What Makes a Game Great?

"Lifestyle games," games that are hobbies in themselves for players who rarely play anything else, are almost always great games: Diplomacy, Bridge, Chess, Magic: the Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons. But not all great games become lifestyle games. What makes a game "great"? Not good, not a flash-in-the-pan, rather an all-time great game?

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A game is never "great" to everyone. Chess is a great game, but many gamers can't stand to play it (though a great many have tried). We can say the same for D&D or any other RPG.

Longevity is important. Some will say a new game is "great", but we cannot tell until years have passed, no matter how much we like it when it comes out. Furthermore, not every great game is great by current "design standards", but it may still be a great game in terms of how it has affected people and the enjoyment it has given to people. "New" doesn't necessarily mean "good" and "old" doesn't mean "bad".

Popularity is not a criterion. There are many popular tunes, movies, games, books, that disappear from our notice in a year or three. Great games continue to be loved year after year, just as great novels, movies, music are enjoyed perennially.

If a game is one of hundreds that people might want to play, can it be a great game? No, it should stand out from the crowd. If you play a game just to kill time or socialize, then the fact that you’re playing it certainly doesn't make it a great game, no matter how many times you play. Not "oh, yeah, I guess we can play that," it must be "I'd love to play that" - again and again. If you can spend your valuable time just to play this game or think about this game, not merely to socialize, when you have other things to do, then it may be a great game. If lots of people don't play it hundreds of hours each, over many years, can it be a great game?

Great games often engender much discussion, and often a literature, about the fine points of good play. Chess, Bridge, Diplomacy are obvious examples.

I'd say:
· if a game is played by a great many people
· who love to play it (they're not just passing time/killing time/playing to socialize)
· who play it for hundreds of hours (per person) over the years
· who can still enjoy it many years after it was first published
· who make variants that are fine games,
then it's probably a great game.

Monopoly is poorly-designed. It's certainly the most-sold commercial game. You can argue that it's usually played by default, because it's traditional, rather than because people truly want to play it. I'd say it's not a great game because it fails the "love to play it" test as well as the variants test.

Which RPGs could be called great games? Comments?

Reference Books: Hobby Games: the 100 Best and Family Games: the 100 Best, both edited by James Lowder.

photo by Alex Vye
contributed by Lewis Pulsipher

 

[Random Bystander]

As far as a game being a lifestyle choice, both GURPS and Hero System players tend to be quite dedicated to their respective games, and quite able to argue why.

For D&D, there is a question of how many play D&D because they truly do prefer D&D to other games, and how many play D&D because it is popular. That being said, certainly D&D is a lifestyle for some gamers, given the existence of games in play which span one or more decades.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'd say:
· if a game is played by a great many people
· who love to play it (they're not just passing time/killing time/playing to socialize)
· who play it for hundreds of hours (per person) over the years
· who can still enjoy it many years after it was first published
· who make variants that are fine games,
then it's probably a great game.

'A great many people' is relative. No RPG is played by a significant fraction of the population, even the population in North America among whom the first RPG was released over 40 years ago. And a lot of people who play RPGs do just play them to pass time and socialize. But, RPGs do lend themselves to a lot of hours of play, they're more elaborate than most other hobby games, that way.

Monopoly is poorly-designed. It's certainly the most-sold commercial game. You can argue that it's usually played by default, because it's traditional, rather than because people truly want to play it. I'd say it's not a great game because it fails the "love to play it" test as well as the variants test.

There are myriad variants or table-rules of Monopoly, itself, and no small number of imitators (that, like the original, weren't so well-designed, and unlike it, never became that popular).

Which RPGs could be called great games? Comments?

By those standards, no RPG has become popular enough to even be in the running. The few potential candidates are necessarily the earliest, most primitive examples of the hobby. Will some RPG shake out to be the Chess or Go or even Monopoly of future generations? Probably not, but it's not impossible...

 

[Random Bystander]

There is another thing that may need to be considered - fads have an effect on how something is perceived, and games that are now popular are, most likely, popular in part because they are different than games we, in general, previously played.