Here’s a game design thought for the day: The 80-20 rule applies to game rules the same as it does anything else.
For the uninitiated, the 80-20 rule says that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the cause. In business, for example (thanks, Wikipedia!), 80% of your profit comes from 20% of your customers.
What’s this have to do with game rules?
Hardy’s 80-20 Rule of Game Design: In any game, 80% of the rules confusion comes from 20% of the rules.
Take, for example, your standard trading card game. Most of the rules are dedicated to generating income, playing cards, and the basic conflict resolution/point scoring mechanism. No one’s confused by this stuff. It’s not until you get into the intricacies of the timing system that things start to furrow the players’ brows. (“My card says that when you play a card, I get a cookie, but your card says that when you play it, my card gets blown up. Do I get a cookie first?”)
Of course, this means that 80% of our rules-writing efforts should be focused on the most confusing 20% of the rules – patching the cracks, filling the holes, and plastering the whole thing with enough examples and diagrams to make it clear.
Which raises the question: Why not just cut that 20%? If it’s such a hassle for both the designers and the players, why not do away with it all and save ourselves some pain?
Because that would make for dull games.
The same complexities that make 20% of the rules confusing also make the game dynamic and given to emergent play. These are the rules that let players come up with clever moves and surprise their opponents with tactics they never saw coming. These are the rules that separate your game from other games like it. These are the rules that make your game exciting.
And people like playing exciting games.
