Excerpt
Chapter 1: Welcome to the World of Gaming Science
A video game might look like a bunch of colors, sounds, and characters moving around on a screen, but there’s a lot more going on than it seems. If you’ve ever played a racing game and felt your heart race as you hit a sharp turn, or if you’ve built a world block by block and felt totally in charge, then you’ve already experienced what makes video games different from other kinds of fun. They don’t just show you something—they let you do something. They let you be part of the action.
At its most basic, a video game is a system. That sounds kind of boring, right? But a system is just a group of parts that work together. In this case, the parts are things like the player, the controller, the screen, the rules of the game, and the goals you’re trying to reach. All of those parts talk to each other in really fast and interesting ways.
Let’s say you're playing a platformer. You press a button. The controller sends a signal to the console, which tells the game, "Hey, the player just pressed jump!" The game checks the rules—are you allowed to jump right now? Are you standing on solid ground? If yes, then the game says, “Alright, go for it,” and your character leaps into the air. The screen updates instantly, and you see the jump happen. That whole thing? It happens in a tiny blink. Less than a blink, actually.
This back-and-forth, this constant conversation between the player and the game, is what makes video games special. A movie doesn’t care if you look away for ten minutes or decide to eat popcorn during the big battle. It just keeps playing. But a game needs you. If you walk away in the middle of a boss fight, your character isn’t going to win on their own. The game waits for you to take the next step. That’s what turns a game from something you watch into something you control.
But a game isn’t just about reacting to buttons. There’s always something behind the scenes telling the game how to behave. Every time you press a button, you’re not just causing an action—you’re starting a conversation. That sounds strange, but think of it like this: you press jump, the game says, “You got it,” and shows the result. Then you might press left or right. The game says, “Moving that way now,” and the screen changes again. These tiny, split-second conversations go on for the entire time you're playing. Thousands of them. Maybe millions. And you don’t even notice, because they happen so fast and feel so smooth.
Some games make those conversations more complicated. Instead of just jumping over things, you might have to solve a puzzle, choose the best weapon, or figure out what another character might do next. The more complicated the game, the more the system needs to think. That’s where all the invisible parts come in—like the rules written in code, the logic of the game, and the way different elements are linked together.
Think about a mystery game where you have to collect clues. You can’t just pick up any item on the screen and expect it to be important. The game has rules about what counts as a clue and when you’re allowed to find it. Maybe you can’t discover the hidden letter until you’ve talked to the character who drops a hint about the desk. The game checks all those rules in the background. It listens to everything you do and decides what should happen next. That’s still part of the system—just a more advanced one.
Even games that feel simple are doing a lot of thinking. Ever played a game where the character moves faster if you hold down a certain button? That’s a rule. The game says, “If this button is pressed and the character is on the ground, then increase speed.” It’s like math mixed with logic, written in a language that the computer understands. The better the rules are written, the smoother the game feels.
Of course, there’s one more big part of what makes a game a game: goals. Whether it’s defeating the final boss, reaching the highest score, or just decorating your island exactly how you want it, there’s something you’re trying to do. That goal gives you a reason to keep playing. It also gives the game a reason to keep track of everything you’ve done. It remembers your high score, how many coins you’ve collected, or how many stars you’ve earned. And once you reach that goal? There’s usually a new one waiting. Games are great at keeping the conversation going.
Some people think of games as just play, but when you dig a little deeper, you’ll see that there’s a whole structure underneath that play. There are rules, systems, and even science holding everything together. Every jump, every blast, every race around a track—it all happens because the game is built to listen, think, and respond.
Now here's where things get really interesting. Games don’t just respond to your actions—they also shape your actions. You start to learn the game’s rules without anyone explaining them. You figure out that touching the lava means restarting the level, or that talking to a certain character gives you helpful items. The game teaches you through experience, and you get better just by playing. That’s part of the system too: it’s designed to help you learn how to have better and smarter conversations with it.
And as you get better, you start having deeper conversations. You’re not just pressing jump anymore. You’re planning ahead, making choices, testing ideas. That’s one reason why video games are more than just fun—they’re training your brain to think quickly, solve problems, and react to new situations.
You might not notice all this while you’re playing. You’re focused on the action, on the music, on the story, on winning. But behind that action is a system built from science and logic and design. It’s a machine made to respond to you in real time. It’s more like a robot partner than a toy. And once you know how it works, you can start seeing video games in a whole new way—not just as something to play, but as something to understand and maybe even build yourself.
