What is a critical analysis, and why do we care?

Critical analysis is not just a game review. We are not concerned with how many out of five stars, or any numbers from 0 to 10, or whether or not a game is “fun” (whatever that means), or aiding in the consumer decision of whether or not to buy a game.

Critical analysis does not just mean a list of things that are wrong with the game. The word “critical” in this context does not mean “fault-finding” but rather a thorough and unbiased look at the game.

Critical analysis is useful when discussing or comparing games. You can say “I like the card game Bang! because it’s fun” but that does not help us as designers to learn why it is fun. We must look at the parts of games and how they interact in order to understand how each part relates to the play experience.

Critical analysis is also useful when examining our own works in progress. For a game that you’re working on, how do you know what to add or remove to make it better?

There are many ways to critically analyze a game, but I offer a three-step process:

Describe the game’s formal elements. Do not interpret at this point, simply state what is there.
Describe the results of the formal elements when put in motion. How do the different elements interact? What is the play of the game like? Is it effective?
Try to understand why the designer chose those elements and not others. Why this particular player structure, and why that set of resources? What would have happened if the designer had chosen differently?

Some questions to ask yourself during a critical analysis at various stages:

What challenges do the players face? What actions can players take to overcome those challenges?
How do players affect each other?
Is the game perceived by the players as fair? (Note that it may or may notactually be fair. Perception and reality often differ.)
Is the game replayable? Are there multiple paths to victory, varied start positions, or optional rules that cause the experience to be different each time?
What is the game’s intended audience? Is the game appropriate for that audience?

What is the “core” of the game — the one thing you do over and over that represents the main “fun” part?

Just remember:

Games are systems.
Understanding a game is much easier if you have played it.
Analyzing a game requires looking at all of the game’s working parts, and figuring out how they fit together and how a play experience arises from them.
Designing a game requires the creation of all of the game’s parts. If you haven’t defined the formal elements of your game in some way, then you don’t really have a game… you just have the seed of an idea. This is fine, but to make it into a game you must actually design it.