[Ntrails]

There was a great Mark Rosewater blog ages and ages ago about how important it was for him to look holistically at a mechanic/theme/set/whatever and ask the most important question - is it fun.

Obviously different things are fun for different people, but some large segment of players need to find a thing fun or it shouldn't go in. Regardless of any other consideration (elegance, purity, cleverness etc etc)

[z3t4]

The problem is that the more people you adhere to the more washed out the game-play will become. So you have to ask yourself if you want the game to be super fun for a few people, or a little fun for many people. An easy mistake new developers do is that they take something that is very fun, and make it less fun in order to attract more people.

[me_me_me]

What do you call a super fun game for few people?

A dead game.

Whether its online or physical. Game that doesn't have player-base is doomed to be forgotten.

Artifact didn't even took off and the playerbase tanked to 200-300 people weekly. Who is going to wait 30mins to find a match? And what are the chances of even match-up?

[z3t4]

I was not referring to any game in particular. Once you have a very good solution to a real problem, or a game that a few people think is really fun, it's no longer a design/engineering problem it's a selling/marketing problem.

When you have few users it's not the time to water it down to suit the general public, you should only do that once you have the ship in motion. eg. million of users.

[dmoy]

> What do you call a super fun game for few people? A dead game.

RIP tribes:ascend. Not fun for most people because not being able to move across the map properly for literal hours of learning the gameplay makes it incredibly unapproachable.

Fun as hell once you learn, but still a dead game very fast.

[baud147258]

> What do you call a super fun game for few people

a niche game?

[mr_gibbins]

This is the problem I have with some cards and mechanics in MTG (particularly Arena). The white Ajani's Pridemate coupled with life-givers e.g. healing hawk/enchantments - you see it once, you shrug, say OK, but then every second or third match is Ajani and it's suddenly NOT FUN. You find yourself playing decks you don't like (like super-aggressive mono red, or decks tailored against Ajani) just to win a few matches. And eventually I wander off and play something else instead.

Statistics != fun.