Eric Zimmerman

Eric Zimmerman is an award-winning game designer and design educator, a founding faculty member and Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center. He co-founded Gamelab and co-authored Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. In his TED talk, he explores how rules and creative constraints shape play.

Good Games Use Constraints to Focus Creative Play

Game designer Eric Zimmerman argues that rules do not limit play so much as give it a structure people can explore. In a TED talk drawing on video games, tabletop games and installations, he shows how carefully chosen constraints can focus attention and invite improvisation—while too many can shut it down. His method is to understand a system, find where its conventions can be altered, and use rules to guide what people do.

TEDOct 20, 20264 min read