Softer wins

When you play Monopoly or Risk or Sorry! there is always someone crowing in triumph while others quietly sulk in defeat. But Richard Tait, 40, founded Cranium in 1998 with the opposite idea: to produce games ''where everyone has a chance to shine,'' a phrase he repeats like a mantra in every conversation. Tait designs games that no single player can dominate; at some point, every player will be the hero. ''And then they have that moment of glow, that moment of shine, that moment where everyone celebrates them,'' he says, speaking practically in the cadence of a preacher. That makes the games particularly appealing to young children, who can be unhinged by the sting of losing. And for parents, it means that playtime is unlikely to end in tantrums. You can win a Cranium game, but no one really cares. It is, as one Cranium designer delicately puts it, ''a softer win.''

From The New York Times: The Play's the Thing, via Blackbeltjones

How do they achieve this?  Firstly, every game has multiple components, each one challenging a different skill (see Howard Gardner's theory of ''multiple intelligences'). Secondly, the game design process builds out from ''moment engineering'', "imagining the paroxysm of triumph each player ought to feel at least once in the game and using that as their goal post."

Based on my own play experiences, I'd say the same approach has been taken by the designers of the party games EyeToy and Wario Ware. There is obviously something about designing for groups of people who will be in the same living room that results in more sociable solutions. (Or at least solutions that are more appealing to this tantrum-throwing casual gamer.)

See also: Mike Kuniavsky's Extending a Technique: Group Personas.