One Minute Philosophy
John Tynes' review of Halo 2 in The Stranger addresses that game largely from the perspective of what he calls the "one minute" gameplay principle: "There's a videogame design philosophy that says if you can make about a minute of genuinely fun play, you can build an entire game around it."
This philosophy was new to me, and I read with interest. At the end of the article I realized that this principle amounts to the same thing I told the people who came to the game design panels I sat on this weekend: To make a great game, figure out what the core gameplay is, then make sure the game consists of doing that over and over, interrupted with as little else as possible.
If the boardgame game is about fighting, don't make the players manage resources. If the RPG is about swashbuckling, don't obsess over the weight of equipment. In Cthulhu 500 ó the game about race cars passing each other ó even going in for a pit stop involves the possibility that you'll be passed by the car behind you.
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