What is Game Design?

I would like to start this off by saying, obviously enough, that I am not an industry professional within game design. Every analysis I perform will only be my own opinion, not based on an insider's knowledge of games, and as such I very much welcome disagreement with what I say.

That being said, I am a gamer (although I do everything in my power to prevent myself from falling into the negative stereotypes of that label). And by gamer, I do not mean only video games; I play (and have strong opinions about) a number of board games, tabletop role playing games, and card games. This blog will focus on how they are designed, and what those games can teach us about how to or not to design a game.

The question remains: to what end, exactly, is the ideal game designed? Without an idea of this, we will not be able to effectively analyze games, because we will be able only to talk about the games and not why such and such a feature is good or bad.

So what can we use as criteria?

1. The game must be fun.

This one should be relatively obvious. Games, even educational ones, are supposed to be a form of entertainment. Of course, everyone has their own preferences when it comes to games, and so I will not use my own subjective opinion when judging a game in this category. Instead, a game that has an issue in this category is almost certainly a game produced in a rush by an understaffed company with no discernable ability for the player to do almost anything and thankfully such games are, if not rare, than almost never released to a wide enough audience to do real damage (for an example of such a game, I cite the nameless game that went down in history as Superman 64).

2. The game must be fair.

This criterion is the one on which far more games fail. "Fair" here means several things. First and foremost, it means that player skill should be the primary (if not only) determining factor in player success. Additionally, and as a corollary to that statement, each player must have a (theoretical) roughly equal chance of winning the game. This is possible even in games that are asymmetrical (for example, the game of Go gives 6.5 points to the player who goes second, in order to even out the odds for victory in spite of the first move advantage). As well, the game must not alter its rules midgame without notifying the player, as this simply leads to frustration.

3. The game must be ethical.

This criterion isn't one that one hears about often. We rarely consider the ethics of our games, partially because they are designed for entertainment and partly because truly ethics-violating games rarely get released, for a large number of good reasons. Unfortunately, some of these games are released. A few are incredibly blatant; games whose subject matter is genocide unfortunately exist, although I will not give them any publicity in this blog. More common are those who exploit monetization systems, turning games that are supposed to be skill based into nothing more than cash grabs or even gambling. I intend with this blog to show what games to pass and fail these criteria. In addition, I hope to show how games can go beyond these criteria and accomplish such feats as telling a compelling story and make the player feel as the game developers intend them to feel during play.