Using Aesthetics

Some of the most prolific video game mods for any game will be texture packs. Texture packs usually don't re-theme a game or change it mechanically. All they do is make a game look more pleasing to the viewer. This illustrates the importance of aesthetics to players.

I'm not trained in aesthetics in the abstract, but most of my higher education was aesthetics training after a fashion. According to Wikipedia, aesthetics "is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well the philosophy of art."

Denis Dutton describes aesthetics as having six universal indicators: expertise, non-utilitarian pleasure, style, criticism, imitation, and special focus. Previously, I have written that form (as opposed to function) is another term for aesthetics. Remember that our definition of design on this blog is the relationship between form and function (or content). So, we can look at these six indicators as indicators of design as well. Certainly expertise, criticism, and imitation are obviously elements found in the meta-conversation about well-crafted design. Special focus means that the subject of the work is set above the mundanity of life and imbued with a certain level of drama. Achieving a special focus should not be too difficult for board game designers who already have to distill down a theme to what can be supported by mechanics. 

Non-utilitarian pleasure is where we start to find some difficulty. This is where fights can break out over whether better looking games are more fun to play. I would argue that mechanics appeal to the analytical side of human nature and theme/art appeal to the emotional side. Which you prefer in a game may say more about you than about the game. In this video, Mark Rosewater shares lessons he's learned in his years designing Magic: the Gathering. He argues that aesthetics matter and that "poor implementation is fighting against human nature" because "humans come pre-loaded with emotional responses." We will never all agree on what is "good" and "bad" in art, but as humans, we all have art/art styles we prefer. And chances are, those preferences are emotional and difficult to quantify. In short, just because you don't mind sparse art doesn't mean that that style is the best choice for a game if you are hoping for broad appeal. 

Style in art is the organization of certain distinctives, like color, line-quality, and predominant shapes into categories. In art, we recognize Cubism as distinct from Impressionism. In board game design, we might start by separating games by genre: fantasy, history, horror, modern life, etc. We can look at atmosphere, tension, humor, excitement, peacefulness, drama, heroism, etc. By combining thematic elements and emotional content we see a game's style start to emerge. This can be somewhat separate from the art of a game or can include art and graphic design. Ryan Laukat has a distinctive art style. His games also have a distinctive playfulness and explorative style that would exist even if he were not the artist of his games. 

How is this useful? Game designs need to not just be mechanically appealing, but aesthetically as well. Because aesthetics appeals to us on an emotional level, playtesting must take the emotional feedback of players into account. By developing a style that matches the emotional response we desire, we can strengthen the emotional impact of a game. 

Remember: theme is fun. Art is fun. Excluding aesthetics from design only shrinks your audience. 

"Scene Work" for Board Game Designers

 I'm frequently struck by the similarities between how board game designers talk about general design approaches and my college acting classes. Frequently, I hear designers talk about the overlap of concepts with film studies classes. For the record, film studies is probably a more efficient class to aid in game design, but I only took acting, so that's what I'm looking at.

[I'm using the term 'scene work', because that covers both acting and directing concepts. Board game designers are like the directors of a game experience (more like a screen writer, but go with me) and players are the actors (conveniently also called players). I'm focusing on basic acting terms for this post.]

Scene work in acting is the breaking down of a scene into all of the motivations, emotions, actions, and so on, for each character in a scene. The result of scene work should be to find the emotional drama in a scene. For our purposes, scene work is when designers break apart their prototypes and reexamine every element. And our goal should be to increase the emotional engagement in our games.

The most important element in every scene is the goal. A goal could also be called an objective, intention, purpose, want, action, or victory. Each actor must have a goal in the scene. Goals must be pursued and must be difficult to achieve. There can be overall goals, such as win the game, and short term goals, such as get resources.

In order to have drama, goals must have obstacles. Obstacles must stand in the way of goals. This creates conflict, which is drama. Games must have obstacles that stand in the way of winning (or just letting the players do whatever they want). The biggest obstacle in acting is 'the other' -the other person in the scene- which translates to board games as the other players.

The methods used to achieve a goal are called tactics. Tactics in acting are used to evoke emotional responses from 'the other'. Tactics often alternate between threats and inducements. Taking actions that resonate emotionally will help raise the dramatic stakes of a game. Tying mechanical tactics in games to emotional responses will strengthen the players' connection to the actions and their ability to remember them.

I have defined beats several times in previous posts. Beats are units where actors employ a single tactic, usually a single emotion. Actors are taught to act out one emotion at a time but to be able to shift rapidly from one to the next. In game design, each type of action has a unique emotional content, outside of the thrill of a well-executed strategy. Chopping lumber has a different emotional content from repairing a mech. Emotional content, for our purposes, does not have to make a player feel particularly happy or sad but rather should draw a player into deeper engagement with the theme. The problem with point salad style games is that the action choices are so all over the map that it is difficult for players to engage with the emotional content of the various actions.

