All Posts & Writings

May 28, 2025

A RESEARCH PROPOSAL: Exploring Player-Centric and Interaction-Aware Matchmaking Systems — Innovations in Dynamic Orchestration, Player Influence, and In-Match Adaptability

Academic Research ProposalMatchmakingGame DesignPlayer ExperienceDynamic Orchestration

A proposal to investigate novel matchmaking systems that move beyond traditional SBMM and EOMM by incorporating player-driven dynamics, real-time orchestration, and adaptive in-match adjustments.

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May 25, 2025

Degamification of Online Dating

ArticleInsightGamificationDegamificationOnline DatingBehavioral DesignDigital Ethics

An investigation into how dating platforms exploit reward systems and competitive mechanics—and how dismantling them might lead to deeper, healthier connection.

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May 24, 2025

BİRİ: Your 'Real' AI Conversation Partner

ONGOINGMobile AppAIConversational AIPersonalizationGamificationRL

BİRİ is the first Turkish AI designed as a genuine conversation partner — proactive, context-aware, and even capable of unfiltered honesty. It's not just an assistant, but a confidant that chats, remembers, and even gossips.

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May 20, 2025

Walter Benjamin and the Aura of Play in the Digital Age

ArticleWalter BenjaminGame DesignPlay TheoryMedia TheoryDigital CultureAuraGame StudiesProcedural Generation

How Walter Benjamin's concept of 'aura' twists, morphs, and finds new life when art becomes live, networked, moddable play—exploring digital reproduction, PCG, and the shift from object-aura to event-aura.

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May 20, 2025

The Future of Games: Beyond Moore's Law and Into the Uncanny Valley of Reality

ArticleInsightGame DevelopmentAITechnological ProgressFuture of Games

A deep dive into how hardware, production models, and AI-driven realities are reshaping not just what games are, but what they could become—and how human creativity remains the wildcard.

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May 19, 2025

Game Design of the Future with Mental Image Reconstruction Technology

ArticleInsightGame DevelopmentAINeurotechnologyImmersive MediaGames DesignBrain-Computer Interfaces

Imagine a future where your dreams and thoughts shape the very worlds you play in: with mental image reconstruction technology, game design is on the verge of integrating the player’s subconscious, turning imagination and dreams into personalized, interactive experiences.

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May 14, 2025

Instrumentalization of Play, Gaming and Video Games

ArticleInsightInstrumentalizationGame DesignGamificationPlay TheoryLudic Literacy

Not a lament for the future of games, but a call to recognize and seize the overlooked opportunities created by their transformation—and to understand why instrumental literacy is the new creative edge.

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May 13, 2025

Why Ray’s Game Is the Antidote to Shallow Gamification

InsightGamificationBehavioral PsychologyGame Design

Most gamified habit-building apps rely on surface-level rewards. Ray takes a radically different approach—one that centers emotional connection, internal motivation, and psychological depth.

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May 1, 2025

Echo: The Anti-Dating App for Genuine Mutual Connections

ONGOINGAppPlatformAnti-DatingOnline Dating

Echo is a private, profile-free app that lets you anonymously confess interest to your real-life contacts. Only if your feelings are mutual does Echo reveal the match—no swiping, no feeds, no dopamine traps.

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May 1, 2025

What Does Wittgensteino Calculate? Does It Even Mean Anything?

ArticleExplainerLinguisticsAIPsychometricsLanguage AnalysisMachine LearningMobile Development

A deep dive into the metrics, meaning, and neuro-linguistic roots behind Wittgensteino—the app that turns your WhatsApp chaos into playful, psychometric scores, all on-device.

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May 1, 2025

A RESEARCH PROPOSAL: The effects of a biofeedback-based dynamic game difficulty balancing mechanism that works in parallel with the fight/flight response on flow-state and desire to play again in video games.

Academic Research ProposalGame DesignBiofeedbackDynamic Difficulty BalancingFlowPlayer Experience

A proposal to investigate how biofeedback-based dynamic game difficulty mechanisms—designed to mimic the fight/flight response—affect flow states and replay desire in video games.

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April 28, 2025

Pawn Shop (with a twist)

ONGOINGSimulation Game3D ModelingLLM IntegrationPlayer Economy

An ambitious simulation where players scan or generate 3D items, negotiate with AI and real traders, and manage their own pawn shop in a dynamic, player-driven market.

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April 28, 2025

Finwise: Personal Finance for Gen Z

ONGOINGMobile AppFintechGamificationAIPersonal Finance

Finwise is the next-generation personal finance platform designed for Gen Z — making money management social, gamified, and empowering with AI-powered coaching and secure Turkish banking integrations.

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April 28, 2025

Game Design Document Preview: Pawn Shop (with a twist)

Game Design DocumentSimulation Game3D ModelingLLM IntegrationPlayer Economy

An ambitious simulation where players scan or generate 3D items, negotiate with AI and real traders, and manage their own pawn shop in a dynamic, player-driven market.

