Audience: anyone who has completed the first two lessons in the games curriculum.
Learning goal: analyze a game by identifying its core mechanics, information structure, and the relationship between design choices and player experience.
Prerequisites: you should understand what defines a game (What is a Game?) and how social context shapes play (Games as Social Practice).
Starting from a concrete example
Two card games use the same 52-card deck. In one, players try to collect sets of matching ranks by asking opponents for specific cards. In the other, players try to win tricks by playing the highest card of the led suit, with a trump suit that overrides. Same materials. Different games. The difference is not in the parts but in the mechanics — the rules governing what players do with those components.
Analyzing game design means identifying those mechanics, understanding how they interact, and tracing the connection between design choices and player experience. This isn’t about judging whether a game is “good” — it’s about being able to explain why a game feels the way it does.
An analytic framework
When you encounter a game — whether to learn it, teach it, write about it, or design a variant — the following questions provide a structured starting point:
What are the core mechanics? Name the specific systems that govern player action. Drawing cards, rolling dice, bidding, moving pieces, declaring actions in fiction. A game may use many mechanics, but usually one or two are central — the ones that players spend the most time engaging with.
What information is available? What does each player know about the game state? Is information public (visible to all), private (known only to one player), or hidden (unknown to all)? How information is distributed decides what kind of reasoning the game rewards. Public information rewards calculation. Private information rewards inference and bluffing. Hidden information introduces variance that no amount of skill can eliminate.
How is agency distributed? Whose turn is it, and what can they do during it? Can players act simultaneously or only sequentially? Can you respond to other players’ actions on their turns? Are all players’ action sets equal, or do roles create asymmetry (as in RPGs, where the game master has different capabilities than players)?
What is the win condition? How does the game end, and how does the group decide success? The win condition shapes strategy backward — every decision is ultimately evaluated against the end state. Multiple win conditions create branching strategies. Absent or subjective win conditions (as in many role-playing games) shift the focus from optimization to narrative satisfaction.
Where does uncertainty come from? Randomness (dice, shuffled cards), hidden information, opponent behavior, or skill variance? The source of uncertainty decides what managing uncertainty feels like. Managing randomness feels different from reading an opponent, even if the expected outcomes are mathematically similar.
Worked example: analyzing Brave Old World
Apply the framework to Brave Old World:
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Core mechanics: Conversation (the GM describes, players declare actions) and dice resolution (2d6, three result bands). The conversation mechanic is primary; dice intervene only when actions are risky.
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Information: Shared among all players — everyone hears the narration and each other’s declarations. The GM may hold private information about the fictional world (what is behind the door, what the NPC is planning). Players hold private information about their character’s intentions and goals.
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Agency distribution: Asymmetric. The GM frames situations and narrates consequences; players declare character actions. Within the player group, agency is informal — anyone can speak, and turn order is conversational rather than mechanical.
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Win condition: None in the competitive sense. The objective is to create a satisfying shared story. Success is subjective and consensual. This is why Brave Old World’s conflict resolution relies on consensus — without a formal win condition, the group must continuously negotiate what “good play” means.
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Uncertainty sources: Dice (2d6 resolution), GM decisions (how the fiction responds), and other players’ choices (what their characters do). The dice create mechanical uncertainty; the other players create narrative uncertainty.
This analysis explains a specific experience: Brave Old World feels conversational because the primary mechanic is conversation. It feels collaborative because there is no competitive win condition. It feels unpredictable because uncertainty comes from multiple independent sources. None of these are value judgments — they are structural observations that trace from design choices to experience.
Comparing games through mechanics
The framework becomes most useful when you compare games. Consider the difference between a trick-taking card game and poker:
| Feature | Trick-taking | Poker |
|---|---|---|
| Core mechanic | Play a card to win the trick | Bet on hand strength |
| Information | Partial (you see played cards, not hands) | Private (you see only your hand) |
| Agency | Sequential within each trick | Sequential betting rounds |
| Win condition | Most tricks or most points from tricks | Win the pot |
| Uncertainty | Card distribution, opponent play | Card distribution, opponent bluffing |
Both use the same deck. Both involve hidden hands. But the mechanics produce fundamentally different experiences: trick-taking rewards inference and timing; poker rewards risk assessment and deception. The comparison makes the design choices visible.
Exercises
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Choose a game you know well (board game, card game, video game, sport — any structured game). Apply the five-question framework. Write one sentence for each question.
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Compare two games that use similar materials or settings but feel different to play. Identify the specific mechanical differences that produce the different experiences. Avoid evaluative language (“better,” “worse,” “more fun”) — describe the structural differences and what they produce.
What comes next
With the core games curriculum complete — defining games, understanding their social context, and analyzing their design — the next step is to explore specific game traditions in depth. See the Topics for focused study of card games, role-playing games, and gambling.