How NOT to design a MODERN board game

I now want to make a game that uses nothing other than all of these mechanisms together to see what happens :D

I think a lot of people miss when talking bad mechanics that seem to never die is the gambling aspect. Most skill destroying mechanics that make games bad can scratch the same dopamine itch as gambling. It can be perplexing to warch from the outside, but many people genuinely enjoy the rush of winning a game by illusion of control while still being able to dismiss defeat as bad luck.

Games for children serve the purpose: learning turn-taking, good sportsmanship, numbers, cause and effect, social skills, fine motor skills, all manner of things. Not to mention imagination—my friends and I would play Life all night long on sleepovers, even after outgrowing the basic game structure, telling stories about our tiny peg families while (for better or worse) subconsciously learning about how a bit of luck will change a life’s path. We learned the fundamentals of game playing and learned to enjoy them! Upward and onward from there 🙂

Excellent advice. I have twins. One loves the luck of dice rolls and card flips. The other cannot stand losing because of something completely out of their control (and not necessarily the opponent’s doing). It makes for very good play testing feedback. 😅

Considering that Battletech is almost exclusively "roll 2d6 and consult one of a billion tables," and it's currently the most popular it's been since the 1980s, I've gotta strongly disagree with the notion that tables are some outdated relic that nobody wants to use.

A friend of mine loves the DC superheroes Deck Building game. So much so that he would constantly pester me to try it (me being a big fan of deckbuilders ordinarily). For three games, during the other players turns, I would be forced to discard more and more cards, so that when my turn came around, the only option I would have...is to draw cards and end my turn. He still doesnt understand why I dont like that game, and wont play it.

Another bad game mechanic: Games with a limited number of times that it can be played before players run out of the specialized paper it comes with. In terms of app-linked games, those are the games that really should have apps associated with them. That way players can "write" on a digitized version of the paper and not waste the 25 sheets that the game comes with. Also, the sheets should really be coated with a material that can handle something like a dry-erase marker that easily wipes off so they can be reused over and over again. Or the sheets are where chips/markers are placed to indicate what would have been written.

Let's be honest, the lack of player agency in those really old (as in 3000 year old) games, was probably so that you could win against the prince and keep your head... most of the times.

Battleship is not as bad as you suggest. Sure the FIRST turn is a blind guess but after that you should have some kind of strategy or prediction of your opponents habits

I think one very important aspect of mechanical design, especially in games with player elimination, is progressive destabilization. Your game should begin with lots of catch up mechanics and positive sum interactions so losing players can remain in the game with some hope of winning, and end with lots of snowball mechanics and zero or negative sum interactions to finish off losing players quickly and humanely and pick a winner in fairly rapid succession so that the game can be over

I feel like Jail in Monopoly is kind of a bad example when it comes to negative, skip-turn mechanisms, because you can always pay $50 to leave, and the recontextualization of it in the late game where you want to stay in.

For those who like to skip the excessively long intro, actual video starts at 4:05 your welcome.

It's a shame that you show Dominion when discussing 'take that' mechanisms while Dominion is one of the few games that does attacks right. I consider 'take that' mechanisms as ways to hit one player hard, often the player in the lead. For example, stealing a keeper in Fluxx, or a card from someone's hand. None of the attacks in Dominion target a specific player, they all hit all other players equally (though the net effect might differ depending on their deck).

You can use event decks as a manually triggered thing. For instance, a player can choose to pay some amount of resources to draw the top card of the event deck. It's an optional decision to take a risk at that point, which makes it more fun. It can essentially function as a hail mary.

I've never played tank battle, but as you describe it it sounds like an interesting game. Sounds like a game about reading your opponent/bluffing, which i wouldn't say is the same as making an uninformed decision. Which resonnate with you saying that the game can be fixed.

I love the idea of the video but after 10 minutes you've almost exclusively mentioned games designed and marketed specifically for kids. Game of Life was one of my daughters favourite games until very recently, we have very happy memories of a giant Snakes and Ladders game they had at a local park, a couple of years ago we had to ask friends to go to Mcdonalds because she loved the Top Trumps cards they had in their happy meals so much! I used to love Battleship as a kid and played it against my Nanna on trains all the time, you said yourself you used to love Wrasslin' although I haven't heard of it before. You're talking about children's games and their mechanisms as if they're adult hobbyist style board games but they are totally different things with different purposes and audiences. Very young children don't care at all about things like player agency or randomness, if anything these things are perfect for bridging huge skill gaps that exist when a 6 year-old plays with their Dad.

Aren't a lot of contemporary cooperative games basically just "event deck: the game"? Everything from Pandemic to Spirit Island is just a bunch of random (or semi-random) negative things happening that the players then have to deal with while traversing to their goal.

That opening monologue sounds like a challenge to put this stuff in a game

28:55 restrictive player counts. most so called 2-6 player games aren’t anyway. For example we only play Battlestar Galactica with 5 players. It is a so much better experience than any other player count. And that is true for many many games.

Catan is also a good example of a more modern game where there are many turns in which you can do nothing but roll dice for everyone else