Great article on design

I agree with nearly everything Matt Thrower says here, although the last point seems specific only to reviewers of games and not to designers. I think I follow most of his design advice, most of the time, but it's great to have an intelligent, well-written take on these concepts and to think them over again.

I particularly agree with his take on randomness - although I do love the elegance of a completely player-determined game, a random element makes for a whole lot of variety, as I've written about before.