General Chernyayev has taken Tashkent. We do not know why. – Russian Minister of the Interior, Pyotr Valuev, 1865 Strategy games are, at their core, about greed and ambition. Yes, almost every game is a power fantasy, but strategy games properly understood are about gaining the most while spending the least. Since most strategy games [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Design'
Open Gates in Japan
March 28th, 2012 · 2 Comments · Design
Before I got too invested in playing out The Meiji Restoration in the new Shogun 2 expansion, Fall of the Samurai, I realized that I hadn’t played The Rise of the Samurai – the first Shogun 2 expansion. It too deals with a Japanese civil war, this one in the 12th century over who would [...]
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Rub Some Dirt on It
February 18th, 2012 · 22 Comments · Design, Me, Paradox
Anyone that is not intimately familiar with failure is probably not anyone worth knowing. The failure need not be profound, but facing setbacks and the limitations of planning are part and parcel of the human experience. It’s not that tragedy is the measure of a man or that there are no atheists in foxholes, as [...]
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Feature Series: Science and Technology
January 29th, 2012 · 24 Comments · Design, Feature:Science
I have a degree in political science. This is nothing like real science. I do, however, have a deep interest in science and technology, especially their history. It may have been a brave man that first ate an oyster, but it was an especially clever man that figured out you could melt certain types of [...]
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Holiday Guest Blog 5: Dirk Knemeyer – “Theme and Mechanics”
January 3rd, 2012 · 6 Comments · Design, Guest Blog
I “met” game designer Dirk Knemeyer through our Out of the Park Baseball league. He’s had marginally more success than I have mostly through not finishing 30 games back four seasons in a row. Dirk is also an employer and collaborator, since I am doing research and consulting for him in the evenings and on [...]
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Three Moves Ahead Episode 146: On the Air
December 8th, 2011 · 20 Comments · Design, Podcast, Three Moves Ahead
It’s more a fancy lecture and masterwork design class than a bunch of guys guessing about what works when board game desiger Lee Brimmicombe-Wood sits down with Troy and Bruce to talk about his history of making games about air power, the challenges in getting all the cool technical bits down and the difficulties in [...]
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