Game designers have many critical decisions to make regarding the experience they wish to provide. In this post, we discuss our philosophy, which will help explain the decisions we made when creating I Love Mahj.
Our overarching principles are:
We believe Mah Jongg is as much a brain exercise as it is a game
We believe Mah Jongg is a social activity
We want the online experience to be as close to an in-person game as possible
For instance, we are sometimes asked "why do I have to click Ignore on each discard?" We know some platforms offer “Ignore” only when the computer knows you can take the tile. However, based on our first principle, our aim is to have players make decisions regarding each tile, instead of the computer doing a large percentage of the “brain work” for them.
In a real-life game, you have to make the decision to call or ignore a tile, and you only have a few seconds to do so (between the time the tile is discarded and the time the next player has picked their tile from the wall and racked it). On our platform, this corresponds to our "Auto-ignore timer". The pause button near the timer is the real-world equivalent of "Hold on a minute" and will give you more time when needed (eg: reworking your hand mid-game).
Another example is the way we display the discards. The computer "could" group the tiles and calculate how many of each have been discarded. It could even show who discarded what. But again, this would take away from the brain exercise that Mah Jongg provides and wouldn’t replicate an in-person game. We do actually offer these options, but only as a practice/learning tool, not in a real game.
Finally, principle #1 drove our efforts to create bots that would provide a challenge to all skill levels (from beginner to advanced).
With regard to principle #2, our platform strives to facilitate the social aspects of Mah Jongg. This is why we give members the ability to manage their list of friends, set up private tables and form groups that get together and play on a regular basis. This is also why we've built audio and video into the game. We believe chit-chatting with tablemates is as much a part of an enjoyable experience as the game itself, and we did not want that part to be lost online.
In summary, our approach is to provide our members with the tools to enjoy all the social aspects of Mah Jongg, in addition to as much mental stimulation as possible.