Actors use expectations to make their characters more interesting and invested in the scene. Expectations create energy which is realized as enthusiasm. Interesting characters should expect victory in their pursuit of goals. Players should also expect to be able to win. Additionally, strong thematic ties can increase engagement when a mechanism works the way a player expects it would. In Ex Libris, library books in your tableau must be alphabetized because you are building a library, so of course they should be.

The process of acting hinges on making choices. Actors choose which goals and tactics to pursue in a scene. If you have ever seen different interpretations of Hamlet, you understand how the same script can yield very different choices depending on the actor. Choices provide the inner (or emotional) and outer (or physical) action in a scene. Good choices are made with enthusiasm, are both physical and psychological, and involve other characters. Bad choices are safe, easy, emotionless, unprovocative, and don't involve others. Actors are often encouraged to make strong choices, especially early in the rehearsal process, rather than focus on making 'right' choices. Sometimes choices are 'strong but wrong!' Making bold choices is important in game design as well. Designers should be enthusiastic about exploring unfamiliar territory, even if the results are not stellar at first. Games should make players feel comfortable exploring bold strategies, rather than playing it safe. Bold choices are a sign of enthusiasm, and we want enthusiastic players, after all. Furthermore, designers should weigh the emotional content or cost of different choices. (I know I just said this about tactics, but it bears repeating.) Even from a purely mechanical standpoint, there are different emotions at play in player who pursues multiple strategies at once and a player who doubles down on one strategy.

The more I looked at this topic, the more I realized how much overlap there is between game design and basic acting theory. The biggest difference is that the same concepts that are used mechanically in game design are emotion-driven in acting. Given that humans are emotional creatures, perhaps game design could benefit from a little scene work.

For this post I relied heavily on Robert Cohen's Acting One, available here. 

Instinct vs. Skill

I've been thinking a lot about instinct it as relates to creating art/games/etc. I believe that board game designers could strengthen their design skills by honing their artistic instincts. But I'm concerned that this sounds like I'm advocating for designers to be better visual artists. While that wouldn't be at all terrible, it is in no way what I am saying. So, what do I mean?

I define skill as the ability to make something that is good (i.e. well executed). Skill is learned over time, usually through practice. Of course, skill can develop faster with instruction and mentorship. The more you design deck builders, the better you should be at designing deck builders, assuming you are capable of improving. The higher your skill, the quicker you should be able to iterate toward a playable game. The other aspect to skill development is that you have to learn each aspect of a skill, as skills tend to not be intuitive but something that must be taught/discovered thru trial and error.

In addition to skill and instinct, which I'll get to, there is also taste. Taste is knowing whether something is good or bad when you see it. Supposedly, you develop taste before you develop skill. Taste develops fairly quickly, usually by exposing yourself to the 'best of' in a given genre. Taste is fairly intuitive, but also subjective.

Instinct is knowing whether something will be good before you see it. If you can look ahead, make educated guesses, and avoid the least likely paths to success, you can save time when developing game. Instinct can develop alongside skill: you know something won't work because you've tried it before. Or instinct can develop alongside taste: you think something will be good because it feels on par with other good ideas you're familiar with. Sometimes the source of your instincts can be elusive, but that doesn't mean they can't be developed. Instinct is informed intuition. You don't have to learn every aspect of a subject to develop good instincts.

Why does this distinction matter? When I say board game designers should develop their artistic instincts, I mean separate and apart from artistic skills. Game designers don't need to know how to draw in order to design good games. Drawing, painting, graphic design, etc. are skills that can be taught/developed. Having good artistic instincts can absolutely make you a better artist, but you do not have to be an artist to have artistic instincts. For instance, I am not good at graphic design. I can muddle my way to mediocrity for prototyping purposes, but I'm slow to get there. I don't know the shortcuts or the rules of composure that a good graphic designer would know. In other words, if I were self-publishing, that is something I would need to outsource. However, using my sense of good artistry, I can still make fairly eye-catching and intuitive prototypes. I still have a lot to learn about icon placement, readability, and so on. Those things have to be learned granularly. But my artistic instincts lead me toward clarity and consistency, because everything I have ever learned about design points me in that direction.

There is quite a bit of overlap and nuance here. Skill and instinct are not always discernible from one another. And I'm not sure of the best way to develop artistic instincts. After all, I've had seven years of higher education and eight years working in the arts, which I don't expect other game designers to pursue. What I find about developing instincts, however, is that once you are alive to certain concepts, instincts will often start to develop on their own as you continue to notice the nuances of how elements fit together for different effects. Which is why I think that just talking about visual design principles could go a long way toward remedying the apparent lack of artistic instinct among board game designers.

Shortcuts to Creativity

Every year, many words are generated on the subject of creativity. Everyone feels that being more creative is a good thing, but becoming more creative remains elusive. Much of the advice offered is about the long term building of creative thinking: have a lot of experiences, generate a lot of ideas, know which ideas are good, etc. Not all of the advice out there is bad, but most is vague and doesn't actually spark creativity when you hear it.

