Gamecraft
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What a game is: all 23 words

Interesting decision

Also said as Meier's rule, A series of interesting decisions

A choice with no obviously right answer, where you know enough to reason about it. A line credited to Sid Meier, from a 1989 talk, says a game is "a series of interesting decisions".

If one option is always best, it is not a choice. If you cannot tell the options apart, it is a coin toss. Between those two is where a player actually has to think.

“This shop is not an interesting decision, because one item is always best. Make the strong weapon cost health, so that a player on low health should sometimes pick the weak one.”

Sid Meier returned to the idea in his own GDC talk in 2012, using his Civilization games, where a turn might set you weighing a city now against a better site two moves away.

Interesting is about the moment of choosing: is it hard to decide? Meaningful is about what follows: did it change anything?

Name a word, or describe what you mean in everyday language.