version 0.7

Something I’ve been thinking on for quite a while, but reading this manifesto on the Trick’s Tales blog finally got me to write this up… version 0.1 anyway. And, of course, this is a personal manifesto that influences my commercial work, but isn’t a limit to my commercial work.

Game Design Manifesto

1. Fight the difficult problems. For example planning, executing, and resolving simultaneous moves is very difficult, especially in person, but that’s why this is a personal manifesto. I need to try and go where others haven’t, to avoid competing over the same ideas, or through failure illustrate and document what cannot work.
2. When possible all games have online and/or hybrid and/or solo options.
3. IGOUGO¹ is easy to adjudicate but it suffers from being unrealistic and with many designs it reduces player engagement while the inactive players wait for the game state to change. Designing “We-Go” methods is more challenging, but has many benefits and is more realistic.
   1. Dispensing with “turns” is next, different actions require different levels of commitment to removing other options, a game should reflect that.
   2. The speed of decision making is a factor in real world success, games should reflect that.

( I’m hardly the first to think this ).

4. Other players should be unidentifiable outside of the game when possible. This prevents any kind of communication or signalling outside the game, or also prevents impressions of others’ mood or ability affecting decision making. Gaming against known opponents should be an option not a default.

   1. This means communication should be carefully managed.
   2. This also, combined with an emphasis on text based interfaces, should enable AI and “centaur” ( computer-assisted human ) play more easily.

5. A situation should be imagined, then the game mechanics should reflect that situation. Try to avoid standard mechanisms such as only having five options this turn because you’ve drawn five cards, rather than only five options are available in the imagined reality. I’m not above bending the imagined reality for this to work though.

6. Games should only be as complex as they need to be, but shouldn’t be kept simple because that meets ideal conditions for available time or players. Also avoid limits due to the preferred way of working by the available playtesting networks. This should always be communicated clearly, and as early as possible in the player’s engagement with the game.

7. These two are stolen directly from Trick’s manifesto, although I infer our greater aims are entirely different:

   1. “I’m about deconstruction, finding the limits of the hobby and pushing on them. I’m about experimentation, breaking the norms of my own manifesto.”
   2. “I’m about deeply-considered worldbuilding.”

8. Rob Grayston once responded to one of my ideas with “ye gods too avant garde”, I should aim for this reaction with every design. We only learn where the boundaries are by stepping over them and looking back, and potentially discover new methods in the process.

9. No figures or toys unless they’re a literal one to one representation.

10. And finally, not intending to be quite as pretentious as it sounds, any suggested or realised designs are partly created to use Cunningham’s Law to learn from others.

Megagame Design Specifically

1. Online or hybrid first, with those formats seen as a part of the game, not an obstruction. If most players are in-person, with a few remote… are those remote players gods, or distant commanders, or far-flung aliens, or….

2. Casting is everything, both in how the game will run, and in making it clear to players what their role will involve.

3. When possible, games should be simultaneously playable by a variety of skills and personality types, in appropriate roles. The bubbly extrovert who’s made friends across the entire game room or server by the end of turn one should need the studious introvert hunched over the rulebook and team’s resources to tell the extrovert what edge the team has; and vice versa the extrovert can feed intelligence on opponents into the introvert’s calculations. All to give their team the best outcome.

4. Games need breaks. Either enough time for players to take their own time-out, or scheduled or spontaneous breaks that fit into the game’s theme or mechanisms. Megagames should be a test of a wide variety of skills, we do not regard endurance as a skill.

5. Player documentation needs rethinking:

   1. Whenever possible players should learn through play, say a solo game before hand, or an extended turn zero.
   2. Players should be given, and expected to read, the absolute bare minimum for their role.

6. Formats should be experimented with:

   1. Players should be able to join and leave, some roles needing eight hours, some needing thirty minutes.
   2. The same game could be played twice - at least - in the same day. To demonstrate the value of replaying scenarios.

7. My games shouldn’t need me, any suitably experienced professional should be able to facilitate them.

Current Designs

Just a list of what I have half-formed, that needs to be finished in some way. Many of these names are “preliminary names”, I’ve listed their status in italics as of February 2025.:

• A Challenge To Leadership - a discussion game inspired by an academic paper on Zombie Leadership. paused
• Arctic Blockades - an overly simplistic introduction into the near-future of the Arctic Circle, a relatively short online demonstration game to introduce non-gamers to the medium. paused
• Chess variations - We-go² multiplayer chess variations. vague notes
• Chorvs - a multi-player space colonization rogue-like or something. vague collection of vague notes
• Cyberkill - A game of variable length actions, subverting the concept of turns, as multiple cyberpunk cyborg assassins and bodyguards fight each other, and cognitive overload, in a split-second battle over their target/asset. there’s something to this, it needs to be a physical game somehow
• Dungeon Hideout - one or more player controlled groups hide within a procedurally generated dungeon from pursuers, and potentially its existing inhabitants. vague notes
• High Fantasy Football - a We-go medieval fantasy sports simulation that keeps growing.
  • Sigilball Zero - the “true” version of the imagined sport on the imagined world, probably unplayable by anything except programs. in active development
  • Sigilball One - a solo version of the above, overcoming issues with the game by putting the entire administrative load onto a single player. will come after Sigilball Zero
  • Sigilball Strategy - a simpler version of the original game, inspired by “Football Strategy”. in very sporadic development
• Liberty and Aviation - a mashup of two existing games, combined with the question of “what situation would need the Continental Army to take over the British invaders’ airports during the American Revolutionary War?”. vague notes but hope to make this
• Market Forces v1 - a spreadsheet based We-go² decision making game for online participants based around competing Market Square Coffee Shops. deceased
• Market Forces v2 - a Theatre of the Mind matrix game as part of the “Wargames and Lego Serious Play Experiments” series. deceased
• Multicity Monopoly Megagame - distributed city management and trading game designed for hybrid play.
• Multiverse Time Travel Diplomacy Megagame - can your country win, both everywhere, and everywhen? vague notes
• Smashbeef - a We-Go area map game of superheroic combat. vague notes
• Uplifted Goose Game - this must live. will be a simple online Ink based game
• Water Water Everywhere - on managed climate change in the East Midlands. No longer a collaboration. currently planned as a “depressing quiz”, playtest soon
• A very simple online games platform for one or more of the above.

Notes and Tasks

• I must get hold of Peter Williams’ presentation from Connections UK 2022. This was excellent on maps. And while I favour irregular sized areas, he makes sense for the intelligent use of squares.

• Start a list of things to subvert: IGOUGO, fixed and mutual turn lengths, players knowing the absolute strength of their own units and the outcomes of dice rolls ( is that unit elite, or did they just get lucky, or is your strategy superior? ), outcomes being statically relevant to a single skill level.

• Indented unordered lists are underwhelming in this template, consider more titles and sub-titles.

• Does this format work well enough, or consider more titles and sub-titles?

• I must reply to this tweet when this is finished.