, but they were happy to jump back in for “just one more run” or “just one more puzzle” if the hook was strong enough.

I shared earlier why this shift is reshaping how mobile games are designed. You can read more of those thoughts here.:

So while console and PC needed to double down on social depth, mobile needed to double down on session hooks. The goal was to pull players back before they swiped over to their next piece of content.

🎯 The Impact

The result is a split in the hit formula.

Mobile games : They need to serve two extremes, snackable sessions for casual engagement and deeper single-player loops for long-term monetization. They are fighting TikTok as much as other games, so repeatability and variety matter.
Console and PC games : They are expected to be inherently social. A generation raised on Fortnite and Roblox expects community, cooperation, and play-as-a-hangout as the baseline.
Players themselves : Younger audiences bring social-first expectations to every platform. Older audiences still lean toward variety and progression on mobile.
Design challenge : Mobile is about competing for fragmented attention. Console and PC are about deepening community play.

📜 TL;DR

Early mobile = snacky, light social loops. Console/PC = mostly single-player.
Better tech expanded both: mobile added fidelity plus solo progression, while console/PC went social through Fortnite and Roblox.
Pandemic along with new breakout hits like Among Us cemented the playground model for younger players.
Mobile faces a new rival in TikTok. Mobile games need to fight for attention with variety and hooks.
Today’s hit formula: mobile = single-player depth plus quick repeatable hooks, console/PC = community-driven social play.

These are just my observations of the high-level patterns, not hard rules. A great mechanic can succeed anywhere. The key is understanding how player expectations shift with platform, age, and context. That lens helps you read current trends and spot the right approach to creating something new.

What do you think? Does this feel relatable or make sense to you? Drop your thoughts in the comments, or reach out if you have any other questions or ideas you’d like to share.

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What Tier Are You Designing At?

Ishan Manjrekar — Tue, 20 May 2025 06:30:32 +0000

Photo by Kanhaiya Sharma on Unsplash

As you gain experience as a designer, the nature of your responsibilities evolves. When you're starting out, things might seem more straightforward, but "Design" as a concept is inherently vague. This makes career progression in design feel even more ambiguous.

Given that vagueness is a defining feature of this role, I've tried to distill it into a tiered framework.

I've shared my thoughts before on what "good design" is and how to achieve it effectively. If you're interested, you can check out these posts for a recap.

As you advance in your career, I believe you grow by identifying the tasks you're capable of handling at each stage. This list isn’t a strict measure of seniority, but rather a tool to help you gauge your readiness based on the responsibility you’re prepared to take on.

That said, this is just my perspective. The way one approaches design is personal, and the role itself is so open-ended that there’s no one "correct" way to do it. So, take this framework with a grain of salt, and feel free to completely disregard it if it doesn’t resonate with you.

🛠️D tier

The Order Follower

“I follow clear instructions and get the job done.”

At this level, you're looking at a complete beginner. No need to know the tools, the jargon, or the processes in depth. As a D-tier designer, your job is simple: follow instructions.

You’ll be told exactly what to do — whether it’s updating a document, entering data into a tool, or supporting tasks across different parts of the project. These might seem like low-level jobs, but they’re a goldmine for learning. You see how things actually work. You start understanding the moving parts of a team.

The more willing and proactive you are, the more you’ll grow. Not just in skills, but in becoming a reliable team player who’s ready to move up.

⚖️C tier

The Self-Starter

“I know the task — how do I move forward with it? ”

This is the next step up. You’re still focused on execution, but now you’ve got a bit more room to move.

At the C tier, you are allowed figure out some of the how. You don’t need to be spoon-fed every step. You can plan your next moves, ask the right questions, and follow through with minimal hand-holding.

It’s also where you start showing real awareness. You spot ways to improve things—maybe a clearer process, a better document, or a smoother workflow. You’re not making the big calls yet, but your small decisions matter. They help the team run better, and they set you up for the next level.

🛡️B tier

The Executor

“The solution is clear — how do I bring it to life? ”

This is where real ownership begins. At the B tier, the solution is already chosen, but how it comes to life is up to you.

You're responsible for execution. You decide the details, the flow, the experience. You’re trusted to make calls on how the feature should be built, even if you didn’t choose what to build.

Let’s say the team’s decided to add a login calendar to the game. As a B-tier designer, your job is to shape it:

Where does it show up?

How does it work?

What rewards does it offer?

Who sees it, and how often?

