In his book Game Architecture and Design, Andrew Rollings attributes this quote to Sid Meier: "A game is a series of interesting choices." In the same paragraph, Rollings then elaborates with: "To be worthwhile, gameplay choices must be non-trivial. Each strategy that the player considers using must have an upside and a downside. ... If there’s only a downside, no one will ever use that strategy so why bother including it in the game?"

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