{"id":14502,"date":"2012-04-06T20:17:51","date_gmt":"2012-04-07T03:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/?p=14502"},"modified":"2012-04-07T01:21:11","modified_gmt":"2012-04-07T08:21:11","slug":"in-good-game-design-less-is-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/2012\/04\/06\/in-good-game-design-less-is-more\/","title":{"rendered":"In good game design, less is more"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"fancybox\" rel=\"14502\" href=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Why_boats_are_cool.jpg\"<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Why_boats_are_cool.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Why_boats_are_cool\" width=\"600\" height=\"347\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-14503\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Jon Shafer, currently at Stardock and formerly of Firaxis, has a great article on his blog about why limits are good things. It also explains briefly why boats (pictured) are awesome.<\/p>\n<p>Game design is the art of providing enjoyable frustration (credit to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.andrewpmayer.com\/\">Andrew Meyer<\/a> for that phrase) and the frustration part is something that often has to be tiptoed around or hidden from players.  Most players think they&#8217;re just in this for the power fantasy of it all.  Shafer gives a few examples of how limitations and scarcity create value.  Read the article <a href=\"http:\/\/jonshaferondesign.com\/2012\/04\/03\/make-a-better-game-limit-the-player\/\">here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>In good game design, less is more - Quarter to Three<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/2012\/04\/06\/in-good-game-design-less-is-more\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In good game design, less is more - 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