Game design theory
I had never been a player of games. In my early thirties I learned of Go and Reversi and Hex and Y, and though I had never played these games, I was smitten by them. It occurred to me that people had designed these games. They weren't just "there." My next epiphany was that I too might be able to design an abstract game. And I did. I designed Quadrature (winner of the Mensa Select award). After playing it around 1000 times with my downstairs neighbour, we got into what seemed like a cycle. I was horrified. I didn't want to believe it. We played the game out for a few more moves and yes. We were caught in a cycle. Neither of us could break out of it advantageously, so we called it a draw. I was totally devastated.
I set about to remedy my melancholy by designing a finite game with the elegant equipment of Go (with which I was enamoured, though I'd only seen pictures of it). After weeks of pacing around in my bathrobe in a trance, staring at my bathroom and kitchen floor tiles, trying to imagine a possible finite game mechanism.... Tanbo dawned on me. A phosphorous bomb exploded in my head. My vision was literally flooded with pure, bright white light for a few seconds. Whatever you may think of Tanbo, for me its discovery was a beautiful moment that I will never forget. For the record, full size, 19x19 Tanbo is extremely robust. There's a statistic on SuperDuperGames, a combination of 9x9 and 19x19 Tanbo data, that shows an advantage for Player 1. 9x9 is, for Tanbo, a tiny board. Strong turn order advantage, if not an outright solution, is to be expected in any tiny game.
I was still very naive at that time about the world of abstract games. I thought everyone hated draws. A game is like a judge. Its function is to determine a winner and a loser—every time. Anything less would be a failure. Years later I would come to understand that some people don't mind the occasional draw. They even like draws, as long as they don't happen too often. To me, draws are a weak, deflating conclusion to a hard fought battle.
I should be calling finitude "hard finitude" since the emergence of the concept of "soft finitude." Soft finitude is where the game is supposedly finite because there would obviously never be any advantage to entering into a cycle. In reality, soft finitude is difficult to prove, and the definition defaults to, "I played my game 100 times and never had a cycle, so it must be soft finite." Henceforth in this article, finite will mean hard finite: You couldn't have a cycle even if you and your opponent wanted to.
The only game that I'm convinced is soft finite is one contrived by Corey Clark. Call it Hex SF. It plays exactly like Hex, except you have the option of removing one of your stones from the board on your turn. Cycles would certainly be possible, but nobody would ever remove one of their own stones. Corey proved a point. Soft finite games exist. But I think one general principle remains valid. If cycles do occur in a particular game, then with increasing skill, cycles become ever more likely, as we see in Chess and Checkers. Christian Freeling reminded me that I once said cycles are like cancer. They eventually kill a game. I had completely forgotten having said that—but yes. No modern game will ever be played as much as Chess or Checkers, but if it were, it could befall the same fate: Death of a thousand cycles. At the very least, for me anyway, it's a question of aesthetics. I don't like cycles, however likely or unlikely they may be eventually to overwhelm a game.
Aesthetics are subjective. You can't really make a logical argument about the preference for finitude in games, but that hasn't stopped anyone, including myself, from arguing about it. Some people have claimed that in non-finite games, perfect play results in a cycle, and this is aesthetically more pleasing than perfect play in finite games, which must end with an unseemly automatic win for Player 1 (or Player 2).
There are problems with this argument. One problem is the assumption that perfect play is relevant. If play ever becomes perfect or even near perfect, the game is no longer a game. I think there's a sweet spot there. You don't want gameplay to be too close to perfect... or too far from it. Enter scalability, which is an important practical consideration. If players are becoming too skilled (approaching perfection), and first (or second) move advantage is becoming an issue, you can usually just change up to a larger board to fix the problem. Almost all of my games are scalable for this reason (and because board size independence is an aesthetic bonus).
The other problem with non-finite games ostensibly being "balanced" is a false premise. Non-finite games played perfectly do not necessarily end in a cycle. If I may draw upon Corey's game again, perfect play in Hex SF doesn't result in a cycle, it results in a win for Player 1. This soft finite game has the same high level of first move advantage as Hex, though Hex's first move advantage can be greatly alleviated with the pie rule. The pie rule is a blemish on a game, but if it can salvage an otherwise outstanding game, as it does with Hex, I believe its use is warranted. It pulls its own heavy weight.
In non-finite games in which expert play usually leads to a cycle, if there isn't a cycle then there will be an advantage for one of the players. If a cycle doesn't occur in Chess, Player 1 is more likely to win. I've never heard anything to convince me that there's anything even remotely redeeming about cycles.
