The "Strange Attractor" in Video Game Design

Key insights

6 takeaways

01
A 'strange attractor' is a core design concept that blends the 'familiar' (what players already understand) with the 'strange' (a unique, compelling hook) to differentiate a game in a crowded market.
02
In highly competitive sectors like mobile gaming, a lack of a clear, easily understood strange attractor directly reduces marketing conversion rates, lowers user retention, and negatively impacts overall lifetime value (LTV).
03
The necessity for a strange attractor is proportional to the competitive intensity of the platform; mobile games require stronger, more immediate hooks than console titles, which often rely on brand, production value, or established developer reputation.
04
Designers must calibrate the ratio of familiar to strange based on genre expectations, as audiences for different categories—such as romance vs. science fiction—have varying tolerances for innovation versus established tropes.
05
The failure of IGG's 'Clash of Lords 2' compared to the relative success of 'Castle Clash' demonstrates that superior gameplay mechanics are insufficient if the core concept has become a cliché and lacks immediate visual or conceptual differentiation.
06
Developers must proactively monitor market saturation, as ideas that are original today will inevitably become clichés, requiring constant re-evaluation of what constitutes a compelling hook for the target audience.

Summary

Joseph Kim's 2015 GameMakers essay argues that a successful game concept begins with a "strange attractor," an idea borrowed from screenwriter Terry Rossio and refined by the Writing Excuses authors. The term describes something unique yet compelling, a hook that can be stated in a sentence or two. Kim frames it as a formula of the familiar plus the strange, and applies it to free-to-play game design, where the absence of a clear hook hurts marketing click-through, retention, and ultimately customer lifetime value.

The essay draws several principles from fiction. Genres evolve, so yesterday's novelty becomes today's cliché. Audiences also expect different familiar-to-strange ratios: romance readers want nearly all familiar content, manga readers roughly 70/30, and science fiction readers roughly 30/70 in favor of the new. Designers must therefore understand their audience's expectations and anticipate how they shift.

Kim's central addition is competitive intensity. Mobile, with millions of apps, demands a stronger attractor than console, where few titles launch each year and competition rests on production value, brand, story, and developer reputation. Within mobile, crowded genres such as Clash of Clans-style strategy require sharper differentiation than sparse ones like MOBAs. The attractor must also be visible in both marketing and the early game experience.

Case studies anchor the argument. DomiNations succeeded by pairing Clash of Clans gameplay with Civilization-style age progression, visible immediately in its interface. In contrast, IGG's Clash of Lords 2 offered arguably better mechanics than Castle Clash but looked nearly identical to dozens of clones, and launched a year after Castle Clash, when Clash-style play and hero units had become cliché. Kim attributes its weak traction to the missing attractor. Console examples include Grand Theft Auto (playing the villain), Tomb Raider (a female lead in 1996), and Dead or Alive. He also cites the crowded PC open-world survival genre, including DayZ, Rust, and H1Z1.

Kim concludes that developers in competitive categories should ask what familiar-to-strange ratio suits the genre, what counts as original, and when novelty turns into cliché. His argument is based on qualitative case analysis rather than quantitative data.