The Lens of The Interest Curve

What captivates the human mind often seems different for every person - but in fact it is remarkably similar for everyone. To see how a player’s interest in your experience changes over time, ask yourself these questions:

• If I draw an interest curve of my experience, how is it shaped?
• Does it have a hook?
• Is there gradually riding interest, punctuated by periods of rest?
• Is there a grand finale, more interesting than everything else?
• What changes would give me a better interest curve?
• Is there a fractal structure to my interest curve? Should there be?
• Do my intuitions about the interest curve match the observed interest of the players? If I ask playtesters to draw an interest curve, what does it look like?