Understanding Game Design 201 - Game Design Starts With Medium

A real game is…
• A competition,
• With victory conditions,
• That is fair and balanced,
• Immersive,
• Requires strategy to win,
• Never takes away any player’s agency,
• Provides its players with full customization of strategy,
• Lacks real-world relevance //Example: Physical aptitude (sports), or being pay-to-win//
• Is neither a simulation nor solvable,
• And victory conditions cannot be random.

Some explanations of terms...
Competition: An activity where players utilize limited resources to achieve conflicting goals, i.e. victory conditions

Fair: Gameplay cannot favor any strategy over another

Balanced: The math of your game must be sound so gameplay is fair, not solvable or otherwise violating of player agency, victory is not random, and strategy is required

Immersion:
• Have strong flavor (reinforced and not distracted or deviated from in design)
Ex: Both “Cards Against Humanity” and “Magic: The Gathering” have strong flavor. The former explores wordplay while the latter explores high fantasy (although it has recently begun violating this, they got it right in the beginning, save for a few minor errors).
• Don't break your players out of either the flavor of your game (distraction or deviation) or the gameplay itself (violating agency)
• The game mechanics must fully explore the space of your game's flavor (refer to full customization of strategy and making your competitions fair and balanced)

Major Note: ‘Board games’ are entirely disqualified as a genre because they fundamentally violate formal game theory. This does not include all tabletop games, just ‘board games’. This does however include things like chess, go, poker, mahjong, etc., regardless of format.

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