DECISION ANALYSIS · METHODS
From problem definition to improvement design
A common process and methodological reference for reading the reasoning. Find the actual selections and applications in each game’s analysis.
Eight explanations for reading the reasoning
These explanations organize the reading of the reasoning. Actual analysis revisits residual scope and coexistence conditions through iteration and adjustment.
1. Start with loops and breaks
Start with the repeating structures and broken connections identified in the game analysis. Read the expected flow and the reasoning behind each break, distinguishing observation, inference and assumptions.
2. Explain the bottleneck through M-ABC
Examine bottlenecks across game design, player groups, behavior, community and commerce. Read the inputs and mechanisms behind the symptoms alongside the theories and evidence actually used.
3. Define the conflict between improvement and protection
Identify the value to improve, the value to protect and the conditions under which they conflict. The initial ideal final result, or IFR, states the direction that would satisfy both.
4. Compare principles and combinations
Compare NTRIZ principles’ conditions, mechanisms, complementarity and potential conflicts against the goal and protection requirements. Read selection and exclusion reasons from the game’s recorded analysis.
5. Turn principles into a concrete design
Explain how selected principles change rules, resource flows or player experience. Read aggressive, conservative and safe designs as alternative choices, together with the selected configuration and its safeguards.
6. Review the residual scope after each design
Reassess the residuals under the assumption that the design is applied. Distinguish design-based dissolution, reduction and preservation, and carry forward the narrowed scope. Confirm processing completion and actual resolution through their respective records.
7. Organize coexistence within the game
Review how interventions coexist while retaining the core design and safeguards. Examine shared resources, attention, exposure, total change and operating load, then read the adjusted configuration’s roles, dependencies and conditions.
8. Bring together goals, safeguards and validation
Distinguish the initial IFR direction from the final design goal. Read goal, protection and diagnostic measures, timing, responsibility and stop or rollback conditions. Keep design judgments, actual observations and validation verdicts separate.
STRUCTURAL FOUNDATIONS ANALYSIS
Core importance and actual repetition
A core is relatively important play content or structure. It can be one-off or recurring, and a game can have one or several cores. A loop is established from actual repetition; closure is an optional explanatory feature.
Decision Analysis starts from the loops and breaks identified by structural analysis. Core–periphery analysis provides the background for understanding core–periphery relationships and connections through growth, competition and cooperation.
Distinguish recorded repeating flows, broken connections, observations, inferences and assumptions when reading the game’s bottleneck judgments.
M-ABC
21 theories for explaining bottlenecks
Examine relationships across game design, player groups, behavior, community and commerce. Game records distinguish theories used in the analysis from supporting or reference roles, alongside observations, inferences and assumptions.
Read declared input variables together with the sources and dates of the game’s observations. Distinguish observations, inferences and assumptions, and identify each theory’s conceptual contribution and direct diagnostic role.
G1T1 Rules of Play
RULES define legal action space; visible consequences convert action into meaning; repeated meaning stabilizes player norms and community interpretation.
G1T2 Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics
Mechanics generate runtime patterns; runtime patterns produce emotional interpretation; diagnosis succeeds only when the emotional gap is traced back to the exact mechanic source.
G1T3 Design-Play-Experience
Design creates hypotheses; live play reveals whether those hypotheses survive real interaction; experience evidence determines whether the design should scale, split by cohort, or be rewritten.
G1T4 Octalysis
Motivational architecture determines why action starts, why it repeats, and whether repetition compounds trust or fatigue.
G2T1 Bartle’s Player Types
Type-dominant players select the mode, reward, and social affordances that match their orientation; mismatch compresses participation into narrow routes and pushes non-matching cohorts toward churn or conflict.
G2T2 Quantic Foundry 12 Motivations
Players act when the content theme and reward frame match the motive that matters most to them; broad demographic or coarse archetype labels hide the real conversion trigger.
G2T3 Machine-Learning Based Segmentation
Behavior traces encode hidden friction, value sensitivity, and habit formation more reliably than self-description; retrained clustering exposes where the current system wins, loses, or silently shifts cohorts.
G2T4 Hexad Player Types
Different motivational types convert the same system into helping, sharing, mastery, collection, autonomous exploration, reward extraction, or disruption; balance determines whether the group becomes productive, dependent, or toxic.
G3T1 Flow Theory
Difficulty, goals, and feedback set the tension band; when the band is controllable players sustain concentration and learn through retry, and when the band breaks they drift into boredom or exit under anxiety.
G3T2 Self-Determination Theory
Freedom, mastery, and social bond determine whether play feels self-endorsed; controlling rewards and mandatory loops convert participation into compliance and eventually fatigue.
G3T3 Fogg Behavior Model
Behavior fails when desire is absent, when the path is too costly, or when the trigger arrives too early, too late, or too often; fixing the missing leg restores action.
G3T4 Operant Conditioning
Consequences reshape future action probability; schedule design determines whether repeated behavior stabilizes into healthy habit, pauses after payoff, or escalates into reward chasing and fatigue.