After listening to any number of game designers online and in person trying to crowd source creative problems, such as theming and naming, I thought I would list a few practical methods for designing a more creative game.

1. Give yourself challenges.

When I first started designing games, I generated three new themes that could become game ideas every day for a week. I figured if I couldn't come up with more than my first game idea, I wouldn't need to worry about learning all about the industry, because I likely wouldn't spend much time in it. I haven't returned to almost any of those themes, but the more practice I have coming up with ideas, the better the ideas are likely to be. Generating ideas is more of a long term creativity building practice, but there are other ways to challenge yourself. You can challenge yourself to design in a particular genre or with certain components. Famously, Oscar Hammerstein II challenged Stephen Sondheim to write four different types of musicals to hone his craft. As designers, working outside of our comfort zone will make us better at designing, even if our 'challenges' never get published.

2. Impose constraints.

Another was to challenge yourself is to set restrictions on your next design project. A game with no cards (or only cards) or that uses a specific component or mechanism can send you down design paths you might not otherwise take. If you also add time constraints on how long you can spend developing an idea, you basically have a one person game design jam. Again, not all of these designs need to be publishable.

2b. Remove all restrictions.

Go as far overboard as you possibly can. Remember, if you want this design to go anywhere, you may have to cut all of your flights of fancy. However, sometimes it's nice to exercise creativity by just letting your imagination run wild. Once you temper your ideas with practicality, you may discover that you've come up with something new and original. This works best if you aren't coming at the design from a mechanism or component point first, but rather imagining experiences and worlds you want to create for players to explore. I think every designer should have their 'art game' that they designed not to publish but because they needed to design it for their own artistic fulfillment.

3. Flip tropes.

This is the most practical and also the easiest. Take a common idea that exists in lots of games and do the opposite. Lowest score wins, damage heals, the hero is the villain, etc. Mechanisms may not be the best place to do this, as many of the obvious opposites have already been done. But you can do this all day long with theme. Subverting tropes in ways that are delightfully surprising is an excellent way to increase engagement with a theme.

4. Theme the heart of your game.

This is more for either mechanism first people or those trying to retheme. The heart of your game is the bit that if you change it, it will cease to be the same game. Look at that bit. Find its movement. How does the visual appearance of the game change from the beginning of the game to the end? How fast does it change? What physical movements do the players take as they play? Moving a piece slowly around a circle (Murano, Scorpius Freighter) feel different than moving pieces relatively quickly in a straight line (Tokaido). Kinetic feedback that feels thematic will make your game more immersive and easier to teach. After you do this, you can go back and adjust the rest of the actions and components to be in line with the new theme.

Of course, the best way to know if the idea you have is creative is to know what has already been done and not do that. But research is a long term practice for creativity. The above suggestions can be done today, whether you are trying to come up with your next game idea or trying to fix a game you've already invested a lot of time in. 

Reflections from TTN and BGGcon

Last week, I went to Tabletop Network and BGGcon. The entire week was very positive and I feel I emerged a better designer.

The overall impression I came away with was how important player psychology is to rules/mechanism design. Sometimes the only compelling reason to change a rule is because players will be happier with it, even if it has no impact or negative impact on the overall system. I have seen this idea before, but last week really drove home how prevalent it was. Which also adds a new layer to focus on when playtesting.

I was further surprised by how many "playtests" were conducted that consisted of rules explanations and component discussion only. When you have access to designers who can see mostly how the game would play from the explanation or who you want to critique the aesthetics/UI, it makes sense to spend more time on feedback than actual gameplay. It also helps to be bad at absorbing rules, because you (I) can stand in for less experience gamers.

Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of discussion about how to improve theme integration and UI. Everyone seems to come at the problem from a different angle depending on their background and academic inclination, but only one panel danced close to visual design theory. The panel was about tempo, so I won't complain that the focus was too narrow, since I'm just happy someone was talking about rhythm at all. I think game design should be like liberal arts: the more different areas/perspectives you learn about, the stronger a designer you will be. Hopefully, design theory one day becomes a more common perspective.

I'm not sure what to do about new designers (myself included) who have good themes/concepts for a game and then pick the easiest to design (read: well trod) mechanisms as the vehicle for the game. Obviously, many new designers don't know how uninspired their gameplay is, because they haven't done the research. I'm always torn between telling them to toss the mechanism or giving them feedback to make the existing game as strong as possible in the view that this game design will likely just be a stepping stone to better future designs. I have discovered that while I might get artistically indignant ("Your game needs cool art!"), I will never be the type of playtester who leaves a new designer in tears.

On the flip side, having had a couple of my games get unsympathetically dismantled before, I would rather have my games taken apart by a designer than have them say "It's fine." My most useful playtests this week were with designers who have worked in the same genre and had strong opinions about what my game could be.

Maybe it was Gil Hova's panel about integrating theme, but a common refrain last week was a designer asking for help retheming their game. Obviously, publishers do this often and thus have some skill in it. But I did see a space for designers who are really good at theme to help other designers who haven't attracted publishers yet. Improv theatre and scene design may give me a leg up in this arena.

