If, after you are well past the design phase, and you’ve been playing for a while, you are still surprised by what happens in your very own game, I’d say you have a winner.
There was a wargame I tried to learn in which you put a counter on your vehicle to indicate that the vehicle has started moving, but is not moving fully yet. And later you replace the counter with a counter that says that the vehicle is moving.
I don't have time for that anymore.
Anyone can win a hand of Poker. Yet there is a lot of skill to the game. This betrays one of the popular myths in game design—that skill and luck are opposites. They are better considered as two axes.
I think games are a good medium for approaching any subject, particularly difficult ones, because by their very nature, they are abstract, invite interaction and allow us to confront and question things... particularly rules that we may blindly follow.
When one player knows something that another player doesn’t a world of game opportunity opens up.
Sometimes I think game rules writers should study the instructions that come with other kinds of products, like electronics or flat-pack furniture kits, and watch exactly how those work and don’t.
No one could tell from watching us that we were generating knowledge. It looked like we were just playing around.
I’ve been to hundred of stranger’s houses. Whatever. If there are games in the house, it’s a good house.
