The PLAYER Framework: A Player-Centered Approach to Game Analysis

Over many years of researching game design and analyzing games, I’ve noticed consistent limitations in existing frameworks. While each offers valuable insights, few provide a comprehensive way to account for the player’s perspective. Many frameworks consider the intended experience, but never really emphasize identifying “Which player is this experience for?”

Player-Centered Design

Player-centered design is a philosophy that builds on the philosophy of user-centered design, first proposed by computer scientist Rob Kling in 1977. User-centered design focuses on the wants and needs of the user, though what users say they want may not always reflect what they truly need.

In games, this philosophy is adapted to focus on player experience goals, the situations, emotions, and engagement a designer wants players to have. Unlike user-centered design, the goal is not simply to satisfy wants or solve problems, but to shape the experience itself, guiding every decision in the design and development process.

PLAYER Framework

Building on this philosophy and my research into game analysis, I developed the PLAYER Framework. This framework provides a structured way to analyze, guide, and design player experiences by explicitly considering the player at every step.

The PLAYER Framework builds on previous game analysis frameworks by placing the player explicitly at the center. It draws from recurring elements in other frameworks: Mechanics & Technology, Aesthetics & Dramatic Elements, Gameplay Dynamics, and Social & Cultural Context, but organizes them in relation to the player and the experience they create.

The PLAYER Framework consists of six key dimensions:

P: Player Identification – Who is the player?

The PLAYER Framework begins with the most fundamental question: Who is the player? Before we can design mechanics, atmosphere, or engagement strategies, we must first understand the people we are designing for. Identifying the player is the foundation upon which the entire framework is built.

Player identification involves analyzing several key factors:

• Audience and Demographics – age, background, culture, and other defining traits.
• Psychographics – values, attitudes, and lifestyles that shape how players approach games.
• Gamer Motivations – Different players are motivated by different factors, such as excitement, strategy, fantasy, and discovery.
• Preferences and Accessibility Needs – the genres they gravitate toward, the devices they play on, and considerations that ensure inclusivity.

By thoroughly identifying the player, designers can then define the intended player experience goals, what the player should feel, achieve, or discover during play. In other words, understanding the player allows us to design experiences that meet both their wants and needs.

L: Layered Interaction – How does the player interact with the game?

Once we know who the player is, the next step is to consider how they will interact with the game itself. Interaction is what makes games distinct from other forms of media. This interaction does not come from a single source but from multiple components working together in layers.

These components have been described as game mechanics in the MDA framework and later as formal elements in the Formal, Dramatic, and Dynamic framework. Additionally, the Elemental Tetrad framework adds technology as a crucial factor, reminding us that every interaction happens within some medium, whether physical or digital. Taken together, these elements layer into the structure that allows the player to act and the game to respond.

Core Components of Layered Interaction:

• Players – The number of participants, their roles, and interaction patterns
• Goals – The victory condition that players strive to achieve and provide both purpose and direction
• Procedures – The steps and actions the players can or are required to take
• Rules – The constraints and logic that govern what actions are permitted or prohibited.
• Resources are game assets that help players achieve goals
• Conflict refers to the opposing forces or obstacles that players must overcome to achieve their goals/objectives.
• Boundaries – The space, both physical and conceptual, that defines the limits of the game world
• Outcomes represent the result of the player’s actions at the end of gameplay, such as winning, losing, or drawing.
• Technology – The medium that enables the interaction, whether it’s cardboard, dice, a computer, or a virtual reality headset.
• Game Loops – the mechanics and cycles that define how the player acts within the system.

Together, these components form a cohesive system of interaction. Each element is intertwined with the others, creating layers that build upon and influence one another. Changing the number of players, the rules, available resources, or the underlying game loops can ripple through the system, altering how players act, interact, and experience the game. In essence, the game’s interaction emerges from the layered system itself, not from any single component in isolation.

A: Atmosphere – What does the player feel?

Beyond interaction, the atmosphere of a game defines how players feel while playing. Game atmosphere is the cohesion of artwork, audio, narrative, level, and world design that shapes the tone, mood, and emotional texture of the game. It establishes the fictional world, inviting players into the “magic circle” of the game and influencing how they interpret challenges, act within the world, and engage with its systems.

