Episode 5

In general software engineering, patterns are everywhere. They come with a context, gotchas, and best practices. This sort of body of knowledge seems to be missing from game design, but why? Is it that design is a problem that can't be reduced to bite-sized solutions? Should we attempt to be more disciplined in understanding how we go about building our systems? The problems we cover are

Players are not intentional with resources
Players do not have a sense of progress
The game continues after the outcome is determined
In a multiplayer game, the winner is denied the satisfaction of the killing blow by the loser surrendering
Players do not understand how they failed
Players lose interest in the game when they feel they cannot win
Gaining skill by trial and error is not fun