It’s hard to come up with game ideas, especially finding a place to start from. Let’s approach it by taking a look at win conditions.
So what win conditions do we have? The most obvious one is having a higher number than your enemy. Imagine a game where every round you and your enemy draw one card with a number and the higher number wins. Now you have a winning condition per round.
The second win condition could be skill based. The goal is to aim for the head. The first one to hit the enemy’s head wins. Now the win condition is about reaction time and accuracy.
Then we have puzzles. You take an image of something, slice it into pieces, and the player has to put the pieces back together into their original form. If they finished the task, they won.
Let’s make a list of win conditions now instead of explaining each of them in detail, each combined with the required skill to win:
- roll a higher number (luck)
- roll a number closer to a given number (luck)
- aim faster and more accurate (reaction, cognition)
- bring something destroyed back to its original form (cognition, perseverance)
- find/gather something (cognition, perseverance)
- carry something from A to B (perseverance)
- reach a destination first (cognition, logic)
- avoid being spotted (cognition, logic)
- dodge incoming objects/attacks (cognition, reaction)
- use the least possible amount of resources, optimize (logic)
- reveal the map (perseverance)
- follow a target (cognition, perseverance)
- remember something (memory)
- take care of something (perseverance)
- clean something (perseverance)
- hide items from being discovered (logic, prediction)
- don’t smile 😀 (self-control)
I’m pretty sure there are more specific win conditions, but I try to only stick to ones that are very essential. As you can see, each win condition has requirements, either skill or luck. There are several skills a task can require, e.g. reaction, cognition, perseverance, logic, memory.
To go one step further, I also wonder why you’d care to win a game. Is having a win condition enough to make someone care? Are we hardwired to care about winning, once we recognize that something is a game? Or what exactly is happening when someone starts caring about winning a game?
This probably depends on the individual and therefore it varies a lot. It is influenced by upbringing, cultural background, living circumstances, age, gender, mood and probably many other factors. When there are too many factors playing a role, then it becomes impossible to predict something. Therefore we cannot make any assumptions what type of game would get everybody involved in it. At best we could optimize for one specific group of people with a set of traits.
So my guess would be that “winning a game” only means something, if your personality is resonating with a goal. Specifically when you are good at something. E.g. when you are good at socializing, then social games might attract you more. If you are very competitive and good at fighting others, those games attract you more. If you are good at solving mysteries, then those games might interest you. And if you are good at nothing… you might enjoy gambling games… right? 😀
But of course this is very hard to define, as humans are complex systems and there’s always more invisible factors at play and I’m not able to fully decode all those factors yet.