Considering the mood of the player is a dichotomy in a way though, because in a lot of ways people don't know exactly what it is they want but they say they do. Granted they do have a good general idea, but never all the details. No one ever entertains someone by giving them exactly what they expect and no more or no less.

It's like the sad parts in movies, people don't know it will happen in the film and they may not like it at the moment it happens but at the same time they enjoy the overall experience that can result from a tragic event. If a movie watcher didn't like the sad part of a film while that same sad plot point was what led to their favorite part, that opinion may not be a valid one.

Similarly, Thomas, if a player says that they wanted the game to be longer, the game might have actually been the perfect length. Portal is a good example of this, I feel, as it is a good game that progresses quickly and ends before the mechanic feels overplayed, while lots of people I know (who go back and play through it over and over again) complain about how short the main part of the game is.

Also Chainsawkitten I feel that more commercialized games are more... exploitative? That might be too strong a word, but the goal of a commercial game is to make money, and you make money by getting people to buy your game, and you get them to buy a game by getting them to want to play your game. Now this can all be handled through advertising, but nowadays really good games are ones that players recognize as fun to play or just have a lot of content to explore. And when you enter into subscription games or free-to-play with microtransactions, then that's where people are really trying to perpetuate the gameplay experience (further than what it naturally should, in my opinion).

A lot of what enjoying a game is from a player perspective is in the expectation of being satisfied, but it is also expecting that it is done in a different way than other games that the player has played. In some ways the player is considering the risk of not being satisfied, making the act of approaching a game a game in itself. We don't want to feel pandered to, and we don't want to be aware that someone made this for our enjoyment, we don't want to know that it was tailored to be hard but not too hard. In whatever medium we experience we crave the unexpected. At least in my opinion.


But on the topic of the original post, focusing on the experience of the player is what every successful game designer does. You don't make a successful game - even a mainstream one - by disregarding the mood and feel of the player. Or maybe the terms need to be more specific, what do you mean by experience? Is it satisfaction of an impulse? Is it a more noble form of gratification? Self-actualization, even?

And Michaël Samyn, the notion of games as software rather than films is a notion that can be scrutinized, as I feel it ignores the storyteling aspect that games can provide. Considering Photoshop, or FinalCut, or a hammer, there are tools and there are toys, but the same object can be considered a toy to one person and a tool to another. Someone editing films for hollywood, for example, and someone who just likes making funny videos for youtube. We're getting into defining entusiast and hobbyist and describing the transition from a hobbyist to a profesional now, which is not the topic of this thread. I suppose your question relys on how each person approaches a piece of software, be it to them a tool, a toy, or a game, which is not exactly something you can control easily.