Finite decisive games are the most challenging to design. Inventing a game is like digging for gems. Designing a soft finite game is like finding a chunk of amethyst or onyx. A true finite game is more like a sapphire or diamond.
One more modifier for finite: "Natural." Naturally finite, decisive games don't have to be sullied with aesthetic abominations like ko, the fifty move rule, and komi. I've seen designers introduce their new game as "draw free," only to read a little further and have my initial excitement dashed by the game's reliance on komi. No.
Beyond finitude, I believe a game should use standard, generic equipment. I don't like rings, balls, cones, pawns, meeples, gates, bridges, toothpicks, or any other kind of non-standard equipment. I generally am not a fan of neutral pieces, though I am willing to break this rule, if compelled to do so, as with Redstone. Boards should be standard square checker boards or standard hexagonally patterned boards. Though again, I will break this rule (or any other rule) if sufficiently motivated along a design line. My use of generic equipment is mainly aesthetically motivated, but I'm glad if makes the game available to anyone with a Checkers set, for example. I designed Byte and Impasse to use the exact equipment of Checkers; likewise, Monkey Queen uses the equipment of International Checkers. I don't remember why I called it Monkey Queen. There's no obvious connection to the behaviour of primates. I don't have the imagination now that I once had.
I'm not a big fan of "with a twist" games. The design process presents me an opportunity to showcase my originality, and that's what I like to do. There's nothing like Cephalopod. There's nothing like Kubodai. The more unique, the better. That being said, I've designed a ton of connection games, all of which are Hex or Y with a twist.
When designing a super simple game, the design universe shrinks considerably. Icebreaker turns out to be similar to Hey That's My Fish and other games in the "tile claiming" class. The difference with Icebreaker is that cells can be revisited. You can traverse open ocean. And of course, Icebreaker is decisive.
My initial exuberance, some 30 years ago, about finitude in games was not well received. It was met—I was met—with indifference, even resentment. At the time I was pounding out a new finite game every two weeks. Aaron Dalton, a truly nice guy, was agreeing to program my new games for his new game site, SuperDuperGames, sight unseen. I remember when Mark Steere Games games comprised about half of SuperDuperGames. Aaron's support motivated me back then. Now, finitude is kind of a "thing." Some negativity still lingers, like cosmic microwave background radiation. I'm not blaming anyone, other than myself. I was brash and I made a big splash. Or maybe more of a tsunami, with all the welcome of an actual tsunami. But now I feel appreciated, by some, and I appreciate the appreciation.
Architecture, the beauty of a rule set, somewhat independent of the gameplay, is what matters to me. I say "somewhat" because gameplay has at least to be robust. A rule set shouldn't be an arbitrary hodgepodge of discordant rules thrown together. There should be only the minimum rules necessary to embody a simple core concept. Arbitrariness is subjective of course. Other designers may think my games are arbitrary in the sense that they could have been put together a little bit differently to embody the same principle. And they're probably right. But my games are never hodgepodge. There are no ornamental, gratuitous rules.
I don't use rules that I consider to be cliches. This is just a guideline for my own designs and is not intended to impugn other skilled designers or their fine games. But I have rarely employed the jump, and have never used the jump-capture. It's too Checkers-like, already employed in the vast expanse of Checkers variants. Likewise I would never use the Knight move. It would be like living on a deserted island and preparing coconut fricassee, coconut flambé, coconut souffle.... I have, however, often used King and Queen moves. They're elemental and generic, and don't reek of Chess. Chess and Checkers variants are valid and interesting. There are many critically acclaimed, well thought of such games. While I truly appreciate them, they're not in my wheelhouse.
I haven't thus far mentioned the subjective experience of a game's quality of play. Other designers, like Dieter Stein, are acutely attuned to a new design's gameplay. They start with a concept, play-test it, tweak it, and play-test it again until they arrive at a game with a quality of play that meets their high standards. I can't do that. I do play-test sufficiently to make sure the game is robust. If it isn't, I toss it out. Very rarely have I tweaked a game. Usually the fundamental concept is so simple that it can't be tweaked without drastically altering it. Better just to start from scratch. Silo had developed a strong first move advantage. (I think, by the way, I'm about done designing one-dimensional games. I can see now that they're more subject to "patterns of play" than their higher dimensional cousins.) Michael Amundsen suggested a tweak that cleared up Silo's issue, so I adopted it. I was already in discussions with the management of BoardGameArena about withdrawing my Silo program. But Michael's tweak saved it from the chopping block. Gopher was solved by Drew Edwards (designer of Mattock) for odd size boards, so I changed my Gopher BGA program (while still in development, fortunately) from size 5 to size 6. Those are the only two tweaks I've ever made to my games that I can think of. I'm loathe to collaborate with other designers. It's a selfish thing. I want to have complete control. But if I had to collaborate, Michael would be a good choice. I consider him to be the current torch bearer in this thin slice of the design universe we've found ourselves in. (I should also mention Alek Erickson, Mike Zapawa, and Luis Bolaños Mures.) I'm past my prime at age 62. I couldn't have done Rive at this age. Or Oust. Lately I can't design anything, and I've hit a brick wall. So now I'm programming. I have a large reserve of game candidates to draw upon.
