Games Should Make the Players Entertaining
Stop building a product that performs for people and start building one that makes people perform for each other.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 94%
This is Elan Lee's stated fundamental premise behind all game design and the filter he applies to every pitch that reaches Exploding Kittens: games should not be entertaining, games should make the players entertaining. The input is any mechanic in your prototype; the mechanism is asking whether it creates an interaction between two people; the output is a game that is basically a machine for making a table funny. It is the reason Coyote's cards sit face-up on the table instead of in a private hand, and the reason rock paper scissors — the most dismissed idea in game design — became a viable foundation once Tim pointed out you only enjoy it over repeated rounds. From round two, as Elan puts it, you are not playing the game anymore, you are playing each other.
Origin
Elan formed this premise across a decade of running Exploding Kittens, having sold roughly sixty million games. In this episode it is what let him take Tim's throwaway love of rock paper scissors seriously: normally invoking rock paper scissors ends a game design conversation, because there are only three tools, you deploy one, you determine a winner and you are done.
Core principles
- 01The design goal is not an entertaining game; it is a game that makes the people playing it entertaining to each other.
- 02Any mechanic that does not create an interaction between two players is a mechanic that is doing the entertaining for you, and it should be suspected.
- 03A four-player game in which all four people are effectively playing solitaire has no reason to exist, however clever its systems are.
- 04Rock paper scissors is trivial for one round and interesting from round two, because from round two you stop playing the game and start playing each other.
- 05Hidden information turns a decision into a private moment; public information turns the same decision into a performance the whole table participates in.
- 06Elan rejects roughly ninety percent of pitched games on this test alone — they are visibly straining to entertain the player rather than arming the player.
- 07The same test transfers outside games: any format whose success depends on the format itself being impressive is fragile compared to one that makes participants impressive.
How to run it
- 1
State the premise out loud before you design anything
Adopt the rule as a filter rather than a slogan: this game exists to make the people at the table entertaining to each other. Elan applies it before he evaluates theme, art, components or systems.
Pro tip Write it at the top of the design doc so every later argument gets settled against it.
- 2
Audit each mechanic for player-to-player contact
Go mechanic by mechanic and name the interaction it produces between two specific people. Elan's disqualifier is the four-player game where all four players are playing solitaire.
Pro tip Interactions can be cooperative, not just aggressive — a shared challenge counts if the players must react to each other.
Watch out A mechanic that only produces a number going up is a system talking to itself.
- 3
Move private decisions into public view
In Coyote the alternative to a hidden hand was to lay some cards face up on the table and choose from them in the open. Everyone can see the options, hope you take the first one, watch your hand hover, and groan when you take the second.
Pro tip The public version is usually the simpler version too, which pays off twice.
Watch out Do not make everything public — if there is no choice left to reveal, there is no performance.
- 4
Design for the repeated round, not the single round
Elan's unlock on rock paper scissors was Tim's observation that it is only fun played repeatedly, because you start picking up tells and patterns. The interesting game cannot start in round one; it starts in round two and moves forward from there.
Pro tip Ask what a player knows about the other players at the start of round two that they did not know at the start of round one.
- 5
Use the litmus test after every session
Elan's read on whether they had found something was that every time they played some version of it, the immediate answer when they finished was 'let's go again'.
Pro tip Watch for the reflex — an unprompted 'again' beats any rating out of ten.
Watch out A polite 'that was fun' with no move to reshuffle is a no.
- 6
Kill anything the players are not driving
Elan says he immediately dismisses pitches where the game is visibly working hard to entertain the players. Apply the same ruthlessness to your own darlings.
Pro tip The cut mechanics usually reappear later as modifiers rather than as core rules.
Watch out Cleverness is the most common reason a designer protects a mechanic that fails this test.
In the wild
On a rainy walk by the water in Toronto, Ken or Elan asked Tim broadly what games he had really enjoyed, and Tim said rock paper scissors — which, as Elan notes, is normally the end of any game design discussion because there is nothing to that game. What saved it was the qualifier: it is no fun unless you play multiple times, because over an extended period with friends you start to pick up tells and patterns. Elan immediately recognised the transition — you are not playing the game anymore, you are playing each other — and ran home to start scribbling on blank cards.
→ A two-year project that had been stalled at roughly one percent for months moved to about eighty percent designed within the following week.
Elan describes the standard convention — in Uno or almost any card game you hold a hand, make a decision privately, and reveal a card. He asked whether there was a simpler version, and there was: take some cards, put them all face up on the table, and then decide which one you are going to pick. In play this becomes theatre — everyone can see your options, everyone is hoping you pick the first card, you hover your hand over it, move to the second instead, and the table groans.
→ A simpler component set and a mechanic that converts every turn into a shared moment rather than a private one.
When Tim asks what cuts through in a cold submission, Elan returns to the premise: ninety percent of the game pitches he sees are attempts to be entertaining games, and he dismisses them immediately because the game is visibly working so hard to entertain the players. The ones he pays careful attention to are those where everything you do in the game creates an interaction between two players.
→ A single-question triage filter that lets him process submissions fast and explains why Exploding Kittens works on around a hundred games a year but ships fewer than twenty.
Common mistakes
Confusing a clever system with a social experience
Designers fall in love with the elegance of their systems, but Elan's reaction to a game that is straining to be entertaining is instant dismissal. The system can be beautiful and still leave four people alone at the same table.
Defaulting to a hidden hand because every other game has one
The private hand is convention, not necessity. Elan's point is that a hidden decision is a private moment, and privatising the decision throws away the exact instant where the table would otherwise react to you.
Judging a repeated-play mechanic on a single round
Rock paper scissors evaluated once is empty, which is why it kills conversations. The interaction only exists from round two onward, so any test that stops after one round will discard the mechanic that was actually working.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone designing a casual, social, or party product — games, workshop formats, group activities — where the value is created between participants.
Not ideal for
Deep solo or heads-down strategy experiences where the pleasure genuinely is the system itself, such as a single-player puzzle or a long-form simulation.
From the transcript
“my fundamental premise behind all game design is games should not be entertaining. games should make the players entertaining”
“we're not playing the game anymore. we're playing each other”
“i'm not interested in a four-player game where all four players are playing solitire”
“now it's me playing the players and those are the best games in the world”
From the episode
#821: My Two-Year Secret Project, COYOTE — The Strategies and Tactics for Building a Bestseller from Nothing with Elan Lee of Exploding Kittens