Creating this fictional world relies on several overlapping design disciplines:

• Visual Design – art direction, color palette, visual motifs, lighting, animation, and spatial arrangement that communicate style and guide attention.
• Narrative Design – story, character, and thematic elements that contextualize gameplay and provide meaning.
• Sound Design – music, sound effects, and voice work that reinforce mood, tension, and immersion.
• Level and Environmental Design – the physical or spatial structure of the world, which shapes exploration, movement, and environmental storytelling.
• Interaction/UX Design – interface, feedback, and controls that communicate the world’s rules and maintain player engagement.

Atmosphere ensures that players experience not just the mechanics of a game, but the emotion and context behind those mechanics. A simple jump can feel joyful and playful in Super Mario Bros., but tense and risky in a horror game. By designing atmosphere as an integrated system, designers can craft worlds that feel alive, coherent, and compelling, drawing players deeper into the intended experience.

Y: Yielded Experience – What emerges from gameplay?

The yielded experience is the phenomena that emerge from the interplay of systems and player choices. While some aspects are intentionally designed by the creators, others arise organically during play. The yielded experience is both the experience we aim to design and the emergent experiences that players generate, capturing the full spectrum of player experiences that emerge from interacting with the game system.

Key aspects of the yielded experience include:

• Gameplay– the culmination of player experiences, including challenges, choices, and consequences as they unfold within the system
• Gameplay Dynamics – the evolution of gameplay in response to player actions and system rules.
• Emergent Gameplay – unexpected strategies, exploits, or creative uses of mechanics.
• Feedback Loops – patterns of actions and reactions that reinforce learning, mastery, and emergent behavior.

Designers cannot control the yielded experience entirely, but they can design systems that encourage richness and variety.

E: Engagement – Why is the player playing?

Engagement focuses on how the game’s design encourages players to continue interacting with the system. It’s about implementing features and dynamics that translate motivation into sustained play.

Engagement can be driven by:

• Challenge and Flow – balancing difficulty and skill to create moments of deep immersion and satisfaction.
• Risk and Reward – providing meaningful stakes, incentives, and consequences that make choices feel significant.
• Play and Agency – enabling players to experiment, try new approaches, and leverage the system in creative ways.
• Replayability and Variation – designing for novel experiences, emergent strategies, and varied outcomes that keep the game fresh over time.

Designers should use player motivations as a guide to implement these engagement features, ensuring the game remains compelling for the intended audience.

R: Relationships – Who and what shapes the player’s experience?

Games rarely exist in isolation; players form connections with the game, with other players, and with the broader cultural landscape. These relationships often emerge organically through gameplay, and they shape how players perceive, enjoy, and interpret the experience. Understanding these relationships helps designers support meaningful connections and foster long-term engagement.

Key dimensions of relationships include:

• Social Connections – friendships, rivalries, cooperation, and competition that arise naturally through play and interaction with others.
• Emotional Bonds to Content – players’ attachments to storylines, characters, AI companions, or game systems that feel personal, meaningful, or memorable.
• Cultural Impact – how players engage with and contribute to the wider culture around the game, including communities, shared norms, creative works, memes, and the way the game extends beyond its medium.
• Shared Trust in Systems – the confidence players develop in the fairness, balance, and meaningfulness of the game, reinforced by consistent rules, predictable mechanics, and mutual understanding of how to play constructively.

These emergent relationships deepen player investment, influence exploration and creative approaches to gameplay, and shape long-term engagement, making each player’s experience unique.

The PLAYER framework provides a holistic lens for designing games with the player at the center. It emphasizes an iterative, player-centric design in which every aspect of a game is continually evaluated against the needs, motivations, and intended experience for our defined player.

Each iteration of the game design, designers start by identifying the player and player experience goals. From there, the components of interaction needed to support that experience, the atmospheric elements that enhance it, and the yielded experiences that emerge from gameplay. Engagement mechanisms are then layered onto sustain player interest and motivation.

The cycle repeats throughout development, and once the game is released, the framework also encourages reflection on relationships, the social, cultural, and emotional connections that form between players, the game, and broader communities.

While the PLAYER framework aims to be a comprehensive framework for game analysis it is not a strict formula. Its effectiveness depends on thoughtful observation, testing, and adaptation throughout development. Limitations are minor and mostly conceptual, such as potential overlap between elements or the need to clarify how emergent relationships form over time.

Nonetheless, it offers a structured way to continuously evaluate and refine the player experience, fostering games that are meaningful, engaging, and capable of creating emergent, lasting experiences.