Through the Lens: Board Games - Game Design Theory - page 145

Party Games

Examples: Apples to Apples , Trivial Pursuit , Saboteur , Pictionary , Boggle

Party games are often silly games. They are often not games you would
want to play ten times in a row, or for months at a time. They are often
distractions, a mere vehicle for fun social interaction.
They don't have to be, though! There is no reason that a party game
can't be an excellent game in its own right. All a party game really needs
is for the mechanisms to be extremely simple—they need to stay out
of the way of the player's social interactions. It's best if the game even
uses players' social interactions, as in the case with Apples to Apples or
Saboteur .

Collectible Card Games

Examples: Magic: The Gathering , Pokémon Trading Card Game , Yu-Gi-Oh

Collectible card games, or CCGs, are fundamentally flawed and can nev-
er be great games. Games in this genre have different kinds of gameplay,
but it doesn't really matter how great the gameplay is because the very
fact that the game's cards are “collectible� means two horrible, balance-
destroying factors are in play.
The first problem is that the game is going to have way too much
content. In fact, often these games are in a state of perpetually adding
new content, which is clearly something that's impossible to balance.
The second problem is that not all players will come to the table with
the same amount of power. Some players start with different cards than
others (based on cards they've bought), which in itself can be an inher-
ent disadvantage. This is compounded by the fact that most CCGs have
rares , or cards that are better than other cards but hard to find Also, in
an unsavory attempt to exploit their fanbases, most CCG manufacturers
sell their cards in packs with a random mix: you buy a pack of 20 or so
cards, but you don't know up-front what cards are inside.
In short, CCGs care very little about being serious games and are
basically built to take advantage of people. New ones may continue to get
made, but nobody will be playing a CCG once its moment in the culture
has passed.

Deck-Building Games

Examples: Dominion , Puzzle Strike , hunderstone , Eminent Domain ,
Quarriors

In a deck-building game, you start out with a number of cards in a deck.
(Instead of cards, Puzzle Strike uses a bag of cardboard chips and Quar-