Game feel

What Hacker News says

1. KiboneuFeb 2026
   Check out “Game Feel: A Game Designer's Guide to Virtual Sensation” by Steve Swink.

   To some extent, responsiveness is a perception based on expectations derived from the visual and acoustical elements of a game. So on top of engine-level optimizations, there are artistic tricks that can further improve the sense of responsiveness.

   Think Kiki and Bouba, and how each one would move, race and fight.

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2. KiboneuOct 2025
   > Is there a particular reason you believe it is reliable?

   I don't, nor do I think it is unreliable. Protocols exist in an abstract space, but they are instantiated in a system that works within physical /constraints/ (noise, faults, oxidation, etc.). These constraints vary because different systems work in different environments.

   The systems we make also have to provide utility for the /purposes/ that it's made. Reliability is necessary to trust the utility of a system.

   If I'm playing a multiplayer FPS game and due to backoff I see players snapping back to the position of a lost packet once it is received, I will not think that the game is reliable (and I will be especially sad since this is known issue with known improvements).

   If I don't care about old packets and only care about the latest packet, I don't work with old information -- but the information is incomplete. Latency will still be noticeable on a noisy connection, but my brain can at least anticipate -- guess where to look next -- once the last packet is received.

   That incomplete information can be used to extrapolate movements. So the final step is to use a model to predict movements in (short) moments when a packet is not received. You can't do this when the information isn't relevant anymore. When that's done, I -- the player -- will feel like that game is more reliable than the first TCP case.

   (Games, and real-time interfaces in general, have some interesting aspects that I think is well covered in Game Feel by Steve Swink).

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3. meheleventyoneSep 2023
   Missing any Game Design books so my picks:

   Game Feel - Steve Swink - 2008

   The Art of Game Design a Deck of Lenses - Jesse Schell - 2014

   101 Things I Learned in Architecture School - Matthew Frederick - 2007

   Writing for Games: Theory & Practice - Hannah Nicklin - 2022

   Procedural Generation in Game Design - Tanya Short/Tarn Adams - 2017

   Procedural Storytelling in Game Design - Tanya Short/Tarn Adams - 2019

   A Theory of Fun - Raph Koster - 2013

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4. JareOct 2021
   For game design, any or all of these will easily be in most top lists:

   - Tracy Fullerton's Game Design Workshop

   - Jesse Schell's Art of Game Design A Book of Lenses

   - Steve Swink's Game Feel

   - Scott Rogers' Level Up

   - Skaff & others' Characteristics of Games

   - Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun

   - Joris Dormans & Ernest Adams' Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design

   This one was just published but I'll happily bet on it:

   - Richard LeMarchand's A Playful Production Process

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5. hn8788Aug 2021
   "Designing Games" by Tynan Sylvester (creator of Rimworld), and "Game Feel" by Steve Swink, are both more recent books about high-level game design concepts, though they don't specifically focus on world building.
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6. beningradJan 2020
   Successful implementations of game physics often has far less to do with realistic simulation and far more to do with sensation. For anybody interested in diving deep, pick up Game Feel by Steve Swink[0]

   [0] https://www.amazon.com/Game-Feel-Designers-Sensation-Kaufman...

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