Mixing Games and Applications [pdf]

I've been thinking a lot about building onboarding experiences, and was reminded of this presentation that I read about 10 years ago.

The gist, that the same principles that make a video game where you save a princess fun to learn (e.g. super mario bros) can be applied to building products, seems so obviously true - yet difficult to put into practice.

The most influential part of this presentation is this quote:

When you build applications that let users be smart, they love you for it. The secret to good game design is simple. Set up situations where there is a problem that must be solved and let the user solve it. Give them subtle clue, but don’t take away that ‘aha’ moment.

Scary part: you have to believe the user is smart.