G4T2 Community of Practice
Shared routine and mentoring convert isolated skill into communal know-how; newcomers learn by observing, assisting, and repeating practice with veterans, and absent transfer the group remains socially active but developmentally closed.
G4T4 Key Player Theory
A few nodes often carry coordination, emotional tone, and symbolic proof; when they disengage or signal negativity, follower behavior and cluster trust move nonlinearly, and weak succession depth converts a local issue into a network-wide shock.
G4T5 Diffusion of Innovations
Innovation spreads when benefit is legible, trial is safe, and trusted adopters make success visible; absent compatibility or proof, usage remains trapped in innovators and fails to become a community norm.
G5T1 Virtual Economy & Progression Curves
Currency supply, sink density, and growth pacing jointly determine whether effort converts into believable future progress; imbalance produces either abundance without meaning or scarcity without hope, and both break value trust.
G5T2 Behavioral Economics & Prospect Theory
Players do not evaluate offers on absolute expected value; they anchor on visible reference points, overreact to possible loss, and distort low probabilities, so framing and safeguards reshape both conversion and regret.
G5T3 Pricing & Consumer Psychology
Pricing works through comparison and simplification; users do not buy isolated numbers but evaluate ladders, bundles, and defaults in context, and friction or opacity destroys otherwise valid value propositions.
G5T4 Ethical Monetization & Dark Patterns
Monetization ethics are evaluated through perceived autonomy, fairness, and clarity; when players feel confused, cornered, or structurally disadvantaged, revenue becomes socially and legally fragile even if short-term conversion rises.
NTRIZ 3.0
40 principles for moving from contradiction to design
A principle’s defining logic and provisional candidate-search mappings serve different roles. Read selected principles together with their recorded comparison against the contradiction, goal and safeguards. Distinguish this common reference from each game’s application record.
Explore the broad working meaning of each principle through functions, authority, timing, relationships and existing or new resources. Explain the roles, mechanisms and conditions of the principles that work together, then examine their interactions against the same problem and protected values.
N1T1 Control Segmentation
Divide a connected whole into units of function, responsibility, authority, time or relationship so that each can act differently or recombine. Segmentation can create new participants and connections as well as simplify complexity.
N1T2 Friction Extraction
Separate interfering elements, or extract a useful property, function or information for use in another place or context. Removal, separation and extraction can create focus, independent value and new connections.
N1T3 Local Optimization Branching
Give different properties to parts, places, roles, stages or relationships that were treated uniformly. Differences can create complementarity, tension and discovery as well as improve local performance.
N1T8 Loss Buffering
Connect a force, burden or shortage on one side with another force or supporting condition to change how it acts. Resources, information, relationships, choices and expectations can provide support or new momentum.
N1T12 Reference-Plane Leveling
Bring differently positioned participants or conditions onto a shared reference plane or interface to change unnecessary movement and conversion costs. Information, tools, opportunities and decision units can be aligned.
N1T29 Elastic Buffer
Use a compressible, fluid or deformable medium to store, transfer, distribute, concentrate or release force and resources. Explore changes to the timing of accumulation and the form of delivery as well as cushioning impacts.
N1T35 Parameter Steering
Change quantity, proportion, speed, density, visibility, connection strength or another property to explore changes in behavior and meaning. Both numerical adjustments and qualitative state changes can inform ideas.
N1T36 Threshold Transition
Let accumulated change or a condition trigger a different property, role, relationship or rule. Explore quiet reinterpretation, branching and structural change as well as a sudden increase in capability.
N1T37 Elastic Scaling
Let size, scope, connections or capacity expand or contract with surrounding demand and conditions. Explore how change and scale interact as well as automatic capacity adjustment.
N1T38 Catalyst Injection
Introduce an element or environment that changes reactions among existing participants and accelerates change. Explore different concentrations, durations, actors and new reaction paths.
N1T39 Integrity Isolation
Create an environment or boundary that selectively reduces unwanted reactions and interference while preserving, observing or developing useful properties. Explore selective connections, safe experiments and independent relationships.
N2T9 Prior Neutralization
Address an anticipated counteraction earlier to create possibilities for later change. Explore prepared opposing roles, alternative paths and relationship coordination as well as neutralization and cushioning.
N2T10 Advance Loading
Place an action, state, resource or understanding earlier in time or elsewhere to change a later interaction. Advance preparation can create choices and connections as well as speed.
N2T11 Prior Cushion
Prepare room to absorb failure, variation or incompleteness so that attempts and recovery can work differently. Explore retry space, alternative roles and relational support as well as insurance.
N2T13 Inversion
Reverse a direction, role, sequence, purpose, value flow or viewpoint to explore a different solution. Propose resources needed by the reversed relationship as well as invert existing resources.
N2T15 Dynamic Transformation
Make a fixed form, rule, role, relationship or interface changeable so that different conditions or choices produce different states. Explore participant-led transformation as well as automatic adaptation.
