I enjoy complicated games, but not if they’re so complicated that they detract from the business of having fun. I enjoy games with theme, but not if the theme comes at the expense of solid mechanics. I enjoy games that will keep us entertained for an evening, but I can’t ever set aside four or five hours in one sitting.

For any metric that you want to judge a game against, there is a spectrum. At each end of that spectrum you’ll find games that fail: they are too simple or too complicated; too short or too long; too adversarial or too light on interaction. But every now and then, a game will come along that hits a sweet spot: it occupies the perfect position on a particular spectrum for you.

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