How to make a successful (fun) game

The following list is from “The Air-Speed Velocity of Unladen Gaming” by Brad Wardell

1. Multiple paths to victory. Whether it’s a strategy game or a platform game, you want players to be able to have multiple ways to win. In Civilization, you could win by conquering the world or sending your people to another planet. In Baldur’s Gate II, you can play as both good and evil and most puzzles had multiple ways to complete it.
2. Provide new things to discover over the course of the game. Don’t put all your game elements up front. Have things you strive to get or see that makes it worthwhile to keep playing. Strategy games tend to do this by having new technologies and new units you can build. Role playing games keep you looking for that +5 armor.
3. Keep the interface simple. Seems obvious but many game developers are more into the technology than the game. A good game’s interface shouldn’t even be noticeable. If the player is losing due to not being able to navigate the interface, that will harm the game. I loved Total Annihilation but loathed TA: Kingdoms because of how much work it was to micro manage the units that you had to do to succeed.
4. Avoid helpless defeat scenarios. You don’t want players losing the game because of something they consider cheesy. In Starcraft, it could be frustrating having a mass of cloaked ships wipe someone out because their otherwise impressive army didn’t have enough cloak detection units. Total Annihilation had the Big Bertha which could be abused. Similarly, in role playing games, you have to keep players from getting too far too fast to where they can’t defeat the bad guys. Believe me, this is not a trivial thing to design in. Cheese tactics are very hard to design against but the games that stay popular over time are the ones that successfully design against it.
5. Design for the proper target hardware platform. Yea, I might have a dual 850 setup but I suspect most people don’t. We design games for P2-233 systems. Unless you’re making a totally cutting edge game (like a first person shooter) you better make sure that most people can play it optimally. Strategy games for instance, aren’t 3D because people want them, they’re that way because game developers want to make 3D stuff. There’s no excuse to double the hardware requirements for your strategy or RPG to make it a 3D engine. There is market research out there and believe me, people don’t care whether the engine is 3D or 2D when they make purchasing decisions.