TED Talks Daily - What makes a good game? | Eric Zimmerman

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

What’s the best way to make a project more playful? Game designer Eric Zimmerman has a counterintuitive suggestion: a few good rules. Drawing on his experience making everything from video games and tabletop classics to museum-scale installations, he breaks down how creative play comes to life — and how to harness the power of constraints to create endless fun. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hume. When someone hands me a set of rules, guidelines, constraints, or fine print, my instinct is that they're going to get in the way of doing something creative. Eric Zimmerman would tell me I have it backwards. He's a game designer, and he has spent his career in the strange generative space where rigid rules meet total spontaneity. If rules are logical and rigid and fixed and unchanging, play is spontaneous

and creative and unexpected, and it's so much the opposite of rules. Eric designs video games, tabletop games, museum installations, and teaches game design at NYU. And in his talk, he makes the case that the constraints we resent are the very thing that makes creativity possible.

Once you learn to play with a system rather than just follow it, you can unlock something joyful and surprising. It's like a very collaborative parasite. It's like it grabs on to something, but instead of sucking the life out of it, it does the opposite. It just adds joy. And for Eric, it's about more than just fun in games.

He shows how this same playful mindset can reshape a dinner party, a building, even the way a democracy works. That's coming up right after a short break. And now our TED Talk of the Day. Hello, everybody. I'm Eric, and I'm a game designer, and that means that I make video games,

I make tabletop games, I work with architect Natalie Pozzi to do large-scale museum installations, and I also write books about game design, and I teach at the NYU Games Center at Tisch School of the Arts, where we think about games as an art form and also play as a deep form of literacy.

Today, I want to talk to you from my point of view as a game designer about how to read a game design, about how to really make something that engages and grabs and hooks an audience, right? And how you can apply these ideas to whatever it is that you do. And how do we do that? We play with rules, right? I want to talk about that.

I want to structure that in terms of a series of levels. I'm sorry about the level thing, but, you know, I am a game designer, so here we are. So let's start at the beginning, right, rules. Okay, what are rules? What do I mean by rules? Well, think about when you buy a board game. What do you actually buying? Well, you have maybe a pretty box.

There are some cards and dice and little pieces, but what you're really buying is rules, right? Rules from one point of view is the essence of what a game is. Rules tell you what to do each turn and how to win. If you're playing the game and it's like, oh, we landed on a red space. What does that mean? I don't know.

We have to clarify this ambiguity by referring to the rules, right? Let me give you another example. Let's say you're playing baseball, right? And you say, okay, this tree here is second base. Okay, so I'm playing. I'm here on second base. And then while the next batter is up, I'm like, oh, maybe I can like hold on to this little twig like way over here and get as close as I can to third base, right?

And then I'm tagged out. And I'm like, wait, what a second. I'm on second base. You're not on second base. Second base is a tree. It's not the tree. It's the trunk of the tree. Right.

Okay, there's an argument here. And in order to actually play the game of baseball, we'd have to resolve this ambiguity, right, in order to move the game forward. So from this point of view, like, games don't sound like that much fun, right? Rules are, like, rigid and fixed and logical, right? But the amazing thing about games is that if you decide to enter into those rules, right? If you decide to play, then what happens is play and plays the opposite of rules, right? So if rules are logical and rigid and fixed and unchanging, play is spontaneous and

creative and unexpected, and it's so much the opposite of rules, right? But we need those rules in order to help facilitate that play, which brings us to our next level, play, right? Okay. Play is not something that just happens on its own. With play, we always play with something, right? Let me explain what I mean. Let's take, like, we can play with any system.

Even this is a system just like walking, right? So getting from point A to point B. So that's like the logical, sort of efficient transportation idea of walking. But if you imagine in your head a child walking playfully, something else is happening, right? What is happening? What are you imagining? Somebody shout it out. Okay.

Skipping. Okay. What's another one? Wandering, right? Okay, I'm going to fall off stage here. Okay, wait a way. So wandering, what's another one? Hopping?

Okay. What is happening here? What's going on? Well, I'm playing with the rules of walking, right? So however we see a kid avoiding cracks or skipping or hopping, they're playing with, well, they're certainly playing with space and time, right? This idea of walking as this efficient transportation, they're playing with their bodies, they're playing with gravity, they're playing with maybe with like the social etiquette

of the sidewalk because they're getting in people's ways, right? Because they're doing things that are unexpected and inappropriate, right? But that's play. And, you know, play, it's like a very collaborative parasite. It's like it grabs on to something, but instead of sucking the life out of it, it does the opposite. It just adds joy.

And this is why play is creativity. Because if we wanted to invent new forms of walking, this is what we would do. We would look at those structures, what are the rules of walking? What are the leverage points where we can start playing around with those structures? And how can we then start to sort of poke and prod in them

to play with those structures and maybe invent something completely, All right, back to our levels. We're at our next level. Design. We looked at what rules are. We looked at how we can play with systems. And now I want to talk about how game designers actually create a game,

how we build games out of constraints. And I actually need two volunteers from the audience for this. Do I have a couple of volunteers? Okay, one, I saw you two. Come on up. Okay, so what are your names? Mila. Mila and Ida.

