"Making Wargames - Brent Spivey Interview" Topic

Brent Spivey (who has created, amongst other things, the Origins nominees Havoc and Battlefield: Miniature Modern Warfare) has given some very useful insights on making wargames.

General interview is here
link

Game Design/Playtesting insights here
link

Well worth a read if you're interested in designing games.

A very interesting discussion. Thanks for sharing.

Once it's felt that a certain degree of balance has been met, the game rules and other data is put into a computer simulation program and large volume virtual testing is performed. While the program we use most certainly doesn't rival Google's AI or feature true 'deep learning', it's pretty slick and extremely useful for spotting exploits, tendencies, and patterns. Small tweaks to the game are then made based on the information.

Yes, that is the first reference I have seen of a designer using a computer to suss out patterns in the game processes. It would be interesting to know what program Brent used.

This one has both me and my group completely obsessed with playing it like nothing else ever has. It's one of the first games that has me thinking about it as much from a player's viewpoint as a designer's viewpoint.

I think this is a great indicator, but also an interesting point about game designers.

Raph Koster noted this in his book, A Theory of Fun for Game Design.

Game designers spend less time playing individual games than the typical gamer does. Game designers finish games less often than typical players do. They have less time to play a give game because they typically sample so many of them…

Basically, game designers suffer from what I call "designeritis." They are hypersensitive to patterns in games. They 'grok' them very readily and move on. They see past fiction very easily. They build up encyclopedic recollections of games past and present, and then then theoretically use these to make new games.

I often see this disconnect between gamers and game designers in discussing game design. Game designer often play for analysis rather than enjoyment. [though obviously, designers enjoy the analysis part…] In talking about games, the two groups will talk past each other.