It might seem like an esoteric problem at first, but the residents of my apartment live with this on a daily basis. There are two sets of elevators here with independent buttons. When people are in a rush, they press both buttons in an attempt to get an elevator sooner at the cost of someone else’s schedule.

I get that there’s no real retaliation besides harsh glares, but you’d think people would be a little more considerate. When I hear someone complain about the elevators being slow right after having noticed them press two buttons, I die a little inside.

I’ll assume for the purpose of this exercise that we’re all familiar with these common games. We can use them as examples when discussing game attributes.

Accessibility

Are players able to observe the entire state of the game? Snakes and Ladders is accessible as players can see everything clearly. Scotland Yard is inaccessible for the detectives as the position of Mr. X is hidden. Note that accessibility extends beyond visibility in friendly games. Players are limited to taking socially acceptable time spans for their turns and, consequently, can’t stop to calculate exactly how much money a player has at any given instance.

Determinism

Are all aspects of the strategy determined by the players once the game has begun? Battleship is entirely deterministic as there is no chance involved. Snakes and Ladders is entirely nondeterministic as players have no choice at any given time. Risk is noteworthy here as its frequent dice rolling lends itself to statistical trends. Roll a d6 1000 times and you’ll get a sum quite close to 350.

Inter-agent dependence

Are a players choices affected by the choices of the other players? In Risk, players’ choices are heavily dependent on the other players. Players in Battleship are entirely independent. Note that dependence requires some level of determinism.

Role symmetry

Do players share the same goal, have the same capabilities, and share the same starting conditions? The vast majority of games provide identical roles to their players. A few, such as Scotland Yard, provide different mechanics for different player roles.

Advantage continuity

Is a player likely to continue winning when already doing so? In both Risk and Monopoly, players with a significant advantage are likely to keep that advantage. If they lose that advantage, they lose it gradually. In Snakes and Ladders, the winning player can easily slide half-way down the board into last place. In Scotland Yard, it’s difficult to determine advantage, which might make this attribute difficult to gauge.

Advantage dampening

Are there game mechanics that draw player advantages towards eachother? In Risk, two weaker players are strategically compelled to form an alliance against a stronger player. In Monopoly, there are no official rules that allow alliances; Resources for losing players are simply absorbed into the larger players.

Finale Monotonicity

Is the game guaranteed to end at some point? Is that end accessible to the players? Snakes and Ladders could theoretically continue forever and Risk is often likely to do so. Both Scotland Yard and Battleship, on the other hand, have a limited number of moves before the game ends.

Strategic diversity

What strategically-viable avenues can a player take to win? None of the above mentioned games provide multiple avenues of success; Your end goal is directly linked to the actions you take. Fortunately, modern board games offer some strategic diversity within their gameplay.

Some of these attributes, when considered in pairs, reveal some of the flaws we often see in board games.

Advantage dampening and finale monotonicity

A game with only finale monotonicity will allow one player to gain an unstoppable momentum. A game with only advantage dampening is likely to continue forever.

Accessibility and finale monotonicity

If a player’s immanent win is inaccessible to the other players, they’ll likely feel discontinuity when the player reveals their unexpected win.

Inter-agent dependence and strategic diversity

If there’s only one avenue for success and players are highly dependent on each other, the game will have a difficult time dampening advantages.

Given what attributes we’ve been able to pull out, it’s easy to see why games like Puerto Rico and Caylus are so well received. This doesn’t really explain why some games that severely lack some of these attributes are fun (e.g. Dungeonquest), but so long as they are, I suppose it doesn’t matter too much.

Footnote: I’ve only considered discrete static nonepisodic games. Outside of those restrictions, we’re usually talking about video games. I wouldn’t be surprised if the above observations were applicable in that field as well, but that’s another topic entirely.