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April 26, 2025

Why I Canceled My App “mymasal”

ArticleReflectionAIAI EthicsPersonalizationDigital ParentingSocial PolarizationBehavioral Design

A critical reflection on the unintended social and ethical consequences of personalized storytelling for children—and why I chose to cancel an AI-powered app I had passionately built.

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April 21, 2025

Wittgensteino Mobile App

PASTLinguisticsAIPsychometricsLanguage AnalysisMachine LearningMobile Development

A deep dive into the metrics, meaning, and neuro-linguistic roots behind Wittgensteino—the app that turns your WhatsApp chaos into playful, psychometric scores, all on-device.

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April 21, 2025

What2Films Game

PASTGame DesignGenerative-AIBrowser Games

Decode the Daily Film Blend, Challenge Your Friends!

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April 21, 2025

If Bertolt Brecht Were Alive, He Would Make Video Games!

ArticleInsightBrechtVideo GamesTheatreCritical TheoryGame StudiesEstrangement Effect

A playful exploration of how Brecht’s theories of estrangement, critical realism, and epic theater find their most natural home in interactive digital worlds—and why video games may have already surpassed his revolutionary vision.

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April 19, 2025

Dave the Diver and Split Fiction Are the Same Game!

ArticleInsightGame DesignGame MechanicsAttention EconomyNarrative Structure

A surprising exploration of how two seemingly unrelated games—Dave the Diver and Split Fiction—reveal a major design shift in the age of attention fragmentation and genre fluidity.

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April 12, 2025

Gamification or TikTokification?

ArticleInsightGamificationBehavioral DesignAttention EconomyExperience DesignFlow

A deep dive into how behavioral design is evolving: from goal-driven gamification to flow-based TikTokification—and what this means for attention, engagement, and digital experience design.

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April 11, 2025

Hacking Attention: My Immersive Group-Watching Project for the Living Room

ExplainerGamificationImmersive ExperienceAttention EconomyExperience DesignFlow

It’s my way of hacking that distraction, turning every screen and device in the room into a synchronized, immersive, and (honestly) pretty intense collective experience.

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March 19, 2025

A RESEARCH PROPOSAL: Explainable AI Techniques for GOAP Agents and AI Storytellers in Emergent Narrative Systems

Academic Research ProposalGame AIEmergent NarrativeExplainable AIGOAPInteractive Storytelling

A proposal to investigate how Explainable AI (XAI) methods can enhance transparency and usability in emergent narrative game systems driven by GOAP agents and AI Storytellers.

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March 18, 2025

Ray's Midnight Routes

ONGOINGStory-drivenMobile GamingAtmospheric GamesGame Design

A mobile game that blends real-life sleep tracking, story-driven gameplay, and meditative night drives—offering players both meaningful progress and a unique interactive routine.

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March 18, 2025

Game Design Document Preview: Ray's Midnight Routes

Game Design DocumentSleep IntegrationStory-drivenMobile GamingAtmospheric GamesGame Design

A mobile game that blends real-life sleep tracking, story-driven gameplay, and meditative night drives—offering players both meaningful progress and a unique interactive routine.

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March 10, 2025

Game Design Document Preview: MAKE GAMES NOT WAR

Game Design DocumentPolitical StrategyMultiplayerMini GamesSatireTeam-based

A satirical, multiplayer political strategy game where teams resolve Cold War tensions not with weapons, but by competing in fast-paced, legendary mini-games inspired by the history of gaming.

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March 3, 2025

What Was Right About Wordle?

InsightGame DesignBehavioral PsychologyExperience Design

An exploration into how deceptively simple game design—guided by psychological principles, habit loops, and social mechanics—created one of the most viral word games in recent memory.

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February 27, 2025

A RESEARCH PROPOSAL: Dopamine-Driven vs. Oxytocin-Driven Game Design — A Comparative Experimental Study

Academic Research ProposalGame DesignPlayer PsychologyNeurogame StudiesBehavioral DesignEngagement

A proposal for a controlled experimental study comparing dopamine-focused and oxytocin-focused game design models, exploring their effects on player engagement, compulsiveness, and social-emotional outcomes.

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February 20, 2025

Where Boundaries Are Set, and Memory Is Written

ExplainerTheaterImmersive ExperienceExperience DesignGamification

This isn't just a play; it's an experience that navigates the boundaries of consciousness, memory, identity, and reality, where the audience becomes the character's inner voice.

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February 14, 2025

Tycoon Games → Simulator Games → What's Next?

InsightGame DevelopmentSimulationDigital Culture

An exploration into how simulation games evolved from capitalist fantasies to therapeutic rituals, and what radical transformations lie ahead for the genre.

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January 1, 2025

Crimes from the Underground

PASTTheaterTheater PlayImmersive Experience

An theater play written by me.

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