Feedback Fountain

calendar_today March 24, 2026 • schedule 7 min read

Are we there yet?

Feedback is the way we know in which direction we're moving. The goal is where we want to go. This means that we must have feedback in order to know if our actions are bringing us closer to the goal.

This in turn gives us meaningful interaction: the feeling that our decisions are having an impact on our direction and movement towards the goal.

This post is part of a series, the first installments are found here:

Time for a first Terrible Game!

Play around in this (terrible) game and try to feel what it's like. Your goal is to survive as long as you can.

Floor is Lava 1 (the link should open in a new tab)

When you've had enough, try this alternative version and see what it changes for you. The goal is the same, survive as long as you can!

Floor is Lava 2 (the link should open in a new tab)

Questions for the player:
- What strategy would you apply in the first version?
- And in the second?
- In which version would you have the most confidence of staying alive longer?

What is a system?

In some definitions of the word game we see: a game is a system... Used in this way the word system refers to Systems Theory, a way of thinking about our world not as separate objects, but as interconnected parts forming behaviour that is not evident in any of the individual parts.

A system is not the sum of the behaviors of its parts, but the product of its interactions

- Russell Ackoff

Many things can be viewed though the lens of systems thinking: your body is a collection of individual organs each influencing the other parts, but none of the parts display the behavior of the whole. The same can be said about a car or a country or a company or a team of developers...

A very important lesson from systems thinking is that you cannot improve the system by focussing on the improvement of individual parts. You should only improve a part if that simultaniously improves the system as a whole. Local optimizations can even be counter-productive if they take resources away from more effective changes.

There is a lot of interesting material on systems thinking, but for now we will focus on feedback.

What is Feedback?

What makes a system is the interaction between parts. This means there is some form of information moving between parts - and some form of behaviour change based on that information.

Not all these behaviour changes are "conscious decisions" - the system displays emergent behavior even if individual parts are simply switching on/off based on a signal. The neurons in your brain or the individual transistors in a computer chip are examples of such parts.

In the context of a game the feedback can be many things - but it is always there. The state of the board in chess, a score counter, but also the response of an avatar when you use the game controls... whatever information comes back that influences the next move. Your move, but also the move of any other agent like computer controlled enemies.

Some feedback is very clear-cut: your opponent taking a piece on the board for example. But in some games feedback is a lot more fluid. When you play soccer, the motion of players on the field, the ball, the effect of wind or rainy conditions. Any of it can influence your next move, and the next move after that, in a constant stream of decisions.

Positive and Negative feedback loops

The signal, the decision and the resulting behavior form a loop. If the signal triggers behaviour that causes more of the same behaviour which causes more of the same signal (and there are no other constraints) this is called a reinforcing loop. These cause system instability over time due to exponential growth and runaway processes.

The opposite is also possible: a signal that triggers behavior so there is less of the same signal reducing the behavior even further. These are called balancing loops. Balancing loops tend towards system stability.

Keep in mind that system stability and instability in itself does not mean good/bad. A stable system can keep undesireable behaviour in place. The spread of an idea can lead to the collapse of a system which brings about radical change (and a new system).

Perfect information

In all games players face having incomplete information. In most games this is part of the design, and adds to the fun - every card you turn over, or every dice you throw is a surprise and adds new information for you to use. Armed with this new knowledge you make your decision in order to bring yourself closer to the goal (whatever it may be).

Some types of games are called "perfect information" games. Like chess for example, because both players have access to the exact same information and nothing is hidden on a chessboard. But even then, as a player, you do not have "perfect information". You lack the knowledge of what your opponent is thinking (but you may get information from facial expression or body language!).

When you do achieve perfect knowledge it means you have reached a situation where the outcome of the game is inevitable.

Let's see this effect in action with another Terrible game:

Floor is Lava 3 (the link should open in a new tab)

Questions for the player:
- Where you able to beat the time from the second version?
- Was is more or less satisfying to put in a good time?
- How much fun did you have?

Flawed communication

In communication between people there is always a form of noise present (noise is something that happens to a signal between sending and receiving). Not only because different people have different backgrounds and knowledge, but also because the context of a signal matters a lot.

In the context of a game, if it has dice you assume that you will be throwing them and reading the numbers from the top. Unless you have never played with dice before! There are probably many game elements in the world that you would not know how to use or interpret. And sometimes familiarity gets in the way.

Assumptions are made due to familiarity of information surrounding a signal, and if those assumptions are off we might need to understand why before we interpret our signal in the usual way.

You get what you measure

In real life, it is hardly possible to get clear-cut signals. Most of the signals we use for feedback are a proxy because it's hard to measure directly. We want to know if people like using our system, so we measure how long they are online... We want to know how well our students know the material, so we test them with a standardized test...

Systems ... have a terrible tendency to produce exactly and only what you want them to produce. Be careful what you ask them to produce.

- Donella H. Meadows

If a desired system state is predictable development speed, measuring story points will ensure that the system produces story points and pretty burndown charts. Whether or not that measure is correlated with predictability is at least worth thinking about (paraphrased from Donella H. Meadows).

Keeping in mind that you are part of a system, interpreting signals and making decisions is quite useful in games as well as your work environment. You can keep asking system related questions:

Is my decision part of a feedback loop? Positive or negative? Are my signals directly related to a goal or proxy measurements? Is there (a potential for) noise? Do my actions result in the intended behaviour of the system?

Questions

What feedback mechanisms do you recognize in your work environment?
Are they related to the goals? Is the feedback directly related to the goals or a proxy indicator?
Are there any goals for which you have no feedback loop?

Speaking of feedback, maybe you can let me know how you like the series so far? We’ll be looking at Rules and Voluntary Participation, and then move on to Serious Games and how they are used.

This post is part of a series, the next installment is found here:

Remember: Always keep playing!