1. How a player perceives the structure of a game, concerning its game design, level design, and art design.
You may not know it, but every game has a "gameplay groove". Interestingly, it isn't something a game designer explicitly designs. It's something the players themselves create within their own minds as they go through the experience.
I'll give you an example, to start this article off with a bang. In Metroid games, a player understands that any wall could mean Morph Ball passages. They then go to each room in the game and Bomb every available inch, in search of those rare secret passages. Now, fast forward to the 5-hour mark. Finding the secret passages has now become a mechanical task within the player's mind, scanning and bombing every wall in the game in hopes of finding a new secret passage. However, there's not much thought behind the whole process. In many ways, it's a soulless task, taking away any immersion the game might have had. The player then tries to decipher the game's level design techniques, making the experience even more mechanical.
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