Sunday: This stupid Harry Potter movie is going to be on until midnight, isn't it? Did we really need an hour in the last movie of R+H+H having a camp out and doing nothing? Seems like that would have been a good thing to cut, but I guess that's why I'm not in charge of making cash grabs to get an extra billion dollars.

I mean, I'm just saying.  Still, it's a three day weekend, and I'm committed to finally finishing this movie series.

I felt like pizza.

While eating it, I decided that I'm even more sure that Pokemon Go is fundamentally broken.  There was a gym there, and I figured I could defeat it without much trouble (although Blissey should be nerfed for being annoying).  However, while I was getting ready for the third round, which would actually start knocking things out, the GPS decided I wasn't close enough, so I had to exit and re-enter the gym.  In that time, some asshole had dumped a pile of berries, healing everything back to where I had started.  What's the point?  It takes me three minutes to battle the gym, and it takes an opponent three seconds to undo all of that.  It's ridiculously asymmetric.

Which is basically how to identify a bad game.  A good game should give all players an equal chance of winning, and shouldn't require vastly different levels of effort to achieve that.  Ideally, there should also be multiple equally valid strategies, so it's not just a matter of doing "the thing that wins."  A quick list, because I've been thinking about this all evening:

• Pokemon Go: The gym thing I mentioned above should be fixed.  Additionally, it'd be nice if they found some way to make more Pokemon useful.  There are so many that are basically just trash that get in the way of the same six everyone uses.  I know that the strength is based on the original games, but who cares?  Why not make it so that, occasionally, you'll get an insanely powerful Pidgey or something?  Randomness helps smooth out bad mechanics to make a game more equal, and therefore more fun.
• Spooky House Betrayal at House on the Hill:  Like I said.  The entire game is essentially random, and I have not yet had a bad time playing it.  The bad guy is overpowered, but I've only played one scenario in which it seemed overwhelmingly so.  I suspect they've worked out the balance by attempting to ensure that in order to achieve each side's goal, each side needs approximately the same number of steps.
• Train Game Ticket to Ride:  This also relies on a lot of randomness.  Getting the cards you need requires the deck to be sorted the way you want, and filling the ticket requirements is an issue of getting what you want, and not having someone screw you over.
• Machi Koro: This game needs more/better mechanics.  The PvP aspects don't seem balanced well, and the fact that the entire second tier of buildings is largely unneeded to win means something isn't right.
• Settlers of Catan: This one also has a lot of randomness, and has many winning strategies.  I think some of the randomness works against it, though.  Fully randomizing the tiles creates problem layouts, and I don't think the 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1 placement completely equalizes this fact.  Having a set of pre-balanced placements (with probably something preventing brick/wood and stone/wheat junctions to maximize the necessity of trading) would probably help.
• Axis and Allies: I was surprised when I rebought this game, and there was so much redesign between the 80s version and the modern one.  But it's clear that this was done to fix the balance problem in the original.  In that version, the Axis has almost no working strategy to win, and this goes back to "there's one way to win": Russia dumps a wall of infantry on the border while the US and UK pour expensive units into Europe.  There is one possible counter to this, if the Russia player is cautious (Germany can invade and take out the UK on the first turn by dumping everything it has if they roll well).  The updated version added additional territories that make the old strategy invalid, and added new units that smooth out the cost/utility curve.
• Set Jr.: Sometimes you have to remember you're playing against someone who is five, and that you probably don't have to make all the optimal choices in the game to make sure it balances.

Side note: Why doesn't Harry just jump off the stairs, and do the thing to stop falling when he gets where he wants?  Wizards should really use more magic for simple things.

• People who make actual video games know that games are more fun if they don't always stick to the rules.
• Inequality.
• Marvel is selling a Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel costume.