Game Design Antipatterns

It can't just be a flaw in a game to be an antipattern; it has to be something that sounds like a good idea on paper but then when you actually play it, you discover it sucks. So while "a disjunction between what the player wants to do and what the avatar actually does" is a bad thing that should be avoided, nobody puts it in their game on purpose.

The format for an antipattern is the same as a pattern: Problem / "Solution" / Consequences / Examples.

For all of these antipatterns, we can cite good games that were guilty of them. That doesn't mean that these patterns aren't 'anti' after all; the games would probably have been even better if they did not follow the pattern.

The term "antipattern" may be poorly chosen, if it is meant to be meaningful. "Anti" means "opposite". An "antipattern", judging by examples, is not the opposite of a pattern. The opposite of a pattern might be either the absence of pattern (anti-hero: not a hero) or something which destroys patterns (anti-dote, something which nullifies a poison): neither works with the following examples. Instead, what we have here are patterns which have been labelled as "bad". A pseudo-Latin term might be "malpattern". In any case, irrespective of whether I agree that the following patterns are bad or not, their badness is only an opinion of the author. Antipattern is a bit of NewSpeak?, perhaps unconsciously meant to quell dissent in advance. I suggest it be re-considered.

PunishmentAntipattern

RealWorldTerrainAntipattern

UndifferentiatedTerrainAntipattern

SimulatingSimulationAntipattern

ComputerControlledAllyAntipattern