Eda. Okay, we're going to play a game, and this. This game may not work at first. So we'll just take it step by step. I'm going to give you some rules. Milo will start with you. And what I want you two to do is just alternate saying a word.

Okay? It can be any word, and the only rule is that you can't repeat a word that's already been said. Okay. Okay, go ahead. Cheese. Play. Yellow. Freedom.

Red. Okay. That's a start. Maybe not really a fun game yet, but that's a start. That's okay. That's not your fault. That's on me. I'm the game designer.

Okay, I'm going to add another rule. We're going to keep all of the rules that we had before. So you're going to alternate saying words. You're not going to repeat a word that's already been said. But I want to add a restriction. I like your cheese opening. That was a very interesting opening. We're going to restrict it just to food.

So things you eat or drink, ingredients, dishes, otherwise the same rules. Okay. All right. Whenever you're ready. Go ahead. Uh, ketchup. Mustard.

Pizza. Hot dogs. Okay. What was that last one? Water? Okay, I like that. Yes, water, a beverage, of course. That may actually have been less interesting than our first version.

That's okay. It's not on you. I'm the game designer. I'm responsible here. So what we're going to do is we're going to add one more rule. Okay? We're going to keep everything we had before. You two are going to alternate saying rules,

so you can't repeat a word that's been said before. We're going to stick to edibles, beverages, dishes, things that you can eat or drink. But when Mila says a word, the last letter of your word is going to be the first letter of your word, Ida. And vice versa, the last letter of Ida's word, it's going to be the first letter of Mila's word.

Let's see how this goes. Okay? Yes, let's go. Cake. Cake. Evian. Is a type of drink? Does that word?

Evian ends with an N? Nutella. Almonds. Oh. S. Shirley Temple. Oh, wow. Let's give it up for our two volunteers.

Amazing. I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Here's what I want to point out. Something happened that third time around, right? When we were adding rules, something happened in that final version of the game.

It wasn't just that these two suddenly got much more focused and intensely, like, wanting to play the game. But I also heard everybody starting to lean forward. I heard whisperings. I heard suggestions coming from the audience, some of which were taken, right? And we also started to see some amazing play with the rules, right? We sort of switched over to some brand names. We got some sort of multi, like Shirley Temple.

It was an awesome closing move there. So what game designers do is work with these constraints, right? These constraints focus and guide the play of players. Now, it may seem when you're playing a video game that it's the opposite, that it's like video game lets you go anywhere and do anything and be anyone, but actually from a designer's point of view, we work with constraints. And those constraints guide and focus the creative activity. and, you know, it can be that too many constraints are a problem, right?

I could have said, oh, let's also now make it only seven-letter words, right? And you probably would have thrown me off stage, so yes. So finding that balance, right? Finding the right amount of constraints to move the game forward into that creative space of play, that's game design. And when you see players, just like we did here and all of you actually joining in, not just playing in the system, but starting to play with the system and kind of bending and breaking rules, like audience,

For example, that's when we know we've really got something cooking and percolating, and we're in that amazing space of play. We've looked at rules, playing with systems and how to design with constraints. And the boss level here is thinking about how to apply this to what you do, to your project or organization, because there's a methodology here, right? The methodology is looking at and understanding the system. How does the system work? How is it structured?

And then what are those leverage points for play? How can you start poking around and playing with a system maybe in ways that are unexpected and even inappropriate? And then, as you start building this experience, don't be afraid of constraints, right? Use those constraints to kind of guide and focus the behavior of your audiences. I want to finish just with a few quick examples. I was at a dinner party recently, like a big, fancy dinner party,

room full of interesting people. was only at a table with like a handful of them. And I thought to myself, how can I actually interact with more people here and not be just with the same people all evening? Well, after the first course, I stole all the name tags at the table, and I randomly put them around at different tables.

Luckily, everyone played along, but that little bit of playful design made a huge difference on everyone's experience. Another example, there's a wonderful performance space, not too far from here in Brooklyn, St. Anne's Warehouse. and there's a wonderful example of playful architectural design there in the bathrooms. So the bathrooms have these giant signs like men over here and women over here. And like giant, like taller than a person sign.

And so you sort of, you go in these grand entrances. And then when you go in, you realize, oh, wait a second, they actually both connect to the same space inside. Right? And so I love that. It's so unexpected. It's playing with our expectations. But it's also playing with the sort of notion. of a gender binary, right? And that sort of social etiquette of bathrooms. And it's just so delightful

and a wonderful example of designed play. And finally, final example, I've been working with these amazing organizations, Games for Change, and Action for Democracy. And we've been thinking about democracy as a design problem. And this summer, we're bringing together game designers and policy experts to think about how can we play with the structures of democracy and maybe poke around in those systems, do something unexpected and inappropriate, and maybe move them playfully into a new and better space. I don't know what's going to happen there, but definitely wish me luck. We'll need it.

Whatever you do, keep playing, and thank you very much. And that was Eric Zimmerman at Play at TED in 26. If you're curious about Ted's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Tobner, and Tonzica, Sungmar Nivong. Additional support from Daniela Balerozzo, Christopher Faiso, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban-Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey-Lott.

Learn more at podcasts.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening.