Ideal Game Designs

       What sets competitive games apart from other types of games? There are so many different types. There is shooters, role-playing, top-down, etc. They are all so drastically different and yet they can be classified as competitive as the best in the world fight for sometimes quite large amounts of money. To add on to this thought, why are the competitive games also the extremely popular games? What makes them appeal to the casual player just as much as the top-end professional. I would consider the presence of the skill ceiling and the skill floor.      We aren't building a skill based house no matter how architectural this sounds. These two terms refer to the accessibility of a particular game. The skill ceiling represents exactly how much potential a game has when played by a professional. In other words, if a person pilots the game mechanics perfectly, how much more effective are they than someone who is a complete beginner? On the flip side, the skill floor represents the b

      Everyone has played Monopoly. It's basically a house staple at this point in time and yet it is one of the most hated games on the planet. It shares plenty of mechanics that other games have but for some reason this particular combination of game does it so badly. I hope you aren't looking for some super insightful reasoning as to why it is actually better than people give it credit for. It's not, it really is as bad as people say it is. Monopoly being a bad game was the point in the first place.      Originally, it was called the Landlord's Game , made by Lizzie Magie in 1903. It was created to prove a point, to show everyone the danger of capitalism. Being fun to play was never the main cause of creation. So what in particular makes it such a bad game?     There are three particular bad qualities that stand out. First, the high degree of randomness gives little room for skillful expression. The randomness stems from the unpredictable nature of the dice rolls and

    Have you ever stopped to think of why major sports are created the way they are? Why the rules are the way they are or even why the various positions matter? There must be some reason it is designed in this fashion and some reason the pacing and intensity flows in an even progression.      Taking this thought a step further, what happens when we change this balance of rules and pacing? Particularly in Hockey, each team has 6 players on the ice at any given time. There is 1 goalie, 2 defensemen, and 3 forwards.     It's really clear what the point of the goalie is, stopping the puck from getting into the net. It's also really clear what the center forward does, the team needs somebody to score goals and there has to be someone to fight for the puck when the referee drops it.  But why is everyone else there? What do the other players bring to the game?      To take a step into game design theory, I'd consider Hockey to be a zero-sum, symmetric game. This means that both s