Game Design Theory
Episode 1: Uncertainty as a Source of Fun
So thanks to some encouragement from @ludicryan I decided to start this project. I’ve wanted for a while to put out some videos about game design theory itself. There are many particular ideas I’ve come across over the years that I would like to discuss with the wider community.
I am hoping to make a series of short-ish (by my standards!) videos. Each exploring a particular topic of game design theory and hopefully having some discussion around it.
I spend about five minutes or so at the start of this introducing myself, feel free to skip! Apologies for the video quality, I don’t have great recording equipment currently.
Bah why do I have work to do, I’ll have a listen to this once I’m doing post work. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts 😀
I look forward to hearing what you think!
Great start Dave. Made me think about the mechanics in games I like best, and maybe why I like them. One that comes to mind is a blind token draw for unit activation (e.g. Bolt Action) The odds are changing with each draw, but it gives you information of what is to come and what you can do and what your opponent may do as the sequence plays out. Another would be tracking Destiny draws in the old Star Wars ccg. You knew the number of your total cards in play and the position of desired cards in the draw… Read more »
Yes, I think that unit activation drawing (the SW: Legion mechanic comes to mind as well) is a great example of controlled uncertainty. As you say, since it is selection without replacement, you actually get more and more sure what is going to happen next, and it still offers quite a lot of control for the players. I’ve not played the SW CCG you mention so I couldn’t comment but it sounds very much like it fits within what I was talking about. It would be good to understand how much control the player had over the deck. E.g. Was… Read more »
SW:Legion, of course too – I was blanking on examples when I was typing :-p . That Destiny mechanic was about tracking a piece of known information while events outside of your control affected it (you didn’t have to track it – you could just rely on random flips). Each card had a Destiny number from 1 to 6 in the corner. In general, cards with a higher Destiny number had a weaker in-game effect. A SWCCG deck was always 60 cards, and you discarded cards to pay for damage done to your units. You lost when you ran out… Read more »