The Game Design Platform
Beta
Ending Q1 2021
design, balance & handoff game systems
API Integrations
Used by 2500+ game studios all over the world
Craft flawless game design
Map your game design in an interactive diagram, using a visual, Turing-complete language composed of 9 atomic Nodes and 2 types of Connections.
LEARN MORELay out systems
Get your exact vision across with a standardised, visual language
Communicate complexity
Define abstract concepts and get the entire team on the same page
Leverage experience
Start with hundreds of ready-made deconstructions and prefabs
Calibrate player experience
Hit Run and watch any system come to life, interactively. Click-to-edit parameters and run Monte Carlo simulations until you find the perfect balance.
LEARN MOREReduce guesswork
Back up gut feeling with science and iron out any kinks
Predict player progression
Simulate emergence and balance player journeys
Spot flaws
Isolate and solve roadblocks in player journeys
All on 1 diagram
Empower your team with a single point of truth for game design and reduce time spent chasing outdated, static GDDs and sheets.
LEARN MOREAlign visions
Input/output with developers, analysts, producers
Update instantly
No, really. Our API pushes values real-time over-the-air
Design collaboratively
Share and edit real-time co-op like it's the 21st century
Play Pac-Man
Take it for a spin and watch the meta unfold. Or add it to your account and hack it.
Spreadsheets reimagined
Combine machine and human analysis through visualization
Complexity mastered
Simulate emergence and forecast the butterfly effect
Balancing solved
Your game is a unit, treat it holistically
Don’t take our word for it
Just wanted to let you know that I got around to plot my first Machinations graph! :D Dove right into it and skipped all tutorials... as you do, took me a while to understand logic and resource lines [...] I looked at some of the [library] examples and it took me about an hour to achieve my goal [...]
Olle Lundahl
COO
Presenting a feature becomes interesting. I was doing Machinations and René looked over my shoulder: “You should stop playing games :)”. If it’s a spreadsheet, nobody cares, Machinations grabs everyone's attention.
Laurids Binderup
Lead Game Developer
Machinations is a place for all the real-life data points to land and verify our assumptions and/or change the model.
Maja From Andersen
Data Analyst
Join a community 20,000+ strong
Some of the best game designers, developers and academia all over the World use Machinations in their day to day work
Emil Kjaehr
Product Manager & Partner
Aarhus, Denmark
Kyle Bardiau
Game Designer
Orange County, California
Julia K
Lead Game Designer
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Andreas Pizsa
Studio Technical Director
Hamburg, Germany
Atilla Kabakcıoğlu
Game Designer
Istanbul, Turkey
Daniel Jones
CEO & Co-Founder
London, United Kingdom
Johanna (Jacob) Janiszewski
Founder & CEO
Berlin, Germany
Andreas Diktyopoulos
Lead Developer & Creative Director
Athens, Greece
Todd English
Co-Founder & COO
Karlsruhe, Germany
Mayu Polo Wieja
Monetization Director
Hilversum, Netherlands
Jamie Smith
Lead Game Designer
Sheffield, United Kingdom
Ole Goethe
Associate Professor
Oslo, Norway
Michael Prokofyev
Unity Developer
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Patrick Davis
Technical Game Designer
Tokyo, Japan
Alan Jack
Game Design Lecturer
Breda, Netherlands
Jeffrey Feenstra
LiveOps Producer
Vancouver, Canada
Mariusz Lesniewski
Creative Director
Warsaw, Poland
Himanshu Agarwal
Game Designer
Pune, India
Samüel Buraud
Game Economy Designer
Barcelona, Spain
Jordan M. Blackman
Design & Monetization Consultant
San Francisco, California
Evangelos Leivaditis
Lead Game Designer
London, United Kingdom
Thais Weiller
Game Designer & Producer
Curitiba, Brazil
Jakub Remiar
Head of Game Design
Bratislava, Slovakia
Elad Drory
Senior Game Designer
Stockholm, Sweden
Isaac Boldarini
Game Designer
Mellieha, Malta
Hugues Pedreno
Formateur Level Design
Montpellier, France
Kuba Pałyska
Head of Design
Warsaw, Poland
Brandon Ramirez
Co-founder & Research Lead
Oakland, California
Anders Howard
Systems Designer
Cary, North Carolina
Ionut-Gabriel Solomon
Creative Director
Bucharest, Romania
Slack 
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Machinations was originally created by PhD Joris Dormans (co-founder) at the University of Amsterdam.
His thesis “Engineering emergence: applied theory for game design” (2012) is the cornerstone of the Machinations language and framework.
Together with Ernest Adams, Joris co-authored “Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design” and we strongly recommend you get a copy.
LEARN MORE
350+ universities & academic institutions use Machinations
Ready to start?
Some of the best game designers, developers and academia all over the World use Machinations in their day to day work
Used by 2500+ game studios all over the world
350+ universities & academic institutions use Machinations
