Evolution

If a the rules and tokens of a game are static, players may, over time, become bored with it.

This idea was brought to our attention by Guus_Schijns?.

Very few games have remained both popular and unchanged for very long. Chess, Go?, and their ilk are among the few examples of games that have managed to remain largely unchanged for very long. However, in order to achieve their current state, the game play had to evolve over countless years, and even today, people create variants attempting to find that next improvement.

A game with an expansion set evolves. Some games are founded on evolution, such as CollectibleCardGame?s and many MiniatureGame?s. Others never evolve, and remain popular in spite of it. This idea, then, is very much an option, and not a requirement. However, it might be good to consider the possibility of evolution while the crafting the main game, so that expansions can slide cleanly and unobtrusively into place.

Another factor to consider that that some players might be bothered by constant change. This is a more important factor in an aggressively evolving system like a CCG, than with expansions to most games, where players well decided whether to use the expansion or not as a whole, before playing.

Examples:

• Carcassonne? started out as a good, self-contained game. Later, expansions were published, which were easily mixed into the game's tile set. The game's rules also evolved from earlier editions.
• Magic:_The_Gathering? took evolution to an extreme, and founded a new game form.
• Reportedly, The_Settlers_of_Catan? started out as a much larger game, and was cut down to make it more understandable (SimpleAsPossible) and practical to produce. Later, some of the other elements were released as expansions. (Others were apparently released as the separate game of Entdecker?.) The popularity of Settlers also spawned similar (evolved) games such as The_Starfarers_of_Catan?.
• 18xx? evolved entirely by publishing separate, but similar, titles.

Therefore, while designing any game, consider how the game might evolve in the future.

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