That's it for TTN and BGG! 

Board Game Design and the Theatre Arts Perspective

It occurs to me that this whole blog is shaping up to be "how the arts can influence board game design for the better." We started with general visual art theory then moved to comparing board game design styles to architecture and engineering. Today, we're going to compare board games to theatre. I'm going to skip over RPGs, although that crossover between board games and theatre is clear.

Board games, of course, are a category of 'play' where scenarios are bounded by rules and play is performed with pieces. Theatre is elaborately produced 'plays', i.e. imaginary scenarios bounded by sets and props and costumes and lights. The primary difference between the two is that in theatre, the play is performed for the entertainment of the audience; in board games, the game is played for the entertainment of the players.

Theatre is arguably the most interactive of the fine arts. After all, the art is partially being made while it is being viewed and has a certain malleability designed into it based on audience reaction. This is why shows have previews, so that typical audience reaction can be incorporated into the show. As far as I know, musicians don't really do this, even though they too can feed off audience reaction. And recently, theatre has been pushing further into the interactive realm with immersive experiences like Sleep No More.

Board games have always been fully interactive. Players have full access to the intended game experience or can even change the game if there is a rule they particularly don't like. Most entertainment experiences are consumed passively, but board games require active participation. In many ways, board games exist where theatre has only begun to tread. That said, there is a lot board game designers could learn from theatre.

In Principles of Design #9: Rhythm, I introduced the idea of 'acting beats'. Beats are small units of action with a single goal. Each actor has their own set of beats all of which combine to make up a scene. Scenes combine to make an act. Similarly, board games have actions which make up turns which make up rounds (or sometimes phases). Players should have clearly defined goals for why they would take an action, although those goals could be in conflict with each other. Conflict creates drama! Games designers should take on the role of a director, planning how these beats and scenes can flow together to drive player engagement thru the entire game. Directors are in charge of pacing, meaning knowing when to turn up the intensity and when to give the audience a moment to breathe. Players, even more than passive audience members, need to have a balance between being bored and overwhelmed. Pacing should convey the mood of the game while allowing players moments to digest new information. 

Pacing largely concerns the time element of gameplay; I'd like to spend a moment on visuals. Sightlines, in theatre, are imaginary lines that tell a designer, director, or actor where backstage stops and onstage starts for any member of the audience. This is done by delineating the most extreme angles of the seating compared to the stage space. If you want to know if something looks good, you will probably stand in the center of the audience to view it. But if you want to know how bad it could look to a paying customer, you go to the edges. As I mentioned when talking about Context in Principles of Design #7, games designers need to look at their components from every angle. So many boards are designed from a single point perspective that makes no sense when viewed upside down. Jamey Stegmaier recently delved more into this topic in a video about accessibility. Remember, every player's eyes will be viewing your game from a different angle.

The next concept from theatre that I want to emphasize is that of the overall experience. Not every theatre focuses on immersion, but all of them put effort into creating an experience that starts from the time you walk into the lobby and ends when you leave the building. Preshow and postshow music, actor headshots, programs, ushers, everything is intentionally provided to add and not distract from the experience. That doesn't mean it's always a success, but 'pulling focus' is one of the cardinal sins of theatre. Every element exists to help the audience appropriately participate in the play (yes, turning off your cell phones is a part of the experience). Many of these elements have become ritualized to the point that, while they may not be immersive, they enable theatergoers to enter into the mind space required to suspend disbelief. Everyone knows that turning down the lights means get quiet and pay attention to what's coming next. 

Board games have similar rituals. Clearing a table. Opening the box. Unpacking and setting up the components. Asking players their color preferences. Referencing the rules for starting conditions that no one can ever remember. Picking a start player. These are a part of the gameplay experience. If not fun, these rituals should at least not detract from the gameplay. A tabletop board game should fit on a table, be intuitive to unpack and repack. Rules should be clear and have a quick setup reference. 

Lastly, good design in theatre, like any design field, fully integrates all elements into a single design vision. Every component, every graphic, every word in a game should be integrated into the whole. We mock television shows for missing coffee cups on set, but think our designs get a pass. They do not. 

As I have previously mentioned on this blog, I work in theatre. The thing that keeps drawing me back to theatre is the collaboration between artists. That is also what draws me to board game design. 

Architecture versus Engineering

In the first post of the Principles of Design series, I state that engineering isn't architecture. I'd like to unpack that in this post. 

The heart of my argument is that if you only pay attention to the mathematical/mechanical elements of game design you are missing most of what makes design design. I'd like to back that up by directing your attention to the non-stop discussion in the game design sphere about how good mechanics aren't enough to get a game to sell, that you need something else. What you don't see in those spaces is a clear, concise idea of what that something else is. In one case, it's table presence/curb appeal. In another, theme or narrative. Perhaps it's innovation or player experience. I think it's all of those things and that they all fall under having a better idea of Design from a formalist perspective. Hence my series. 

