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So, some of what Nalates' article is pointing out is kind of obvious and not too surprising:
-people like social interaction, especially if it is positive. Moreover, social currency can be more meaningful to people than monetary currency.
-people like immediate or nearly-immediate feedback for their actions.
I'll also suggest a few general additional ideas that I suspect are true:
-people want a game that will immerse them in a well-developed gameworld with compelling narrative, graphics, and sound design.
-people like to make progress in a game and not get totally stuck, yet also want to be challenged
-people want avenues for creative expression and customization of game content
-people like to be the protagonist. They want to be the hero of the story, and not an irrelevant bystander who has minimal effect on the gameworld.
So how does this all apply to Uru? How can it be applied to Obduction?
Uru benefits enormously from its social component and its community. The game is currently pretty stagnant so this is really the primary thing going for Uru right now. (the fans!) I think it would be great if Obduction had Roadtrip Mode or something similar to meet this social need. It might even be smart of Cyan to look at Obduction and try to implement some form of Roadtrip mode with the $100,000 extra they have beyond the first stretch goal. They don't have enough to do that AND a new world, but maybe they have just enough to do one of the two.
Obduction should, consistently, give players some indication, even if it's subtle, that they are or aren't on the right track when they try things. Obduction's puzzles should also make some sort of internal logical sense, and should feel seamlessly integrated into the gameworld, without being so subtly integrated that key puzzle elements go unnoticed by the player. Clues, or parts of a puzzle, should have a discernible connection to the place they will be used... and even though there will undoubtedly be a LOT of red-herring objects in Obduction (due to the Kickstarter object rewards) these should be kept in some discernible way separate from the puzzle elements so players don't get lost trying to find the things that are actually relevant.
-Regarding immersion, Cyan is (at their best) able to do this brilliantly. Cyan needs to do what they do when they are at the top of their game - create fully realized worlds with well-developed characters and a story that will engage players. They must create a world that is detailed and feels real and believable even if it is (and it will be) totally fantastic in nature. The art direction is promising already - and if they can execute the imagery well, and supplement it with amazing, atmospheric sound design, it will come to life for players exploring it.
-Puzzle design must not get the player so hopelessly stumped that they give up in frustration. The frustration element is, I suspect, the reason the Myst series went downhill in the size of its audience, maybe more than any other reason. Myst was a mainstream phenomenon that caught millions of peoples' attention, but over time most of those people would drift away, leaving only the most patient players still playing.
A *substantial* number of people who bought Myst weren't able to finish it, or were - but only after searching for help. Riven was arguably even tougher to complete, and I think the people who got stuck in Myst and never finished it probably didn't buy Riven, the people who got stuck on Riven didn't buy Myst III, etc*
I'm not faulting Cyan for this too much - puzzle design is quite tricky to do well. The puzzles have to challenge enough to be interesting, but not so much that they end up unsolved. I suspect testing the puzzles extensively will help - prototype every puzzle early and test them all with a randomly selected sample of people. Measure, statistically, what happens. If it is too simple, and people breeze through the puzzle quickly, tweak it to make it a bit trickier. If it takes most players hours upon hours to solve, and some players can't make sense of it at all, try modifying it to make it a bit easier. Repeat the process until every puzzle in the game is well-balanced.
I would recommend looking at the puzzle design in the Portal games as a superb example of well-calibrated puzzles which require some time and thought to beat, but which most people don't get stuck on completely.
-Customization, personalization, and creativity. I've come to believe that Uru's most time-consuming, difficult, and rewarding puzzle is the puzzle of 'figuring out how to make a fan age.'
Now - Obduction won't likely have player-created content in that sense but there's no reason why the player shouldn't be able to mess with a lot of the game settings. Graphics settings, sound, controls, player-character options, and good game-save options [plenty of manual save slots plus a good autosave system]
Finally, tell us a good story and allow the player to be at the center driving that story forward. Create a sense of mystery, a few hooks, secrets, unknowns, and then allow us to uncover what is going on as the game progresses. Surprise us and entertain us with some clever ideas and some 'aha!' moments in both puzzles and story. It would also be good to give players the sense that they affected the gameworld in a meaningful and positive way. Make the player a hero. Give the player choices and actions within the game that matter both to the player and to the other characters in the game. Give us a narrative that has some substance, that's not sparse or thin, but at the same time, don't load the game with so much character interaction that the quality of that interaction is compromised in the process. Cast actors/voice actors wisely... if you can, give us better performances than some of what we saw in Myst IV's weaker scenes.
Finally - when the game is released, don't hesitate to publicize that release and showcase the game's strengths. You can have an amazing game but if nobody knows about it, then it won't go anywhere. I suspect a lot of the later Myst titles failed not only due to their inherent flaws [there were some definite weak points in them] but partly also to the fact that the publishers didn't call attention to them. People in the general public didn't *notice* them, for the most part, didn't seem to realize they existed. You are self-publishing Obduction, so hopefully now that you're actually in control of the release you can come up with a variety of creative, effective, yet inexpensive ways to publicize the release in 2015.
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