Links

PRACTICE 2013: The Art of Strategy

Awesome talks by three strategy game designers. Nice range of approaches/opinions. Keith and Soren seem to agree that transparency of mechanics (like in board games) is very important, but Keith takes it a step further with the Core Mechanism reductionist model, whereas Soren seems more comfortable having a potentially more loosely related systems. 

And Brad is a self proclaimed “Sauce” designer at a “Sauce” studio.

Also really interesting to hear the perspective that Keith’s approach “fetishises mechanics over experience” which seems to me to say you can’t have a great experience solely through mechanics. It isn’t true, as is demonstrated by many board games that simply use theme as a way to get you in the door (Bohnanza, RFTG, Love Letter, et al.), but it certainly can SEEM true (rules seem very dry for some reason, even when they can very easily be the most interesting part/exiting/engaging/suprising part of the experience).