ooh- this is fairly recent. Cool.
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I always love these interviews since it is devs interviewing other devs. Love that kinda format. 
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Is it Ted Price interviewing?
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Yup.
In hommage to Psychonauts which I finished just few hours agoā¦
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Great video analyzing design elements of various open world games:
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Iām just going to disagree with everything he said about ER, because my super short expirience with the game was running to the open world, spotting the grace area and an NPC - just like Dark Souls/2 - who told me what was up with the world and how if I wanted to get stronger I needed a maiden. How the grace lights which I can see on the map would lead my path forward, a map which I can place a marker to where I want to go. The only way my experience would have been the same was If I went in specifically looking to ignore the super obvious go here signs that from placed at the beginning of the game.
Not sure it makes much sense forming opinions about open world in the game when you literally just got through the tutorial area which is not part of that open world.
The whole premise of their case here is that player decision making is what leads to choreographed sequences feeling as if they are unique, which in turn positions players to pay attention to the world the art team has built and to engage with that world in that space. Players decide where to go to based on what looks cool from their vantage point. The idea is that you see something, form presumptions about what you are looking at, and then work your way over to it and there should be some unpredictability in what you find when arriving there. Elden Ring does this really well.
You can place markers as the player, which is a vastly different experience than having the game place them for you since you are the one making decisions about where to place them, how to ālabelā them with which crest icon and if you want to ignore them or come back to them later, etc.
FWIW, I have lots of things I think could be better designed in the game and it has lots of faults or drawbacks. I would have liked to see the video author talk about how ERās open world differs from Skyrim, for instance, and how the latter leverages icons popping on your map in a really great way to peel players from the golden path. Or when he talked about the UI elements he could have pointed to games like SoT that put 99% of the UI into the actual game world, which is brilliantly immersive and adds whole new types of mechanics for players. I also think there is a lot to be said about how fun it can be moving through an open world, which ER totally sucks with. Halo and BotW do a much better job in this area, as do other titles.
I will watch this because Iāve finished GTA San Andreas last week and the theme is in my head. But I have a question: is Adam Millard actually an architect of games or this is just a youtube title?
He just analyzes game design afaik. Not sure if he makes any games himself.
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Iām not a huge fan of Mark Brown, but he shines doing these level design interviews. Iām considering backing GMTKās Patreon just to watch the full interviews.
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Boooooooo! 
Huge fan of his work myself.
This is a really interesting video on how games present choice to players and the psychological implications of that presentation.
Thereās some interesting connections to Reactance Theory and Self Determination Theory (outlined in video below in context of game design).
SDT is something game devs are gradually becoming more and more aware of and what seems to me like the main thorn in Halo Infiniteās side. It also explains why all GaaS games start off being poorly received as customers complain about ālack of contentā.
The challenge system in the game is intended to force players to mix things up and experience more weapons/play styles/etc but in actuality players feel it is too controlling. SDT research found that when extrinsic motivators (like reward systems) are perceived to be controlling participants see them as chores and find them highly demotivating. Players see these more as check lists to complete and once they complete them they stop playing. The entire game experience is shifted from āplay bc it is inherently funā to āplay bc I feel compelled to check all the boxesā. The latter of these has a well defined end while the former doesnāt.
It also completely changes how players think about engaging with the content on offer. When games are designed to push players towards varying play styles (because that means they are more likely to see value in DLC options they spend cash on) that almost always falls into the trap noted above. The result is gamers āoptimize the fun out of the gameā because the goal that their strategies are built around is no longer about how to play the game to have the most fun but instead is framed around how to most efficiently complete those chores. Thatās why essentially all GaaS titles have this perceived ālack of contentā early on. The reward mechanics push players to engage with content totally differently than they do without those mechanics.
Halo actually gives a good test case for this too. In the flights before launch we had fewer maps, fewer playlists, fewer mechanics than we did at launch. We also didnāt have functioning reward systems that meant anything as no āprogressā carried over to anything, so nobody rly engage with those reward systems at all. the result was everyone loved the experience and couldnāt imagine getting enough of it.
Halo really needs to throw the challenge system away entirely (UNLESS they can somehow allow us to build the challenge targets ourselves). Otherwise it will never flourish like it should.
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Sakuraiās channel is the best thing about games in Youtube since Extra Credits
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Yep, amazing channel. Itās so nice to see a developer with so much experience doing a channel like this one.
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Love me some Extra Credits! Will def check his channel out.