Break the Rules of a Game to Improve it

In The Well-Played Game, Bernard DeKoven advocates a fundamental adjustment in players' attitudes towards the rules of a game: You're not changing the game for the sake of changing it. You're changing it for the sake of finding a game that works. Once this freedom is established, once we have established why we want to change a game and how we go about it, a remarkable thing happens to us: We become the authorities. No matter what game we create, no matter how well we are able to play it,...

 A good game keeps you at the edge of your ability

As you successfully lock in Tetris puzzle pieces, you get three kinds of feedback: visual—you can see row after row of pieces disappearing with a satisfying poof; quantitative—a prominently displayed score constantly ticks upward; and qualitative—you experience a steady increase in how challenging the game feels. This variety and intensity of feedback is the most important difference between digital and nondigital games. In computer and video games, the interactive loop is satisfyingly tight...

 Video Games are Work Made Fun

As you all know, games are about choices. Sid Meier famously defined games as "a series of interesting choices." And choice is the most fundamental expression of Will. How can an activity motivated by decisions, striving, goals and competition, a deliberate concentration of the force of Will, be used to transcend Will itself? You might as well try to smother a flame with oxygen. Game designers are taught that the ideal player experience is something called flow. Flow is that magical stat...