Now, I am not saying that you have to have studied design theory to be a good designer. Like with any skill, some people will have a greater innate understanding or taste without any formal training. You don't need to know music theory to be a musician. You don't have to have studied story structure to be a novelist. But an untrained musician still works within the bounds of music theory, by and large, and an untrained novelist who is any good usually has an innate sense of pacing and structure even if they don't have the vocabulary for it. 

So there are plenty of great board game designs and designers. But there are also plenty of easily avoidable goofs that have little to do with pure mechanics. Mechanics are also said to be 'designed' but more and more I think of them as 'engineered'. I don't mean that to sound negative, either. Engineering is the 'How to' and is beautiful and complex in its own way. Design is the 'Why'. Now that our hobby has a lexicon for the mechanical understructure, I believe it is time to develop an aesthetic lexicon to go with it. 

Oftentimes, we see art as a thing people either can or cannot do, whereas engineering is the result of training. But art skills can absolutely be improved with training. Most of art is being able to see the important parts of what you are trying to execute. The rest, of course is the execution. We become better designers when we can see without effort or extensive product testing which options will better support the whole design. 

Developing your aesthetic sense can help with theming, table presence, visual information transmission, pacing, sell sheets, pitching, and more. Knowing what information or elements to include and what to leave out is the core of design. This could mean more beautiful, atmospheric games, but also games that are funnier, scarier, more exciting, more fun. 

You may believe that it is the work of a developer or a publisher to steer a game to a certain artistic expression. But having a clear design vision will make your game stronger, even if it gets redesigned down the road by a publisher. Developing a better sense of design doesn't require you to be an artist or a great writer. A good designer can make a 'clip-art on white cardstock' game that clearly articulates the design vision in an appealing way. And of course, if you're planning on Kickstarting your game, then having a good design foundation is a must. 

Students of theatre are strongly encouraged to cross-train in areas outside of their focus, in order to better understand the process of making theatre, but also because artistic training of any sort will make you a better artist. So even if you are a mechanics only designer who relies on someone else for theme, graphics, layout, art, sell sheets, prototypes, etc., you still need to have an understanding of design. Even from a mechanics only standpoint, the principles of design still apply. All elements of a design should be fully integrated. Every element should add to the experience and reinforce the design vision. Your mechanics should be designed to produce a desired experience. Perfect mechanics in a vacuum is not a game. And if mechanics, too, are experiential, then they are also subject to emotional content, pacing, and mood. 

Every element of board games should be designed. All it takes is a little aesthetic sense and a vision. And a few guiding design principles, of course. 

Principles of Design #10: Mood and Conclusion

My ideas about design theory are evolving. I've based this series off of what appears to be the academic consensus of the principles of design and structured my thoughts around the framework and terms used in Lauer and Pentak's Design Basics. That's been useful for me because I own a copy and I find it very accessible. However, I would like to propose a sixth principle, mood.

Mood is the emotional content of your design. All art, all music, all narrative has emotional content. It doesn't take much research into color theory and marketing to realize that all design does too. Color temperature, how 'warm' or 'cool' a color is, has a huge effect on mood. Scale can be deployed to create a feeling of vastness, but may need to be paired with other elements to really develop a sense of loneliness in the cosmos. Rhythm can help make a game more exciting or relaxing or whimsical or joyful.

Mood is all about eliciting a desired emotion or response in your players. A game design should not be 'finished' until not only do the mechanisms work well, but the players respond to the emotional content of the game in a way congruous with your design vision. This type response will be more obvious in themed games, but most games have an arc of play that can include emotions such as optimism, overconfidence, or agony of defeat.

Art assets hugely reinforce mood. Mood informs player experience. A game's art should match the intended experience. I cringe every time I hear someone say that art shouldn't matter. (Yet there is no outcry when someone buys a game only for the minis.) A typical board game, sans players, is visual components, tactile components, mental components, and time. When at least a quarter of the stuff that makes up your game is visual, it must be integrated into your design. It must reflect the quality of the mechanic design. Bad art is bad marketing; it affects usability by being distracting; it dis-unifies a design. What is good art in a board game? Good art is well executed (i.e. looks professional), reinforces the design vision, and follows the principles of design. I am so tired of looking at boards where the major color is 'washed-out dirt'. Boring boards or cards are just as lazy design as cluttered, poorly organized ones. Designers don't always have a say in the art that goes into a game, but from an end user's perspective it's all the same design.

Conclusion 
This series has been a very high level discussion of design. Each of the design principles could turn into their own series, by applying the principles to different themes and mechanics and so on. But the purpose of this series was to introduce new terms to how we talk about design as a topic.

Here are some things I hope become standard good practices in board game design:

1. All elements of a design should be fully integrated. Every element should add to the experience and reinforce the design vision.

2. Games are fundamentally experiences. All games should be designed with player experience in mind.

3. How games convey information is as important as the information conveyed. Sometimes the information is emotional or experiential. 