N2T16 Over-and-Under Experimentation
Deliberately do less or more than an appropriate or completed state to explore other responses and possibilities. Under- and over-completion can become lasting features of strategy, expression or relationships.
N2T17 Added Dimension
Add a dimension to the way a problem is represented, or change relationships between dimensions, to explore new positions and interactions. Space, time, history, society, viewpoint, identity, ownership and scale are possible starting points.
N2T18 Rhythmic Feedback
Use oscillation, waves, repeated variation, resonance or synchronization as mechanisms and signals. Explore how collective behavior and relationships resonate and coordinate as well as sensory feedback.
N2T19 Periodic Design
Arrange actions as continuous, intermittent, repeated or staggered time relationships and explore what their intervals and rhythms create. Explore fixed schedules, variable periods, event responses and participant-generated rhythms.
N2T20 Idle-Time Continuity
Connect a break in a useful function to another action, participant or state. Define usefulness in context and explore rest, recovery, maturation and changes in the world as forms of continuity.
N2T21 Rapid Processing
Compress an action into a shorter period, simultaneous processing or rapid passage to change exposure and experience. Explore momentary decisions and concentrated challenges as well as removing friction.
N3T4 Intentional Asymmetry
Create intentional differences in roles, information, time, risk, authority, goals or form to change choices and relationships. Explore strategy, complementarity, expression and new experiences through those differences.
N3T7 Layered Capsule
Place one entity inside another, or nest layers, scales and stages, to change access and interactions. Explore nested or recursive worlds, goals, organizations, rules and experiences as well as information disclosure.
N3T14 Curvature
Transform a straight, angular or single-direction structure into curved, cyclical, rotating, indirect or nonlinear paths. Explore return journeys and changing perspectives through repetition as well as smooth progression.
N3T30 Flexible Overlay
Add or remove a thin, flexible layer, membrane or interface to change properties and connections. Explore temporary roles, relationship surfaces and new environments as well as protection and replacement.
N3T31 Porous Control
Create small openings, channels or interfaces within an entity and change passage, absorption, storage, release or exchange. Explore small contributions, accumulation and selective connections as well as pressure relief.
N3T32 State–Rule Encoding
Express or transform a state, property or meaning through another signal such as color, brightness, form, sound, movement or spatial arrangement. Encoding can connect explanation, sensation and action in new ways.
N3T33 Homogeneous Consistency
Let interacting elements share a property, standard, grammar or interface to explore connections and transfer. A shared basis can support different implementations and outcomes.
N3T40 Composite Composition
Combine elements with different properties to explore new properties and interactions that a single element cannot provide. Materials, mechanisms, motivations, relationships, resources and technologies can all inform combinations.
N4T5 Integration Hub
Bring dispersed entities, actions, times or participants together to explore new connections and results. Explore shared operation of actions, goals, roles and relationships as well as screen integration.
N4T6 Multifunction Core
Let one element, action, resource or relationship perform several functions or meanings. Explore changing functions, new uses and choices among purposes as well as structural simplification.
N4T22 Loss-to-Asset Conversion
Transform failure, loss, shortage, inconvenience or another adverse condition into a resource or interaction in another context. Explore information, stories, relationships and new paths as well as compensatory rewards.
N4T23 Feedback Control
Return the result of an action as a condition for the next action to explore learning, adaptation, strengthening, moderation or change. Explore feedback that develops new patterns and learning between participants.
N4T24 Mediating Buffer
Insert an intermediary, participant, layer or representation between entities to change their connection. Explore translation, delegation, mediation, transformation, amplification, delay and new interfaces as well as buffering.
N4T25 Self-Service Expansion
Let users, communities or entities create, maintain, recover or operate functions they need. Explore collaborative creation, resource regeneration, self-organization and experience creation as well as cost reduction.
N4T26 Safe Replication
Transfer a property, function, relationship or meaning into a copy, model, abstraction or proxy to explore different interactions. Explore reuse, comparison and new perspectives as well as safe practice.
N4T27 Low-Cost Circulation
Explore entities and actions that can be created lightly, used briefly, replaced, consumed or ended. Consider temporary roles, agreements, rules, prototypes and adaptable resources as well as inexpensive consumables.
N4T28 Behavior Instrumentation
Transfer a function performed through direct contact, physical manipulation or repeated action into another signal, information process, interaction or proxy relationship. Explore different ways of transmitting and transforming functions.
N4T34 Planned Disposal and Recovery
End or separate a function, state or entity at the end of its useful life and recover, regenerate or pass on useful properties and value. Explore complete or partial endings and context-appropriate forms of recovery.
Game-local composition and cross-game reuse
Game-local composition describes the roles, dependencies and safeguards through which interventions coexist in a game. Cross-game accumulation records established designs with their origins and compares common principles and coherent configurations.
Applicability in the next game is judged against that game’s problem and conditions. Confirm application requirements and effect evidence per game; type comparison provides an entry point for finding similarities and differences.
Open game comparison