Make the fun part also the correct strategy to win
This lesson comes from the set Unhinged, the second comedy oriented set made. In it Mark created the mechanic "Gotcha". Some cards had an effect that was triggered when the opponent did something. Some cards cared about touching your own face, others about laughing, others about certain words, others about speaking numbers, etc. The idea sounds fun in principle because you are making the players interact with some very unusual conditions.
That mechanic essentially backfired. Every player is supposed to speak, to touch his face, to laugh in at least one moment of the game. Unless the player has some physical disability that prevents them from performing such actions. That's the root of the issue. If you have a card that states that "this effect triggers when the player speaks the word attack", what is the opponent going to do to no trigger your card? They are going to avoid speaking. See the contradiction they created? The game is supposed to be interactive and the players have to speak to interact with each other!
It may sound obvious but the lesson that Mark is trying to pass on is that every player expects the game to be fun. If you make a game that requires the player to make a huge effort to have fun, it has lost its purpose and value. The player is going to obey the game's rules as long as they are rewarded with fun. If having fun in a game means having to make sacrifices and doing things that a player don't want to, why are they going to play the game in the first place? The player shouldn't feel forced to understand your game to find he fun. It's the developer's job to make the game fun and crystal clear. Mark's 5th lesson is about confusing interesting with fun and I believe that they made this mistake with the mechanic "Gotcha".
Level design can very well suffer from that. Fun vs. Win. The design of a level may be following ideals or goals that aren't matched with the game's goals or ideals. For example: if a level has a car and the player has drive it to the level's end, that level can't have so many obstacles and be painful to the point that driving the car is the worst choice to reach the goal. If the level is built to allow the player to move in a certain way, use or not some weapons, it has to resonate with the game. Otherwise the game feels contradictory by asking the player to do something, whereas the player can't perform what the game is asking them to perform. I'd say, mind you it's a personal opinion, that when a level lacks coherence and cohesion with the rest of the game or within itself, the communication between whoever made the plot, whoever made the mechanics and whoever is making the level has failed. When mechanics, plot and level don't talk to each other we have problems, many of them.
This card self destructs as soon as a player casts a spell. When this happens, the opponent of whoever cast the spell draws three cards. What's the strategy behind this card? Play it and wait, as the name suggests, for the opponent to cast a spell to make you draw three cards. What's the problem? The opponent may choose to not cast a spell. On the other hand, you wouldn't cast a spell and have the card backfire on you, giving your opponent cards for free. What this card creates is a situation in which neither player, or more in case there are, is going to cast anything and they wait for the other. How is the game going to progress if nobody casts a spell? That's the problem. The correct way of playing this card is to lure your opponent or trick them into casting some spell first.
How would this happen in level design? If the game gives the player weapons with long range, the level has to allow for long range. If there are weapons for close combat, the game does allow players to fight in another way when long range is not possible. If the player scores points by destroying certain targets, a level design that makes it hard or impossible to destroy the targets is a problem. The player wants to score points and destroy targets, why force them to not do it? One the worst things a game can do and this applies to level design as well is to give the player tools, but the game or the level are made in a way that the player can't use those tools. For example: if the player can jump and is invited to do it, why place traps that punish jumping? Or why make a level where jumping is boring and the player is punished for jumping? If the player has to behave in a way to get through the level and this means waiting 1 or 2 minutes, the player will become annoyed.
You may have asked: How do I know what is fun? I know that the answer to this question may be obvious, so let's change it a bit. "How do I know what others think / find it's fun / funny?". Mark wrote a whole article about empathy and empathy is the key here. People have fun in their own personal way. Some people may have fun cooking, while others find cooking a waste of time. What it's fun for you may not be for someone else. The better you are at understanding, sharing and feeling other's emotions the better you are at making a game that is fun not only for you, but for your target audience as well. In here I won't discuss this in depth because the psychology of empathy is not the main subject and it requires a separated page because it's a broad topic. However, I should point out that to have fun is an experience and we can't force ourselves to have fun if we just can't have it. Much less force someone else to have fun in the same way we do, unless they share the same desires or preferences as us.
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