I'd also really like it if we retired washed-out dirt as a main color choice. 

In this series, I'm outlining the principles of design from a perspective of how they relate to board game design. If you want to read more on your own, the main reference I use is Design Basics by David A. Lauer and Stephen Pentak. Available here.

Principles of Design #9: Rhythm

Today we cover the last principle of design: rhythm. Rhythm is the visual, auditory, or chronological patterns present in a design. Two types of patterns can affect rhythm. Alternating rhythm is a consistent sequence of elements, the continuation of which can be anticipated by the viewer. Progressive rhythm is a sequence that changes or ramps up as it goes along.

In addition to design terms, we can look to music for ways to use rhythm. The visuals of our boards can have a tempo. Elements that flow gently to one another are more legato, whereas elements that abruptly break up the pattern are more staccato. Rounds of play can be described as having beats and meters. Here I think it is helpful to switch for a moment to theatre terms. In theatre, beats are small units of action that are broken up by moments of reflection. A beat may be more than a single action, but they have a single goal in the scene, or perhaps the phase or round. Much like in music, how you structure the beats of gameplay can build excitement (or relaxation, contemplation, etc).

All of a game's elements should have rhythms that make sense for what they are trying to bring to the game. Much like the actor's beats, each element should have a motivation. The goal of a card draft is for player's to add new cards to their hands. The motivation of drafting cards might be to slow down gameplay and allow for a moment of reflection and strategizing. Every board game mechanism (even the one you invented ex nihilo) has an inherent rhythm. The combination of mechanisms into turns and rounds and phases creates the cadence or meter of gameplay. The rhythms of the visual design should reinforce the rhythms of gameplay. A visually cluttered and chaotic play space (especially at set-up) will convey a stressful, frenetic rhythm, regardless of how the game actually plays or is intended to play. Visually and tactically, rhythm can be conveyed thru texture. Sharp edges and points can reinforce fast, exciting gameplay; gentle curves and soft edges convey a slower rhythm.

Rhythms that work together to achieve the design vision help create unity of design. Emphasis should be incorporated into the rhythm of your design. It should be clear by now that each design element supports the others.

In the next post we'll look at a bonus principle and draw some conclusions. 

In this series, I'm outlining the principles of design from a perspective of how they relate to board game design. If you want to read more on your own, the main reference I use is Design Basics by David A. Lauer and Stephen Pentak. Available here.

Principles of Design #8: Balance

An abundance of attention is given in board game spaces as to whether a game is balanced. 110% of that attention is paid to how mechanisms work in relation to each other and the win condition(s). But balance can apply to all elements in a design.

Balance is the distribution of 'weight' or importance within a composition. In order to be balanced, all sides must maintain equilibrium. In terms of mechanisms, a game is considered balanced when all players have an equal chance of winning based on starting position. In design terms, balance is one of the key ways to create unity. Balance helps reign in emphasis by keeping the focal point from taking over the design.

Balance can be achieved thru symmetry or asymmetry. Symmetry is when all design elements have equal weight. Symmetry creates a sense of stability in a design. One way symmetry creates stability is by repeating patterns and motifs across a design. Symmetry in most elements can help to emphasize a focal point. Bilateral symmetry is when one half mirrors the other. The easiest way to describe bilateral symmetry in game terms is to look at two player games. If both players have access to identical resources and abilities and set-up positions at the start of the game, then that game has a high level of bilateral symmetry. Boards with bilateral symmetry are often easier for new players to contextualize. Radial balance or radial symmetry is when elements extend out from a central point in many directions. All games played around a table should have visual radial balance in the components. Especially in competitive games, all public information should be readily perceivable by all players. Crystallographic balance or mosaic balance, aka 'allover pattern' is a constant repetition of a quality. A grid of tiles (or an Andy Warhol print) exhibits this type of balance. Each tile, or board in a campaign game, or expansion, or episode should feel like it fits as part of the whole.

Asymmetry exists when elements are noticeably different but have equal weight. Asymmetry feels less formal than symmetry. Asymmetry can be deployed by increasing variety. Asymmetry in board games can be found in player powers, one vs. all gameplay, player elimination, round length, and board layout. Wingspan has asymmetrical round length, with players taking more actions each new round. Point salad games have high asymmetry in scoring.

Imbalance creates tension. Too much imbalance creates chaos. A perfectly balanced game has little excitement. Most gameplay exists in the space between perfect balance and total imbalance. Encouraging players to take risks (that are real risks, not merely perceived as such) generates greater imbalance but also greater engagement. Card art with intentional imbalance can add to the spooky feeling of a horror game. Well-executed, imbalance can simply feel like forward momentum, that the game is hurtling toward its eventual, but not inevitable, conclusion. In scoring terms, the goal of most games is to be the player to achieve the best/most imbalance. 

The various types of balance (and imbalance) should be considered in every aspect of designing a game. Does this element bring stability or tension? Does this element reinforce other elements? Does this element draw too much attention away from the overall design vision? In other words, is my game balanced?