For me, a new design's gameplay has always been hit or miss. Usually miss. As luck would have it, a small percentage of my games ended up having quality play. And... I believe players appreciate an elegant set of rules, separately from the gameplay, though a game must play well if players are to stick with it. I appreciate what other designers do in their tweak cycle pursuit of excellent gameplay. It's not what I do, but not everyone has to do what I do.
I like Urbino, though I've never played. I like the name, the theme, the architects, the finely crafted wood board and pieces from various publishers. It has an appealing overall package. Urbino would never occur to me, and I wouldn't release it if it did. But, I appreciate other artists and their work, however dissimilar to my own. (Game design is also a science. My games have drawn the attention of mathematicians and computer scientists over the years. Recently, Jonathan Baker of Virginia Tech wrote an elegant proof of Silo's finitude, which I posted on MarkSteereGames.)
Publishers generally do not like to produce games with generic equipment. They don't want to expend a lot of resources promoting your game when players can just go out and buy a $5 Checkers set and play it, and that is perfectly understandable.
Designers are always hoping for a hit. We put a lot of work into our games and it's nice when our work is appreciated. But we know our game won't be the next Chess. A shot at fame isn't what drives us generic equipment, abstract game designers. What drives us is creative self-expression. We'd design games even if nobody would ever see them. It's a hobby, just like building and flying remote control planes that may not fly well or might even crash. We just go back to our garages and build another one.
A word on integrity. If your new game landed in the immediate vicinity of an existing game, credit that game. It doesn't matter where your train of thought began. It matters where it arrived. If you've designed what's obviously a minor variation of Reversi, for example, don't make the ridiculous claim that your game has nothing in common with Reversi. ◾️
I set about to remedy my melancholy by designing a finite game with the elegant equipment of Go (with which I was enamoured, though I'd only seen pictures of it). After weeks of pacing around in my bathrobe in a trance, staring at my bathroom and kitchen floor tiles, trying to imagine a possible finite game mechanism.... Tanbo dawned on me. A phosphorous bomb exploded in my head. My vision was literally flooded with pure, bright white light for a few seconds. Whatever you may think of Tanbo, for me its discovery was a beautiful moment that I will never forget. For the record, full size, 19x19 Tanbo is extremely robust. There's a statistic on SuperDuperGames, a combination of 9x9 and 19x19 Tanbo data, that shows an advantage for Player 1. 9x9 is, for Tanbo, a tiny board. Strong turn order advantage, if not an outright solution, is to be expected in any tiny game.
I was still very naive at that time about the world of abstract games. I thought everyone hated draws. A game is like a judge. Its function is to determine a winner and a loser—every time. Anything less would be a failure. Years later I would come to understand that some people don't mind the occasional draw. They even like draws, as long as they don't happen too often. To me, draws are a weak, deflating conclusion to a hard fought battle.
I should be calling finitude "hard finitude" since the emergence of the concept of "soft finitude." Soft finitude is where the game is supposedly finite because there would obviously never be any advantage to entering into a cycle. In reality, soft finitude is difficult to prove, and the definition defaults to, "I played my game 100 times and never had a cycle, so it must be soft finite." Henceforth in this article, finite will mean hard finite: You couldn't have a cycle even if you and your opponent wanted to.
The only game that I'm convinced is soft finite is one contrived by Corey Clark. Call it Hex SF. It plays exactly like Hex, except you have the option of removing one of your stones from the board on your turn. Cycles would certainly be possible, but nobody would ever remove one of their own stones. Corey proved a point. Soft finite games exist. But I think one general principle remains valid. If cycles do occur in a particular game, then with increasing skill, cycles become ever more likely, as we see in Chess and Checkers. Christian Freeling reminded me that I once said cycles are like cancer. They eventually kill a game. I had completely forgotten having said that—but yes. No modern game will ever be played as much as Chess or Checkers, but if it were, it could befall the same fate: Death of a thousand cycles. At the very least, for me anyway, it's a question of aesthetics. I don't like cycles, however likely or unlikely they may be eventually to overwhelm a game.
