I love ideas. Ideas have potential — unfulfilled possibility. Ideas are applied imagination. Ideas are my fuel. I spend a lot of my in-between time thinking about games. And mostly about creating games — trying to invent novel ones and/or ones I would love to play. Games provide the sandbox for my imagination. Mechanics and […]
Read more "The Problem With Ideas"I’ve been witnessing a Twitter Battle play out over weeks, days, and now over the course of minutes. The subject is Machi Koro. The debate is about whether Machi Koro is fun (or even a game). I boil it down to two perspectives: 1. There are lots of ways to play and win 2. There […]
Read more "The Game Theory of Games"I played Legendary solo last night. It was my first time playing the game. I was excited about how different hero and villain superpowers would be expressed via the card mechanics. However, like many deck builders I’ve played, it was more of the same. You can break most cards down into: The cost to acquire […]
Read more "The Problem With Deck Builders"Apple featured gaming as a key part of the iPhone 6 (and Plus) but didn’t really mention it, that I saw, when presenting the Watch. There’s a hint at new forms of interpersonal communication – like the send a drawing and heartbeat functions. But what about the notion of “glance games?” By the way, the […]
Read more "The Future of Gaming via the Apple Watch"I added a new “game in production” to my development pipeline. My 2nd grade daughter is now requesting Monopoly as her default game to play. We’ve included games for her birthday and Christmas presents every year past 3 years old. I want to expose her to all sorts of mechanics and themes. But that hasn’t […]
Read more "A Better Version of Monopoly"Who thinks rules are fun? We talk about freedom and liberty as immutable truths. But a world without rules isn’t fun. Unbridled freedom and liberty aren’t just dangerous — they become meaningless in the extreme. We create meaning through rules. We also create fun through rules. Games are strange things. By imposing constraints we foster […]
Read more "A Student of the Rules of Fun"
The Piquer 