In this series, I'm outlining the principles of design from a perspective of how they relate to board game design. If you want to read more on your own, the main reference I use is Design Basics by David A. Lauer and Stephen Pentak. Available here.

Principles of Design #7: Scale and Proportion

Today's topic is the most engineering forward of the principles of design. In many ways two aspects in one principle, scale and proportion is all about looking at how size affects design.

Scale is the actual sizing of an element. Scale is most obvious in games with minis, where the scales are usually listed (especially if the minis are bought separately). Scale is hugely important in board games, a hobby enjoyed by the very young to the very old with vastly different levels of vision and dexterity. Board games are physical objects that are manipulated by human players and present changing information sets to players throughout game based on that manipulation. Human scale is when elements are designed to be used by the average human (as opposed to mice or elephants, I suppose). Some games have employed an unusual scale (or exaggerated scale) to drive excitement about a game. Giant Jenga is arguably outside of human scale, especially for humans whose height trends below average. Giant Jenga is also clearly cooler, because everyone knows that the possibility of a concussion is what Jenga had always been missing. 

Scale can also be deployed to create a sense of space. Do you want players to feel small in a vast universe or tightly constrained with little room to maneuver? The scales you deploy can reinforce the theme or desired player experience. 

Proportion is the relative size of one component compared to another. Proportion can be used to create emphasis by using the size of an element/part of an element to drawer the viewers' attention. Notably, proportion can vary within a given scale. Mess with proportion too much and you enter into surrealism, which is a confusion of scale. Surrealism must be intentional and well executed or your players will simply feel confused. Confusion is only good if it adds to immersion and doesn't detract from gameplay. Similarly, fantasy in scaling moves completely beyond reality. Fantasy in this sense is not the same as fantasy commonly seen in movies and literature, which often still broadly relies on human scale to create the world.

Hierarchic Scaling is the use of more than one scale to convey which elements are the most important. This is another way to clearly deploy emphasis, with the clear intention to convey that the larger element is the more valuable/important/essential. Ancient Egyptians were famous for deploying hierarchic scaling in their art. To our eyes, hierarchic scaling in art looks odd, but makes complete sense in graphic design.

Returning for a moment to human scale, we need to talk about context. Context is the surrounding condition(s) were we find (or can expect to find) a design. Context includes location, which for our purposes is where a game is played. Tabletop games have the expectation of being able to be played on an average sized dining table. Unlike board game storage, where kallax reigns supreme, there is no general expectation that the majority of hobbyists will have the same sizes of gaming table. However,  there are some general guidelines designers can follow. The most important issue is that every player should always be able to understand the game state regardless of where they are sitting relative to board orientation. A tiny, unreadable board that is four feet away from a player is bad design. I would say that the individual player space should be no more than two square feet, to allow all of the players and the general use space to fit at the table. The number of players is going to be limited by the number of people the table can accommodate. A typical card table is 3'x3', which is fine for parlor games where players hold most of their cards and there is no large central board. We no longer have an expectation that people will play cards at a card table, which opens design up to be more expansive. Lastly, components should be neither too tiny nor too large to be easily manipulated or deciphered by the average player. 

In this series, I'm outlining the principles of design from a perspective of how they relate to board game design. If you want to read more on your own, the main reference I use is Design Basics by David A. Lauer and Stephen Pentak. Available here.

Principles of Design #6: Emphasis

From here on out, the remaining principles should require fewer posts to cover. As the overarching principle, Unity had a lot of ground to cover. On the other hand, today's topic is arguably optional depending on the style of design. I'm not saying it is optional, but you could argue that if you want.

Emphasis is giving particular stress or importance to an element. You give a design emphasis by using focal points. A focal point is a central, singular component or idea. It may be an innovative element or experience. In order to have effective focal points you need to choose only one or two within a design. The rest of the elements should support your focal point and not distract from it. In other words, unity still needs to apply. In essence, a focal point is a type of variety employed to convey the big idea of the game. In board game design, the focal point could be an innovative mechanism, unique theme, engrossing narrative, engaging experience, or impressive central component. Remember however, that a focal point is not just something that stands out; it still needs to be an integral part of the design.

Emphasis in a design can be created thru a number of methods. Deploy one or more of these methods to help draw attention to the element you want to showcase in your design.

Contrast allows focal points to stand out by virtue of their differences. A great way to use contrast is to set expectations then change the script just once in a noticeable way. The biggest mini is almost always the boss. Flipping over the only card in the deck outlined in red means you're probably in trouble. It's ok if the contrasting element follows certain meta-tropes. We want the audience/players  to know something is happening just before it happens. The noticeable contrast draws attention to your pivot in the game. The dramatic moment is set up, pulling the players deeper into the experience. Poorly timed drama falls as flat as poorly timed comedy. Putting emphasis in the right places adds drama to your game.