You may not have picked the feature itself, but your decisions shape how players experience it. And if you can justify your approach, deliver results, and take up more responsibility for the outcomes, you’re on track to level up.

🔥A tier

The Problem Solver

“I have the problem — now I need to find the right solution. ”

At this level, the tasks get fuzzier, but your ownership gets sharper. You’re not just handed a solution to build. You’re handed a problem, and it’s your job to figure out how to solve it.

The problem could come from anywhere — product, design, tech. It might be:

How do we increase monetization for a specific player cohort?
How do we get more players to return each day?
How do we reduce the game’s download size without hurting the experience?

As an A-tier designer, you're expected to understand the product deeply and craft solutions that make sense. But that’s only half the job. The other half is bringing your team along with you.

Ownership here means alignment. You need to justify your thinking, get buy-in from stakeholders, and keep the team focused, even as people rotate in and out of the project. Sometimes your solution is a small fix. Other times, it’s a long-running initiative with multiple moving parts.

Either way, you're the glue. You provide clarity, direction, and momentum. You’re not just solving problems, you’re leading others through the solution.

🌟S tier

The Visionary

“ Which problem is worth solving? ”

This is the final form of a designer. At the S tier, you're no longer waiting for problems to land on your desk, you’re deciding which problems are worth solving.

Every product has countless challenges. You can't solve them all. The real skill at this level is choosing the right problems to tackle. And often, there’s no obvious answer.

That’s what sets an S-tier designer apart: the ability to define meaningful, high-impact problems based on a deep understanding of the product, the team, and the player. You’re not just reacting, you’re steering.

In a space this uncertain, your decisions won’t always be “right.” And that’s okay. What matters most is that you make decisions. Inaction is worse than a wrong call, because at least with a wrong one, you learn and adapt.

Everything you’ve built up in earlier tiers, the craft, the execution, the collaboration, comes together here. That foundation gives you the confidence to operate in ambiguity and drive the product forward, one smartly chosen problem at a time.

🌈A Spectrum

I’ve broken things down into tiers based on tasks and responsibilities, but in practice, it’s rarely this clean. Real teams, real products, and real timelines often blur these lines.

Personally, I’ve found myself working across the whole spectrum. Sometimes I have to do some D-tier duties. Other times, I’m shaping A-tier solutions. And occasionally, I’m making S-tier decisions today that hand off a trail of work for future me to follow through.

So, this isn’t a rigid hierarchy. It’s not about putting yourself or others into fixed boxes. And it’s definitely not a ranking of seniority.

For me, this framework is just a way to understand the goal of a task—what’s expected, how much ownership is needed, and how to approach or delegate it accordingly.

📜TL,DR

Design responsibilities evolve as you gain experience — from task execution to problem definition.
This tiered model isn’t about seniority; it’s about the level of ownership you take on.
D-tier : You follow clear instructions. Great for learning the ropes and observing how teams work.
C-tier : You’re told what to do, but decide how to do it. Shows initiative and improves processes.
B-tier : You’re given a solution and own the execution. You shape the details and user experience.
A-tier : You’re handed a problem. You craft the solution, align the team, and drive it forward.
S-tier : You identify the problems worth solving. Your decisions guide the product’s direction.
You’ll often operate across tiers depending on the task — that’s normal and expected.
Use this model as a way to clarify your current role, delegate effectively, or plan your growth.

I’m looking at this through a game designer’s lens, but I think it applies to many creative and problem-solving roles involved in making any product. What do you think about this approach to evolving your skills?

Agree, disagree, or have other thoughts? Drop them in the comments below. And if you have questions about my profession, feel free to ask.

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economy design, but make it brainrot

Ishan Manjrekar — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 05:31:01 +0000

Welcome to Game Design Bites - a personal take on game design, straight from years of experience in the industry!

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The brainrot-ification of everything is in progress. As I started looking at the mobile game market with this lens, I’ve had a bunch of thoughts.

I posted some opinions on this earlier; you can read them here if you haven't already.

💸Economy Design?

It might sound complex, but at its core, economy design is about managing how resources—like currency, items, and progression—are earned, spent, and balanced in a game.

The term can be broad, covering everything from basic progression systems to intricate economies with multiple currencies.

For this post, I’ll focus on key aspects of economy design in modern games, specifically within mobile gaming. This keeps things structured and aligns with my experience in the field.

