Yehuda has a nice list about common design flaws

Hopefully those are pretty obvious to most folks, but good to see them listed out and probably helpful for newcomers to the field.

It seems to leave only a very few types of games as the product of something other than 'hack' game design.

Any game that uses random elements will come down to who rolls better numbers or draws better cards if the players are of equal skill.

And playing the odds? I can't imagine a game that includes random elements yet doesn't give the advantage to those who play the odds.

To say that unless player order has no effect the game must be redesigned seems naive. I'm very tempted to say that every game gives advantage to some position. Games that don't clearly give such an advantage usually have just had it overpowered by some other random factor.

I think the list contains good things to be aware of when designing games. But most of the points are vastly overstated.

You must have very restrictive settings. Yehuda is a well-known gaming blogger. His blog is hosted on Blogspot.

And there was no flash code on the page that I visited.

i meant the actual site flash driven dot com. i just didn't want to type it out as a link. the same site that 'Willi B' mentions. hope that clarifies.