A video game might look like a bunch of colors, sounds, and characters moving around on a screen, but there’s a lot more going on than it seems. If you’ve ever played a racing game and felt your heart race as you hit a sharp turn, or if you’ve built a world block by block and felt totally in charge, then you’ve already experienced what makes video games different from other kinds of fun. They don’t just show you something—they let you do something. They let you be part of the action.
At its most basic, a video game is a system. That sounds kind of boring, right? But a system is just a group of parts that work together. In this case, the parts are things like the player, the controller, the screen, the rules of the game, and the goals you’re trying to reach. All of those parts talk to each other in really fast and interesting ways.
Let’s say you're playing a platformer. You press a button. The controller sends a signal to the console, which tells the game, "Hey, the player just pressed jump!" The game checks the rules—are you allowed to jump right now? Are you standing on solid ground? If yes, then the game says, “Alright, go for it,” and your character leaps into the air. The screen updates instantly, and you see the jump happen. That whole thing? It happens in a tiny blink. Less than a blink, actually.
This back-and-forth, this constant conversation between the player and the game, is what makes video games special. A movie doesn’t care if you look away for ten minutes or decide to eat popcorn during the big battle. It just keeps playing. But a game needs you. If you walk away in the middle of a boss fight, your character isn’t going to win on their own. The game waits for you to take the next step. That’s what turns a game from something you watch into something you control.
But a game isn’t just about reacting to buttons. There’s always something behind the scenes telling the game how to behave. Every time you press a button, you’re not just causing an action—you’re starting a conversation. That sounds strange, but think of it like this: you press jump, the game says, “You got it,” and shows the result. Then you might press left or right. The game says, “Moving that way now,” and the screen changes again. These tiny, split-second conversations go on for the entire time you're playing. Thousands of them. Maybe millions. And you don’t even notice, because they happen so fast and feel so smooth.
Some games make those conversations more complicated. Instead of just jumping over things, you might have to solve a puzzle, choose the best weapon, or figure out what another character might do next. The more complicated the game, the more the system needs to think. That’s where all the invisible parts come in—like the rules written in code, the logic of the game, and the way different elements are linked together.
Think about a mystery game where you have to collect clues. You can’t just pick up any item on the screen and expect it to be important. The game has rules about what counts as a clue and when you’re allowed to find it. Maybe you can’t discover the hidden letter until you’ve talked to the character who drops a hint about the desk. The game checks all those rules in the background. It listens to everything you do and decides what should happen next. That’s still part of the system—just a more advanced one.
Even games that feel simple are doing a lot of thinking. Ever played a game where the character moves faster if you hold down a certain button? That’s a rule. The game says, “If this button is pressed and the character is on the ground, then increase speed.” It’s like math mixed with logic, written in a language that the computer understands. The better the rules are written, the smoother the game feels.
Of course, there’s one more big part of what makes a game a game: goals. Whether it’s defeating the final boss, reaching the highest score, or just decorating your island exactly how you want it, there’s something you’re trying to do. That goal gives you a reason to keep playing. It also gives the game a reason to keep track of everything you’ve done. It remembers your high score, how many coins you’ve collected, or how many stars you’ve earned. And once you reach that goal? There’s usually a new one waiting. Games are great at keeping the conversation going.
Some people think of games as just play, but when you dig a little deeper, you’ll see that there’s a whole structure underneath that play. There are rules, systems, and even science holding everything together. Every jump, every blast, every race around a track—it all happens because the game is built to listen, think, and respond.
Now here's where things get really interesting. Games don’t just respond to your actions—they also shape your actions. You start to learn the game’s rules without anyone explaining them. You figure out that touching the lava means restarting the level, or that talking to a certain character gives you helpful items. The game teaches you through experience, and you get better just by playing. That’s part of the system too: it’s designed to help you learn how to have better and smarter conversations with it.
And as you get better, you start having deeper conversations. You’re not just pressing jump anymore. You’re planning ahead, making choices, testing ideas. That’s one reason why video games are more than just fun—they’re training your brain to think quickly, solve problems, and react to new situations.
You might not notice all this while you’re playing. You’re focused on the action, on the music, on the story, on winning. But behind that action is a system built from science and logic and design. It’s a machine made to respond to you in real time. It’s more like a robot partner than a toy. And once you know how it works, you can start seeing video games in a whole new way—not just as something to play, but as something to understand and maybe even build yourself.