✨The Basics

Some key aspects of a game economy can be broken down into a few main components.

🪙Currencies

Most games have at least one, often multiple, currencies that players work toward. These include coins, gems, diamonds, keys, and more.

Soft Currency: Earned easily through gameplay.
Hard Currency: Scarce and possibly requires real-money purchases.

Some games feature multiple soft and hard currencies, and the difficulty of obtaining hard currencies can vary depending on the game’s design.

🛁Source and Sinks

Every currency needs a source , where players earn it, and a sink , where they spend it.

The balance between sources and sinks determines the currency’s value. If too much is earned without enough ways to spend it, its value drops. If it is too scarce, progression can feel slow or frustrating. This follows the basic principles of supply and demand, similar to real-world economies.

📈Progression

Games create a sense of progress, and the economy scales alongside it. As players advance, the economy would evolve to ensure their efforts feel meaningful. A well-designed economy reinforces a sense of purpose and achievement, making it a core part of the game's progression.

🔴Live Operations

For games that rely on regular content updates to keep players engaged, the economy is designed to support ongoing changes. New updates can introduce fresh resources or sinks to maintain balance and sustain player interest. Live operations play a crucial role in keeping a game relevant over time. Many of today’s most successful games depend on live operations, with economy balance as a key factor in their longevity.

⌛Conventional Approach

Multiple currencies in games, especially mobile games, are common. They are typically divided by value, with soft currency forming the foundation of progression and other currencies adding layers of complexity.

The value of a currency is usually defined by:

Conversion rates between soft and hard currency.
The effort required to obtain it.
Rarity-based scarcity that affects availability.
Limits on how it is earned or stored.

These elements help designers control the economy and guide player engagement. Many successful games use these tools effectively:

Strategy games like Clash of Clans casually introduce multiple currencies tied to different mechanics over time.
4X strategy games feature even more complex economies where understanding currency interactions is key to progression.
RPGs like Summoners War and AFK Arena use multiple currencies and gacha mechanics with rarity-based rewards.
Puzzle games like Candy Crush Saga and Gardenscapes use soft and hard currencies, such as gold bars and lives, to control progression.

A common way in economy design is to avoid currency loops where players spend a currency to generate more of the same. Designers also make conversions and effort levels slightly opaque, encouraging players to engage and figure things out.

Recently, there has been a slight shift in this approach, and the results have been promising.

📉New Normal?

While traditional economy strategies continue to be successful, evidenced by the continued success of many of the games mentioned, there's a noticeable shift toward simpler, more straightforward economy designs that require less mental effort from players.

I’ll highlight some games and genres that, in my observations, are experimenting with simplified economy designs and finding success. These are just high-level summaries, as each example could easily warrant a deep dive of its own.

🏰Merge Mansion

Games like Merge Mansion and Gossip Harbor are part of a growing genre, driven largely by their strong revenue potential.

A key design hook in these merge-based games is how they obscure the grind. Since merging requires two of the same item to upgrade, the numbers scale quickly. Upgrading an item to Level 10 from Level 9 may feel achievable, but in reality, it takes twice the effort of reaching Level 9, which itself took twice the effort of reaching Level 8, and so on.

Additional constraints like energy limits, generator cooldowns, and limited board space gradually increase complexity without making the mechanics feel overwhelming. The game remains easy to grasp while subtly guiding players into deeper engagement.

Another smart approach is how these games handle rewards. Coins, for example, are mainly used to progress the narrative rather than for multiple in-game functions. By simplifying currency use, the game can give out meaningful rewards without disrupting the core gameplay loops. Limited-time events and rewards then feel even more valuable, as they provide the items and power-ups needed for faster progression.

By streamlining currency systems and hiding complex calculations within an engaging core mechanic, these games have become some of the biggest recent successes in mobile free-to-play.

👑Royal Match

Many modern match-3 and puzzle games, like Royal Match, have streamlined their economies compared to earlier titles.

It’s easy to attribute Royal Match’s success to massive user acquisition spending (you’ve probably seen that crying King ad somewhere) but its place in the top tiers of the grossing charts suggests that players are not only engaging but also monetizing well.

On the surface, Royal Match is similar to Candy Crush Saga or Gardenscapes, but it has introduced subtle yet effective design tweaks to improve engagement. While the game does have a “lives” system, it is extremely generous with lives early on. This makes the early experience feel frictionless, allowing players to focus on coins, which are primarily used to buy extra moves when failing a level.