Aesthetics are subjective. You can't really make a logical argument about the preference for finitude in games, but that hasn't stopped anyone, including myself, from arguing about it. Some people have claimed that in non-finite games, perfect play results in a cycle, and this is aesthetically more pleasing than perfect play in finite games, which must end with an unseemly automatic win for Player 1 (or Player 2).
There are problems with this argument. One problem is the assumption that perfect play is relevant. If play ever becomes perfect or even near perfect, the game is no longer a game. I think there's a sweet spot there. You don't want gameplay to be too close to perfect... or too far from it. Enter scalability, which is an important practical consideration. If players are becoming too skilled (approaching perfection), and first (or second) move advantage is becoming an issue, you can usually just change up to a larger board to fix the problem. Almost all of my games are scalable for this reason (and because board size independence is an aesthetic bonus).
The other problem with non-finite games ostensibly being "balanced" is a false premise. Non-finite games played perfectly do not necessarily end in a cycle. If I may draw upon Corey's game again, perfect play in Hex SF doesn't result in a cycle, it results in a win for Player 1. This soft finite game has the same high level of first move advantage as Hex, though Hex's first move advantage can be greatly alleviated with the pie rule. The pie rule is a blemish on a game, but if it can salvage an otherwise outstanding game, as it does with Hex, I believe its use is warranted. It pulls its own heavy weight.
In non-finite games in which expert play usually leads to a cycle, if there isn't a cycle then there will be an advantage for one of the players. If a cycle doesn't occur in Chess, Player 1 is more likely to win. I've never heard anything to convince me that there's anything even remotely redeeming about cycles.
Finite decisive games are the most challenging to design. Inventing a game is like digging for gems. Designing a soft finite game is like finding a chunk of amethyst or onyx. A true finite game is more like a sapphire or diamond.
One more modifier for finite: "Natural." Naturally finite, decisive games don't have to be sullied with aesthetic abominations like ko, the fifty move rule, and komi. I've seen designers introduce their new game as "draw free," only to read a little further and have my initial excitement dashed by the game's reliance on komi. No.
Beyond finitude, I believe a game should use standard, generic equipment. I don't like rings, balls, cones, pawns, meeples, gates, bridges, toothpicks, or any other kind of non-standard equipment. I generally am not a fan of neutral pieces, though I am willing to break this rule, if compelled to do so, as with Redstone. Boards should be standard square checker boards or standard hexagonally patterned boards. Though again, I will break this rule (or any other rule) if sufficiently motivated along a design line. My use of generic equipment is mainly aesthetically motivated, but I'm glad if makes the game available to anyone with a Checkers set, for example. I designed Byte and Impasse to use the exact equipment of Checkers; likewise, Monkey Queen uses the equipment of International Checkers. I don't remember why I called it Monkey Queen. There's no obvious connection to the behaviour of primates. I don't have the imagination now that I once had.
I'm not a big fan of "with a twist" games. The design process presents me an opportunity to showcase my originality, and that's what I like to do. There's nothing like Cephalopod. There's nothing like Kubodai. The more unique, the better. That being said, I've designed a ton of connection games, all of which are Hex or Y with a twist.
When designing a super simple game, the design universe shrinks considerably. Icebreaker turns out to be similar to Hey That's My Fish and other games in the "tile claiming" class. The difference with Icebreaker is that cells can be revisited. You can traverse open ocean. And of course, Icebreaker is decisive.
My initial exuberance, some 30 years ago, about finitude in games was not well received. It was met—I was met—with indifference, even resentment. At the time I was pounding out a new finite game every two weeks. Aaron Dalton, a truly nice guy, was agreeing to program my new games for his new game site, SuperDuperGames, sight unseen. I remember when Mark Steere Games games comprised about half of SuperDuperGames. Aaron's support motivated me back then. Now, finitude is kind of a "thing." Some negativity still lingers, like cosmic microwave background radiation. I'm not blaming anyone, other than myself. I was brash and I made a big splash. Or maybe more of a tsunami, with all the welcome of an actual tsunami. But now I feel appreciated, by some, and I appreciate the appreciation.
