game-design-theory

game-design-theory is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from nicepkg/agent-world. It costs 31 tokens per session (1,512 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A reference guide to game design theory, including the MDA framework, player psychology, balance, and progression systems. The MDA framework links game rules to player behavior and the experience those rules create.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps analyze game loops, player motivation, balance, progression, and the relationship between mechanics, gameplay behavior, and player experience.
Why use it?
It gives developers and designers concepts for explaining why games feel engaging and for examining how mechanics affect play.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nicepkg/agent-world/game-design-theory
Any agent
npx skills add nicepkg/agent-world --skill game-design-theory
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nicepkg/agent-world

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for game-design-theory

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nicepkg/agent-world/game-design-theory.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nicepkg/agent-world/game-design-theory)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nicepkg/agent-world/game-design-theory"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nicepkg/agent-world/game-design-theory.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 31 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,512 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00031 $0.01512
Opus 5 $0.00015 $0.00756
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00302
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00151

Measured 4d ago against content hash 548e01881f65, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

game-design-theory scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 4d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/design_analyzer.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.claude/skills/game-design-theory/SKILL.md · 213 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 213 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Game Design Theory

The MDA Framework

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    MDA FRAMEWORK                             │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  MECHANICS (Rules):                                          │
│  → Player actions, constraints, state changes               │
│  → Example: Jump has height limit, costs stamina            │
│                              ↓                               │
│  DYNAMICS (Behavior):                                        │
│  → Emergent gameplay from mechanic interactions             │
│  → Example: Wall-jump combos, speedrun routes               │
│                              ↓                               │
│  AESTHETICS (Experience):                                    │
│  → Emotional responses: Fun, tension, achievement           │
│  → Example: Flow state, satisfaction, immersion             │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Core Game Loop

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    ENGAGEMENT LOOP                           │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  1. INPUT    → Player takes action                          │
│  2. PROCESS  → Game calculates results                      │
│  3. FEEDBACK → Immediate visual/audio response              │
│  4. REWARD   → Progress, points, unlocks                    │
│  5. REPEAT   → Loop invites next iteration                  │
│                                                              │
│  Loop Quality Criteria:                                      │
│  ✓ Fast feedback (< 100ms)                                  │
│  ✓ Clear causation                                          │
│  ✓ Rewarding outcomes                                       │
│  ✓ Compelling repetition                                    │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Read the full file on GitHub · 213 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 4d ago First seen · 213 lines · 31 tokens per session scan A 548e01881f65

Subscribe to this mod's changes

game-design-theory is a skill published in the GitHub repository nicepkg/agent-world (5 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 31 tokens to every session and 1,512 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.