By creating an early illusion where lives don’t feel like a constraint, players ease into the game without worrying about restrictions. The accessible level design reinforces this feeling, keeping players engaged without frustration. Additionally, the game frequently offers free lives through limited-time events, which trigger a sunk cost fallacy—players stay longer to make the most of their free playtime. Meanwhile, short-term events that rely on maintaining streaks subtly push players to spend coins, making those moments feel more impactful.

This combination of well-tuned level design, a massive content pipeline, and a reduced emphasis on in-game gates and multiple currencies has made Royal Match one of the most engaging and successful puzzle games today.

🎲Monopoly Go!

Another massive revenue-generating game, Monopoly Go!, takes economy simplification even further.

At its core, the game follows a straightforward "numbers go up" design, making it instantly understandable to any player. It borrows heavily from social casino games like Coin Master, operating on a slot-machine-like loop where a random number determines a random reward. In this case, rolling dice serves as the slot mechanic, while progression is visualized through the Monopoly board.

Since the goal is simply to earn more rewards, the best way to do that is to roll more dice. This makes dice rolls the game’s most valuable currency, as they are directly tied to how much a player can engage with the game.

On paper, a loop where you spend a currency just to earn more of that same currency might seem redundant. However, games like Monopoly Go! make it compelling by increasing the reward values as players progress. Watching numbers scale up rapidly creates a strong sense of achievement, reinforcing the desire to keep playing.

By tying key rewards to progression layers, the game strengthens the incentive to move forward. The act of spending dice rolls is also the core game action, making the currency sink extremely effective. Additionally, the game introduces players gently, offering generous dice rolls early on. This allows them to get hooked on the loop without friction.

Wrapping a simple slot-based mechanic inside the familiar and friendly Monopoly theme makes the game highly accessible. Even if players don’t fully grasp everything happening on the board, the core action remains clear and engaging. Like Royal Match, this combination of ease of play, strong progression incentives, and well-balanced economy sinks has driven Monopoly Go! to massive financial success.

🐻Capybara Go!

This is a relatively recent game compared to the others I’ve mentioned.

At first glance, it feels like a simple "just press this one button" game, but as you play, it gradually evolves into something much deeper. Over time, it introduces heavier mechanics like gacha drops, upgrades, merging, and leveling systems.

The way this game unfolds is fascinating from a design perspective. It starts off with a progression loop similar to Monopoly Go!, where you repeatedly take the same action to advance. However, unlike Monopoly Go!, there is no immediate limit to how many times you can press the button. Instead, progression is controlled by random events triggered with each press, with outcomes influenced by various internal stats.

As the game expands, players uncover layers of mechanics, making it more comparable to complex mid-core titles. However, the way these systems interact is designed to keep the experience accessible for new players.

The economy follows a similar philosophy. At first glance, the game appears to have a lot of different currencies, which could seem overwhelming. But in practice, each currency has a highly specific and limited use. For example:

Coins are primarily used for leveling up your capybara.
Chests require unique keys that are only used for that specific chest.
Other upgrade or event-based currencies have restricted sinks, ensuring they don’t create confusion.

This structure allows the game to introduce complexity without overwhelming players. Those who enjoy min-maxing and strategic planning can dive deep, while more casual players can still make progress without worrying about every system.

It’s a great example of how a complex economy can be wrapped in an experience that feels simple and approachable. A similar design approach is also evident in Archero 2 from the same studio, which applies this style of progression to a different core gameplay loop.

🃏Candy Crush Solitaire

This game is the latest release in the Candy Crush franchise, which had a global launch just a couple of months ago. While it's still too early to draw any definitive conclusions about its success, I’ve noticed an interesting simplification of its economy in the few levels I’ve played.

One of the most noticeable features is that the game charges a currency cost upfront before you even start a level. If you win, you’re rewarded with the same currency, but in greater amounts than you spent to play.

This approach—requiring currency to access a level—might seem radical, but it addresses some value and perception issues in a clever way. It makes each attempt feel more meaningful, as you know that losing means you’ve spent currency for no gain. On the flip side, losing the currency also means you can’t play any further until you either win or earn more currency.

Although it might seem restrictive at first that you can’t play without spending soft currency, the game rewards you generously as you progress, encouraging continued engagement.

From a design perspective, requiring a specific amount of currency to play each level adds flexibility. The game can adjust the currency cost to make certain levels feel more, or less valuable. As you move through the game, the increasing coin cost serves to reinforce the idea that higher levels hold greater value.

