Marc Kenobi
I’ve been playing games all my life, from traditional family games played as a kid, to six hour convention games of twilight imperium. I play board games, video games, card games, role playing games, war games, and mind games (when I’m playing werewolf).
I love games that leave you with stories. It might be the re-telling of an epic adventure, or the decisive moment when your brilliant strategy paid off (or failed), but I believe great games leave you with memories that last beyond the moment and thats the type of game I want to make.
I believe stories about games get created at the intersection of three factors and this is the philosophy I bring to the games I work on:
Charm
Something about the game has to catch your attention and draw you in, be it the theme the beauty of the artwork, or how smart the mechanisms are, and if multiple aspects are working together so much the better! Games that don't charm us are games we soon forget and I firmly believe charm is created as a side effect of a creator's passion.
Choice
Be it railroaded role-playing or traditional roll-and-move games, if you don't make any choices you rarely create stories. You need to be at the heart of the action driving the result, then your stories include your personal take on the game and how you changed the outcome.
Chance
Without any chance, where the outcome is known and clear from the start, a game falls flat. The same is true at the other end of the spectrum where too much chance leaves a game feeling random. The best games, like the best stories, involve the element of surprise created by the injection of chance.