79 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
79 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
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# Browne's game-quality criteria
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Cameron Browne · **not a simulator** — a measurement vocabulary ·
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`checked` that it exists and its size; **the list itself `unverified`**
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## What it optimises for
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Answering *"is this game any good"* **numerically**, from played games,
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so that generated or modified games can be ranked without a human playing
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every one.
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**Browne presented 57 criteria for measuring the quality of a game.**
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`checked`
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## How a game is defined
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Not applicable — the criteria are computed over played games, whatever
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produced them.
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## What it can analyse
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The families that recur in work building on it: `checked`
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| family | examples |
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|---|---|
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| **turn metrics** | branching factor, **drama**, killer moves, **lead changes** |
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| **endgame metrics** | completion, duration, advantage |
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**Lead change is close to drama**: never changing leader is tedious, too
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much is chaotic. `checked` That framing — *a good value is an interval,
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not a maximum* — is the transferable idea.
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## What it does not do
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Nothing about **cooperative** games, hidden roles, or games with no
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individual leader — at least, nothing we have confirmed. `open`, and it
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is the question that decides how much of this is usable for GROUND.
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## Relevance to clay-borg
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**Track C is not open ground, and this is the evidence.** `Positioning.md`
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§4 proposed "assimilate knowledge about why games work" as though it were
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unclaimed. There is a twenty-year literature with a canonical criterion
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set, and Ai Ai computes members of it.
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**This is a good finding, not a bad one.** It moves Track C from *invent a
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theory of fun* to *adopt an existing vocabulary, credit it, and locate the
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gap* — and the gap is plausibly real: co-operative and hidden-role games.
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## What to steal
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- **The criteria as a vocabulary** for what our panels already half-measure.
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- **The interval framing**: our register would be improved by targets that
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are ranges rather than "0" and "100%".
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## What to avoid
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**Importing a metric whose subject does not exist here.** *Lead change*
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presumes a leader; SHARED GROUND has none, and `Modes.csv` says its
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tiebreak is "Not applicable". Computing lead change there would produce a
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number about nothing — [`../specs/Taxonomy.md`](../specs/Taxonomy.md) §2.2.
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## Open questions
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- The 57 criteria themselves, and which are defined for n-player
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co-operative play.
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- Whether anyone has extended them to social-dilemma games.
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- The primary source (Browne's thesis / *Evolutionary Game Design*) —
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**not read**, and it should be before Track C opens.
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## Sources
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- *Evolutionary Tabletop Game Design: A Case Study in the Risk Game*
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(https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.20008) — cites the 57 criteria and the
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turn/endgame metric families
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- *Quantifying game design*
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(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0142694X04000201)
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- *Measuring Board Game Distance* (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.03913)
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