I have not written an article for a long time, I got inspired lately for something that I roughtly talked about some time ago. It lists 4 important rules that should be followed for board game design. Here is the link:
http://bgd.lariennalibrary.com/index.php?n=DesignArticle.Article-ruleOf4s
Enjoy!
I enjoyed reading this, for certain, and it strikes a very personal chord with me.
I'd recently relocated to a city over 800 miles away, and ended up moving with only the items I could fit in my car. When it came down to board games, I shed a tear while 'downsizing' to a collection of three "big box" games and about two small moving boxes of game components and art supplies.
Now that I've settled in a new place, I'm still attracted to "living small," so to speak, and although I have an impressive collection of game bits and parts, my published game collection consists of "small" games: those that can be played in a relatively short amount of time, and clearly take up very little space on the shelf.
I think using your four S's as a guide is a great way to maintain a "living small" aesthetic, reduce stress, and still produce quality games. It was a nice read. Thanks for sharing! :)
Small
Simple
Short
The counter to all of these is, filler games go cheap. Unit cost is going to be low. So yes, you can build it faster and it's easier to make, but it sells for less.
One of your repeated arguments is "more likely to get played as a filler". I agree that it is true that games of this type will get played as filler, but why is it desirable to make filler games? I much more remember playing Eclipse for hours than playing whatever version of fluxx I played last time I was playing a filler game.
Social
I think a better way of putting this is make it *interactive*. I think calling it social attaches a lot of boring empty interpersonal stuff. There needs to be some sort of interaction between players - they can trade, or they can block each others moves, or they can directly attack each other. Only the trade part is particularly social.
Your criteria for "good" games aren't about good games at all. They're about good *filler* games. There are *loads* of good games that meet none of these criteria (except social, which as I said is more precisely called interactive).
Now perhaps you think good filler has some other desirable quality, eg you think there's more money in making games like that. Idk, do you?
Even so, that doesn't make the games good games, it just makes them good at making money.
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Yes I understand your point of view that shorter games are more likely to be filler unless they are close to the 60 min.
It's not that I consider those games to be superior, I would love to design and play such games, it's just that if you want people to play your game, you have to go for short commitement games.
Most of the time, your prototype is competing against dozen and dozens of other commercial game which always looks more cool and interesting than your prototype. So convincing players to play your 3 hour game they never heard about is risky, on the other hand playing 3 hours on a game they read a lot of comments, they are willing to take the risk. If your game is 30 minutes, they are more likely to take the risk to play your game even if they have no clue what your game is.
So unless you have a dedicated group de playtesters, the only way to make your prototype get attention from all those commercial games out there is to try to convince people to play it as a filler.
It's unfortunate, but if you want your game tested with real people, it's the sad truth, especially today with generalized short attention span.