Until now, I have been designing my mechanics with a type of diagram that goes from node to node (like the diagram below), that way I can analyze the player experience in a step by step manner.

The bad thing about this way of designing the player experience, is that there is no way to visually measure the emotions the players feel, or when they feel it. So I created a new way to draw the diagrams.

With this new way I can better predict how the mechanics and systems will affect the emotional experience of the player.

I still draw nodes like before, but now they are placed in a X and Y axis.

The Y axis is the time-line, it shows how far apart in time each step is in the experience.

The X axis is the intensity of the emotion, so if its a very boring or subtle emotion, the node is to the left, and when its a very intense emotion, the node is to the right. The color green shows if its a desirable emotion, like happiness, and red for the undesirable emotions, for example boredom or frustration.

The latest way I used this was when I designed the effects of actions when exploring a planet sector. Before using this technique I had the problem of feeling that the effects where too boring, it was very easy make a decision, basically I had to activate all the actions since all of them were desirable, and that was boring.

So I analyzed this in the following diagram.

You can clearly see that there are some experiences that are more positive than others. If I see that a part of the experience is boring, I put it close the the vertical axis, and if its interesting I put in more to the right.

That way I can analyze the experience of play, and create a new mechanic that is a consequence of this analysis.

In this example, I could clearly see that I had to identify which properties where positive and which where negative, and then add a couple of them to the effects list of each action, that way I could make the player go trough a more interesting “decision making process” after deciding which effects where desirable and which where not.