ThematicDesign

A talk at Protospiel? 2002, by James_Kyle?.

James is of the conviction that games which are strongly tied to their themes are more captivating than those which are weakly tied to a theme. (There will of course always be an interest in purely AbstractGame?s.)

The idea CompellingGoal comes directly from this talk. Other ideas will probably appear here as well, directly or indirectly.

The notes for this talk, and several others by James_Kyle?, are available in the files section of the spitandbailingwire mailing list.

Another piece of promising advice came out during the talk: To make a thematic game, brainstorm a list of verbs that invoke the theme. These should be the basic actions of the game.