This is a fascinating approach, and while it may not be entirely novel to this solitaire genre, it's still an interesting twist. Since the game is so new, only time will tell how successful it will become.

💀The Brainrot Effect

In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs. Laziness is built deep into our nature.

- Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)

As the amount of content continues to grow exponentially, players have more choices than ever. This applies not just to games but to all forms of entertainment. With so many options, the effort required to engage becomes a crucial barrier. This is why engagement mechanics that embrace "endless scroll" and the "TikTok-ification" of content consumption have been so successful.

When it comes to game economies—especially in mobile games, which are designed for quick, snackable engagement—this ease of entry becomes even more important. Many players discover these games through casual ad scrolls or passing mentions rather than active searches. The days when a only a handful of standout games were available on the app stores are long gone. Now, the games that succeed are often the ones that make it effortless for players to engage right away.

Mobile games also function as "second-screen" experiences. People play them while watching TV, commuting, or multitasking. This means that the engagement hooks need to work fast to capture attention.

Designing "laziness-friendly" systems—ones that require minimal initial effort but gradually reel players in—has become a key strategy. Not every game using this approach will be a breakout success, but it’s clear that the ones driving strong engagement metrics are often the ones that get this part of the design right.

📜TL,DR

Game Economies Are Designed for Control – Mobile games use multiple currencies, earnings (sources), and spending (sinks) to shape progression, balance resources, and encourage monetization.
A Shift Toward Simplicity – Modern games are moving away from complex economies, favoring streamlined systems that reduce cognitive load while maintaining engagement depth.
Hidden Complexity Drives Engagement – Merge-based games obscure grind through scaling mechanics, limited space, and energy systems, making progression feel natural and rewarding.
Frictionless Play Keeps Players Hooked – Some puzzle and match-3 games reduce early-game barriers with generous resources, free lives, and soft progression limits, making play sessions last longer.
Effortless Loops Create Addictive Progression – Games with simple, slot-machine-like mechanics use escalating rewards and progression incentives to keep players invested with minimal effort.
Brainrot Design Prioritizes Accessibility – Mobile games increasingly focus on "lazy-friendly" engagement, requiring minimal effort while maximizing retention, mirroring trends in broader digital consumption.

That was another one of my attempts at thought-posting here. It turned out lengthier than I imagined, and I feel like I could’ve gone even further. It’s tough for me to judge my own ideas, I often feel like that meme of a person over-explaining. Let me know your thoughts on my thoughts! And if there’s anything else you’d like my perspective on, feel free to reach out—I’d love to explore more!

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game design for the brainrot generation

Ishan Manjrekar — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 07:02:58 +0000

skibidi brrr to rizz up your game 🔥🎮

Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash

You’ve likely noticed, and perhaps experienced, the decline in attention spans over the past few years. Whether it’s scrolling through social media, multitasking with an app or game while watching TV, or struggling to focus on a long paragraph, these behaviors have become increasingly common.

The decline in attention spans has given rise to the popular " brainrot" phenomenon, which was named Oxford’s "Word of the Year" for 2024. According to them, brainrot is defined as "the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, particularly due to the overconsumption of trivial or unchallenging material, especially online content." It also refers to anything that may lead to such deterioration.

🌀_ Rabbit hole alert: _ If you’re interested in a short nerdy linguistic take about brainrot, I definitely recommend giving the following post a read.

when did brainrot begin?

The change in behavior influenced by this lower attentions spans has resulted in reactions like apparently even Netflix has set up some requirements on how their content should be written and presented to support this ‘casual viewing’, or a ‘second screen’ behavior. (read here)

🌀_ Rabbit hole alert: _ Another interesting, and well put together video take that explains this phenomenon quite well. (watch here)

😕What's the Game Connection?

Games, like any entertainment medium, evolve with shifting consumption trends. One way to explore this is by examining how broader trends influence how games are consumed.

Role of Free-to-Play in Shifting Consumption

Free-to-play (F2P) games, especially on mobile, offer a great perspective on this shift. These games are designed for accessibility—anyone can start playing for free.

If you’re making F2P games, monetization depends entirely on how engaging your game is. Since players don’t pay upfront, your goal is to create an experience so compelling that they choose to spend. This could be through direct in-game purchases or by engaging with ads. The more engaging the experience, the more likely players are to invest their time—and eventually, their money.

