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“If you never make mistakes, you are not working on challenges that move you further. And that’s a BIG mistake.”
— Reiner Knizia (@ReinerKnizia)
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“I think the methods and tricks for designing a card or board game are very similar to those used by novel writers, the main difference being that we game designers skip the hardest part: the actual writing.”
— ~ Bruno Faidutti (via whyidesigngames)
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“I sometimes think of games as cars: they need to have an engine (the core mechanic), a steering wheel, gear shift and gas pedal (ways for the players to set their speed and direction), and the car body (flavor and theme). Also, if possible, a destination. The perfect game like a great car has all the parts fitting well together, and that’s what hopefully we are all trying to achieve.”
— Andrea Chiarvesio
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The Strategy Game Designer’s Constitution contains some “golden rules” for design, considerations for giving games strategic depth, plus a good list of potential end-game and victory conditions:

http://www.leiavoia.net/pages/docs/Strategy_Game_Designers_Constitution.pdf

Here’s the handy, pocket-sized Strategy Game Designer’s Cheatsheet:

http://www.leiavoia.net/pages/docs/Strategy_Game_Designers_Cheatsheet.pdf

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“Scoring simply as performance evaluation or identifying winners is not interesting. You have to actually care about the game for winning to be meaningful so if you’re going to score, the way you do it has to validate the game experience. How it’s done matters a lot.”
— Chris Farrell (@cfarrell317)
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“Good playtests lead to changes in your game. The best changes are the ones that make you wonder why it wasn’t that way in the first place.”
— Samuel A. Liberty (@SA_Liberty)
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“Iterate, but have a goal. Games can meander for years without one.”
— Matt Leacock
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“Don’t pin all your hopes on just one game idea. If you’re creative enough to come up with one game idea, you’re creative enough to come up with a half dozen game ideas.”
— Keith Meyers
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“As an amateur game designer, you can focus on one path, e.g. always starting with the theme, and you’ll get some good designs. As a professional game designer, innovation starts with finding new entry points into each design: theme, character, technology…”
— Reiner Knizia (@ReinerKnizia)
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“I have never designed a perfect game, and likely never will. The one thing I’ve learned from this is that it is okay to change an existing game’s design. Software publishers redesign their products constantly, why don’t game designers do it more often?”
— Chevee Dodd (@CheveeDodd)
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“Be as audacious as possible. Better to fail than to suck.”
— Max Temkin, a creator of Cards Against Humanity