Architecture, the beauty of a rule set, somewhat independent of the gameplay, is what matters to me. I say "somewhat" because gameplay has at least to be robust. A rule set shouldn't be an arbitrary hodgepodge of discordant rules thrown together. There should be only the minimum rules necessary to embody a simple core concept. Arbitrariness is subjective of course. Other designers may think my games are arbitrary in the sense that they could have been put together a little bit differently to embody the same principle. And they're probably right. But my games are never hodgepodge. There are no ornamental, gratuitous rules.
I don't use rules that I consider to be cliches. This is just a guideline for my own designs and is not intended to impugn other skilled designers or their fine games. But I have rarely employed the jump, and have never used the jump-capture. It's too Checkers-like, already employed in the vast expanse of Checkers variants. Likewise I would never use the Knight move. It would be like living on a deserted island and preparing coconut fricassee, coconut flambé, coconut souffle.... I have, however, often used King and Queen moves. They're elemental and generic, and don't reek of Chess. Chess and Checkers variants are valid and interesting. There are many critically acclaimed, well thought of such games. While I truly appreciate them, they're not in my wheelhouse.
I haven't thus far mentioned the subjective experience of a game's quality of play. Other designers, like Dieter Stein, are acutely attuned to a new design's gameplay. They start with a concept, play-test it, tweak it, and play-test it again until they arrive at a game with a quality of play that meets their high standards. I can't do that. I do play-test sufficiently to make sure the game is robust. If it isn't, I toss it out. Very rarely have I tweaked a game. Usually the fundamental concept is so simple that it can't be tweaked without drastically altering it. Better just to start from scratch. Silo had developed a strong first move advantage. (I think, by the way, I'm about done designing one-dimensional games. I can see now that they're more subject to "patterns of play" than their higher dimensional cousins.) Michael Amundsen suggested a tweak that cleared up Silo's issue, so I adopted it. I was already in discussions with the management of BoardGameArena about withdrawing my Silo program. But Michael's tweak saved it from the chopping block. Gopher was solved by Drew Edwards (designer of Mattock) for odd size boards, so I changed my Gopher BGA program (while still in development, fortunately) from size 5 to size 6. Those are the only two tweaks I've ever made to my games that I can think of. I'm loathe to collaborate with other designers. It's a selfish thing. I want to have complete control. But if I had to collaborate, Michael would be a good choice. I consider him to be the current torch bearer in this thin slice of the design universe we've found ourselves in. (I should also mention Alek Erickson, Mike Zapawa, and Luis Bolaños Mures.) I'm past my prime at age 62. I couldn't have done Rive at this age. Or Oust. Lately I can't design anything, and I've hit a brick wall. So now I'm programming. I have a large reserve of game candidates to draw upon.
For me, a new design's gameplay has always been hit or miss. Usually miss. As luck would have it, a small percentage of my games ended up having quality play. And... I believe players appreciate an elegant set of rules, separately from the gameplay, though a game must play well if players are to stick with it. I appreciate what other designers do in their tweak cycle pursuit of excellent gameplay. It's not what I do, but not everyone has to do what I do.
I like Urbino, though I've never played. I like the name, the theme, the architects, the finely crafted wood board and pieces from various publishers. It has an appealing overall package. Urbino would never occur to me, and I wouldn't release it if it did. But, I appreciate other artists and their work, however dissimilar to my own. (Game design is also a science. My games have drawn the attention of mathematicians and computer scientists over the years. Recently, Jonathan Baker of Virginia Tech wrote an elegant proof of Silo's finitude, which I posted on MarkSteereGames.)
Publishers generally do not like to produce games with generic equipment. They don't want to expend a lot of resources promoting your game when players can just go out and buy a $5 Checkers set and play it, and that is perfectly understandable.
Designers are always hoping for a hit. We put a lot of work into our games and it's nice when our work is appreciated. But we know our game won't be the next Chess. A shot at fame isn't what drives us generic equipment, abstract game designers. What drives us is creative self-expression. We'd design games even if nobody would ever see them. It's a hobby, just like building and flying remote control planes that may not fly well or might even crash. We just go back to our garages and build another one.
A word on integrity. If your new game landed in the immediate vicinity of an existing game, credit that game. It doesn't matter where your train of thought began. It matters where it arrived. If you've designed what's obviously a minor variation of Reversi, for example, don't make the ridiculous claim that your game has nothing in common with Reversi. ◾️
The image above shows a screenshot from the coming BoardGameArena implementation of Mark's latest game, Diablo—which he claims is one of his very best games. Diablo uses dice, and invites interesting comparisons with Backgammon. Despite his comments in the article above, Mark is still churning out creative game designs. ~ Editor