During the course of teaching math, it has been quite a few months between times that I can spend on my blog. I’m a teacher, not a blogger, I guess.

My beef with your argument stems not from my own “very narrow, personal point of view about game preferences,” but rather from your own tragically narrow view of what constitutes math. When I support the assumption that all games are math, it’s because I understand that all math is not arithmetic. Math includes subjects, like, oh, say, game theory. Persuading people, misleading people, and so forth are just off-the-cuff calculations of what you think the other person needs versus what you need in a game setting. This is opportunity cost, another math concept. Every action taken has a projected result that must be balanced against other options. ALL OF THIS IS MATH. All of your protestations about the burden of introducing math into games are relevant only to the field of calculation and arithmetic, which frankly is a very elementary school interpretation of the subject.

Games are all about people, reading people, persuading people, misleading people, and so forth. Puzzles are often about math. (Single-player video games are interactive puzzles, not games.)

In the millennial generation the proportion who like math is very small. This is one reason why STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) is at a crisis for lack of students. I don’t see that many people play games because they like math.

The object of the designer of hobby games is to have people enjoy the games. If players are easily frustrated by something, it may be necessary to take it out of the game. Arithmetic clearly frustrates most young people. Ergo, take it out of the game unless it’s more important than the frustration it causes.

The general guideline might be: only allow arithmetic in a game when the inclusion is worth more than the damage it may cause.

Is a game designer in a contest to persuade people to do things they don’t enjoy? Not only no, but Heck no! I’ve been a college teacher for most of the past 10 years, and I see people coming out of K12 who have been trained to answer multiple choice questions on end of class tests, but haven’t been educated to think. There’s only so much I can do in an entire semester to really help such folks, it usually takes much longer. What am I, as a game designer, going to do for people who haven’t learned arithmetic decently (have been failed by the education system, perhaps)? The idea that I ought to sort them out via a commercial game is ridiculous. If you want to try to devise educational games (as opposed to entertainment) for such purposes, go ahead, being aware that it’s very hard to get people to play an educational game unless it’s primarily an entertaining game.

Sooner or later I’ll finish a piece about frustration in games. Frustration as part of the gameplay can be part of games (though it is becoming less acceptable). But frustration with the mechanical processes of playing the game (such as doing calculations) is part of the interface, not of the gameplay. Anyone who includes frustration as part of the interface should be in modern entertainment games is not in touch with 21st century reality.

If you think “this guy’s article is bullshit,” that’s your privilege in a free country. Many people seem to follow a very narrow, personal point of view about game preferences, as though they are absolutely typical (which of course they rarely are). And they judge everything through this egotistical personal lens. Game designers must deal with large groups of people and their preferences.