Defining Great Game Design

[Jacob Bendicksen]

My top components of a great game:

• The ability for teams to build to their skill level. World class teams should be able to build really complex and multi-functional robots, while the less experienced teams or those with less resources can still produce something functional and satisfying.
• Spectator-friendliness. (Is that a word? It is now.) If we're going to "Make it Loud," someone who hasn't read the rule book should be able to gain a functional knowledge of the game by watching a match or two.
• A reasonably short rule book. At a certain point, the game is just too hard to understand, and teams will start incurring penalties that they barely knew existed (*cough* Aerial Assist *cough*).
• Some level of coopertition, whether it's inter- or intra-alliance. Six robots doing the same thing in parallel is a lot less interesting than six robots doing the same thing in series. One thing that I loved about Aerial Assist was that it was fully possible, even likely, for an alliance of three decent robots to take down an alliance with one world-famous bot.

I'm interested to see what everyone else has to say!