Evolution of F2P Engagement Mechanics

As mobile F2P games gained popularity, different engagement strategies have emerged. Early on, games offered a ‘free demo’ experience or added extra ‘premium’ content for paying users. The most successful approach, however, has been introducing ‘gating’ mechanics.

These mechanics require players to either wait and return later or pay to skip the wait or grind. Today, most top-performing F2P games use some form of time gating to drive engagement and monetization.

To recap, mobile F2P games rose in popularity as an accessible medium. To monetize players, new engagement mechanics emerged—time gating being one of the most enduring and effective.

To explore brainrot and F2P in the same breath, let’s dive deeper into these engagement hooks in games and examine how one might be influencing the other.

⌛Time Gating Shift

The concept of time gating has been around for a long time, primarily seen in early games like FarmVille with its energy mechanic. This system limited your gameplay actions, forcing you to either wait, engage with friends, or pay to continue. Facebook games popularized this approach, making games more accessible through social connections and timed progression.

As mobile F2P games evolved, energy systems appeared in many forms—and they worked. Early notable examples include:

CSR Racing
Candy Crush Saga
Clash of Clans
Clash Royale

The core mechanic was consistent: play for a short session, then hit a progress block. To continue, players had to wait or pay to skip the downtime. Different games presented this mechanic in various ways—ranging from energy bars to lives systems tied to friend connections, or slot-based mechanics that limited progress after your slots filled up.

Another shared feature was the session design. As a new player, you’d get around 20–30 minutes of uninterrupted play before hitting a hard time gate. This model became the standard for mobile F2P games.

How Time Gating is Changing

Over time, a subtle shift has occurred. Modern F2P games still use time gating but in a softer, more player-friendly way , especially during early sessions. Notable examples include:

Royal Match
Monopoly Go!
Merge Mansion
Capybara Go

While older games blocked progress early, these newer titles allow longer first sessions without interruption. Time gates are still there but appear much later compared to earlier games.

For instance, in Monopoly Go!, dice rolls are the currency that limits your progress. However, early on, you receive so many rolls that you can play for an extended time without hitting a block. The experience feels generous and keeps you engaged longer.

Royal Match re-engages returning players with unlimited lives for a short period, giving them longer, rewarding sessions after a break. Meanwhile, Capybara Go offers a “slot machine”-like experience with constant rewards during the initial sessions, allowing players to keep playing without interruption.

The Rise of Super Casual Design

This shift has brought casual, uninterrupted gameplay front and center, contributing to the App Store success of these games. In a market where overall industry growth has slowed, this super casual approach is showing impressive results.

While these trends are often described with terms like hyper-casual or hybrid-casual , what stands out is how these games allow long, early gameplay sessions without aggressive gating. This lenient, player-first approach is a big reason behind their growing popularity and success.

🤔Why?

With so many F2P games out there, competition is fierce. To stand out, you must offer a seamless, engaging experience that keeps players hooked. But the challenge doesn’t just come from other games anymore—there’s a new contender in the attention economy: brainrot.

Games are entertainment—and so is brainrot.

In traditional F2P design, the goal was to create just enough engagement to leave players wanting more. A 10–20 minute session gave players a satisfying taste, leaving them eager to return later. Time gating worked well because players anticipated the next rewarding session.

But social media has changed the game. With endless, scrollable content and instant sensory rewards at every swipe, players can easily shift from waiting in your game to getting their dopamine hit elsewhere. Competing for attention is no longer just about beating other games—you’re up against an infinite feed that never blocks progress.

This shift has created a new challenge: short-term memory. The fleeting nature of scrolling has conditioned players to quickly forget what they were doing. To counter this, games need longer, more memorable early sessions to build a stronger connection and remind players to come back.

Recent successful games have adapted by extending their first-time user experience (FTUE), offering longer, uninterrupted sessions that help players get deeply invested before any gating mechanics kick in.

📜TL,DR

Declining attention spans and the rise of "brainrot" (mental decline from trivial content) are influencing how we consume entertainment.
Free-to-play (F2P) mobile games need to adapt to this shift, by evolving their time gating (waiting or paying to progress) mechanics.
Games like CSR Racing and Candy Crush used energy systems, limiting playtime and encouraging players to wait or pay.
Modern F2P games, like Royal Match and Monopoly Go!, have shifted to less intrusive time gating, offering longer, uninterrupted early sessions to enhance player experience.
The "super casual" design approach focuses on providing longer, rewarding early gameplay sessions, making it easier to capture players’ attention.
Social media’s endless content has raised the stakes for games, with players easily distracted and moving on to other instant rewards.
Successful games now extend their first-time user experience (FTUE), offering longer, uninterrupted sessions to deepen player investment before introducing time gates.
The competition is no longer just between games; it's against infinite, easily accessible content in the attention economy.

