In service-based games, averages are misleading. Humans tend to understand averages through the lens of physical properties. If I tell you that the height of an average male human is 5′9″ and ask you to guess the...

The Pyramid is a framework for the strategy of your game design. The Session is tactical. It forms the fundamental building block of service games. It addresses the questions: How will I get my players to open...

In philosophy, a razor is a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate unlikely explanations for a phenomenon. The most famous is Occam’s Razor, “among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should...

When I first developed the Pyramid, I used the phrase Base Game, Retention Game and Superfan Game. (And other people used the terms Meta Game and Elder Game). I avoid those terms now because there is only...

I’ve focused on the Retention Layer in video games, but we are also seeing it emerge in board games. Beasts of Balance is a hybrid digital/ physical game. The physical game is a “balance things on top...

Robert Cialdini is professor of Marketing and professor of Psychology at Arizona State University. That is a dangerous combination. In 1985, Cialdini published Influence, in which he identified six principles that all compliance professionals—by which he means...

The Pyramid and the other tools that I introduce in this book improve both product and service games. They are much more important for service games. Imagine two different scenarios: Maria has heard good things about Generic...