What makes games addictive, even when they’re not very interesting or fun? Some games have an alarming ability to make us spend time or money on them, and game designer Minkette will be exploring what tricks push the buttons of our psyches. She’ll be looking at common tricks in game design, as well as psychological experiments in impulse control.

Minkette is a freelance game designer, with credits ranging from Punchdrunk, Coney and Six to Start through to large multinationals such as Hasbro. I know her personally. I’d like to clarify that she’s actually not evil, is in fact a lovely person, and will be discussing these evil game design tricks from a perspective of curious distaste.

Audio is an oft neglected part of games, yet hugely influential in the overall experience of playing something. Composer and sound designer Alistair Lindsay is passionate about audio, and believes it has untapped yet hugely powerful psychological effect.

I agree with him. Good audio makes a massive difference to how absorbed I become with a game, yet even in a 250+ person studio with dedicated audio facilities, it’s rare to have more than a handful of audio guys doing all the work. While sound is sadly underexploited by mainstream game development studios, independent studios may be in a unique place to do amazing things with audio. In this talk, Alistair will outline why he thinks that, what he’s found out so far, and what he’d like to do next.