This was my attempt at connecting some seemingly random ideas and weaving together broader topics into a cohesive thread. Did you like this new approach to thought-posting? Let me know your thoughts on my thoughts! And if there’s anything else you’d like my perspective on, feel free to reach out—I’d love to explore more!

🤝If you like reading such posts, do subscribe for FREE to receive new posts and support my work.

Is Game Design A One-Person Show?

Ishan Manjrekar — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 05:01:09 +0000

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

What comes to mind when you think of game design? Is it the intricate coding, stunning visuals, or immersive storylines? While these elements are crucial, there's a core aspect of game design that often goes unnoticed: effective communication and collaboration. Creating a game is rarely a solo endeavor. It's a symphony of different talents and skills coming together to bring a vision to life. So, how do you ensure that everyone on the team shares the same vision and works harmoniously towards the same goal?

🎩Understand The Roles

Broadly speaking, in game production, there are several key roles, each with its own focus and responsibilities:

Game Design + User Experience (UX): Crafting the game's mechanics and ensuring an enjoyable user experience.
Product Management: These are the "money people" who make critical decisions, especially if the game is a business venture.
Production: The planners and schedulers who keep the project on track.
Engineering: The technical wizards who bring your ideas to life through code.
Art: The creatives who turn concepts into visually appealing assets.
Quality Assurance (QA): The gatekeepers who ensure everything works as intended before release.
Miscellaneous: Other vital teams like Marketing, who help promote and sell the game.

If you're fortunate enough to handle all these roles by yourself, your task is straightforward: convince yourself of your ideas and execute them. However, in a professional setting, you'll interact with various specialists, each with different skills and objectives.

To excel at game design, you need to know these key roles and responsibilities—so you can communicate efficiently and bring your vision to life.

🏔️Understand Motivations

Each role in game development has its own unique motivations and focuses. As a designer, you're the linchpin that connects all these roles. To effectively convey your vision, you need to understand what drives each team member.

For instance:

An engineer might not be overly concerned about the color of a button but will focus on its functionality.
An artist might prioritize the aesthetics of the game world over the speed of moving obstacles.
A producer is more interested in how your design fits within deadlines and budget constraints.

Your job is to tailor your communication to address these specific interests. This means explaining different aspects of your design in ways that resonate with each role's priorities.

⚖️Calibrate Conversations

Effective collaboration starts with understanding. Spend time talking to people across different teams. Learn about their challenges and what excites them. This knowledge will help you communicate your ideas more effectively.

Once you grasp each role's motivations, collaboration becomes smoother, leading to better outcomes.

Poor collaboration is often a major reason for product failure.

As a designer, you need to bridge the gaps between different teams and ensure everyone is enthusiastic about your vision.

For example:

Discuss button placement and functionality with engineers , focusing on how it impacts gameplay mechanics.
Talk to artists about how visuals can enhance the user experience.
Engage producers in conversations about timelines and how your design choices fit within project deadlines.

Tailoring your conversations to the right audience is crucial for successful collaboration.

🛠️Use Effective Tools

As a designer, your primary goal is to communicate ideas clearly. The tools you use to do this can vary widely, and it's essential not to limit yourself. Whether it's pen and paper, long documents, slideshows, or even minor code tweaks, the tool should serve the purpose of conveying your vision effectively.

Different situations call for different tools. Sometimes a simple sketch can explain a concept better than a lengthy document. At other times, a detailed presentation might be necessary to get everyone on the same page.

📜TL;DR

Recognize Roles: Understand each role's responsibilities in game production.
Identify Motivations: Learn what drives each team member to tailor your communication.
Enhance Collaboration: Engage with team members to address their priorities and ensure alignment.
Use Versatile Tools: Clearly communicate ideas using the best tools for each situation.

In conclusion, effective collaboration in game development hinges on shared vision and clear communication across all roles. Recognizing each team member's motivations and tailoring your approach is key to success. If you found these insights helpful, please share this post or leave your feedback.

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