Rules, Goals, and Meaningful Choices
Core flashcards on the anatomy of a game and what makes a decision meaningful.
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Questions Covered in This Set
11 cards to master
What are the five load-bearing parts of a game?
Players, Goal, Rules, Choices, and Feedback.
How did Bernard Suits define a game?
"The voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles" — the voluntary part matters, since forced obstacles keep rules but lose play.
What is a player's 'strategy space'?
The full menu of moves/choices available to a player at a given moment.
Sid Meier's formulation of a game
"A series of interesting decisions."
What four conditions make a choice meaningful?
1) At least two options a reasonable player might take; 2) options differ in consequence; 3) the player can reason but not instantly solve it; 4) feedback lets you feel the outcome.
What is a dominated strategy?
An option that is never better than another — if one option is always best, the 'choice' isn't a real choice.
Why is 'roll a die, add to score, first to 30 wins' not really a game?
It contains zero decisions — it's a lottery, a race between random number generators.
What single rule turns the dice game into Pig, and what decision does it create?
"Roll a 1 and you lose the whole pot" — creating the press-or-bank decision on every roll.
Expected change from one more roll in Pig with pot p
(5/6)(4) − (1/6)p = 10/3 − p/6, which is positive while p < 20 → crude rule: bank at 20.
Why can 'bank at 20' be the wrong play?
Context changes the decision: if the opponent is at 97 and you're at 60, you should push past 20 because a safe loss is still a loss.
Why do Tic-Tac-Toe and Chess differ so much despite similar rulebook size?
A game is not its rules but the decision space they create; Tic-Tac-Toe's space collapses into a forced draw, Chess's does not.