Isolation declutters what you are trying to emphasize. Similar to contrast, you are trying focus the attention of your players. Too many focal points or just too many elements will compete for attention, resulting in a feeling of chaos. Everyone always knows who to attack on a given turn in King of Tokyo. The spatial isolation of one player avatar from the rest is always abundantly clear. Players, regardless of what side of the board they are facing, should always know where to look in a given phase of a game and what they are looking at should easily convey the intended information.

Placement uses the arrangement of elements to draw attention to a focal point. Our eyes are drawn around a track or to the center of a rondel, so we may as well use those spaces accordingly. Pillars of the Earth is a good example of clean flow of information around a board and also isolation of the visual thematic center piece. There is simply no reason for a board to be more visually confusing than a card laying game. After all, on a board, the designer/developer team has full control over how the information is presented. Each area of the board can have its own minor focal point and still flow one to the other smoothly.

Of course, every gamer today knows the (overly relied on) Great Big Element. A design with one striking centerpiece is an easy way to achieve visual impact. It adds to table presence and is usually cool in its own right. Please just remember to integrate your great big focal point into your design. If you can't, perhaps consider the other methods of creating emphasis.

In this series, I'm outlining the principles of design from a perspective of how they relate to board game design. If you want to read more on your own, the main reference I use is Design Basics by David A. Lauer and Stephen Pentak. Available here.

Principles of Design #5: Unity through Variety

Truly elegant designs all have strong unity of composition. But 'elegant' is not always interesting or exciting. To address that, we turn to the last method to create unity, variety.

Variety adds interest thru contrast and comparison. In board game terms, variety adds complexity and (often) depth. Variety applies to rules, pieces, mechanisms, shapes, colors, and so on. Chess doesn't have much variety compared to most hobby games, but it has more variety than checkers. Variety lends itself to theme-focused games. Unity without variety is easier to achieve in abstract games. In fact, themed games that only have one or two simple mechanisms are often decried as abstracts with a pasted-on theme due largely to the simplicity of the gameplay. Variety allows for space to tie in your theme in multiple ways.

Unity across your design is often simpler to achieve without variety. Every element added that is unique and different has to be weighed against the entire design and integrated seamlessly. Compare the base games of Santorini and Gloomhaven. Both designs are well-executed, but Santorini exudes elegance whereas Gloomhaven leans into showcasing its variety.

Variety can lead to increased engagement. Players become invested in legacy and campaign style games because they want to know what new things will happen next. Of course, these games don't change drastically on each play-through. Instead, they balance unity and variety by deploying varied repetition. Each game is just different enough to maintain engagement without overwhelming players with too much new information.

Variety still needs to abide by the guidelines of proximity, repetition, continuation, and continuity. Variety without organization or obvious purpose creates disunity in a design. Every element of a design should add to the experience and reinforce the vision of the design. A well-developed element that nevertheless doesn't fit the overall design is usually an attempt to shortcut the design process while maximizing engagement. In other words, a gimmick. Gimmicks can work well for marketing, but let us not pretend that they are good design.

That's it for Unity. Next post, I'll introduce the second principle, Emphasis. 

In this series, I'm outlining the principles of design from a perspective of how they relate to board game design. If you want to read more on your own, the main reference I use is Design Basics by David A. Lauer and Stephen Pentak. Available here.

Principles of Design #4: Creating Unity

In the last post we defined unity as when all elements work together as one harmonious composition. Now we will discuss methods that can be used to create unity. Board games contain a lot of information: rules, mechanics, strategies, scores, etc. in addition to the visual input from graphics, art, and components. Fortunately for us, these methods are all about bringing that information together to make one usable design. 

The purpose of these methods is to add clarity, reduce visual/information chaos, strengthen relationships between elements, and add consistency. The result of which is greater unity in your design. 

Proximity refers to the idea that elements near each other (in space or time or visual look) will be associated as a group. Groupings add clarity to a design. A good rulebook will go over all the rules about scoring in the same section, for instance. Cards of different 'types' will be readily identifiable from the front-side (and often the back, depending on if decks are separated). Placing certain icons near each other graphically gives them an implied relationship. Rounds of play can be designed so that related things happen subsequently, which can help players remember to perform all the actions in a round. 

Repetition, as any student could tell you, is a memory aid. Repetition is the repeating of motifs across a design. Repeated motifs add clarity (unity is largely about clarity of message), reinforce symbolism, and can add to theme and immersion when done well. 

Continuation is the flow of one element to the next. Every element should occur in a way/place that feels logical and 'natural'. The graphic style of the box should feel like a logical extension of the board/experience. The cards should be in the same world as the tiles. The icons should match the components. (I've seen a published game where this was not the case and it was enraging to me.) Game phases should feel connected (at least thematically) to each other. 

Continuity is the flow of one design to the next. The industry is leaning into expansions, modules, game systems, and legacy versions. Good designs will retain the feel of the original while allowing room for improvement. 

Next post, we'll cover the last method of unity, variety. 

In this series, I'm outlining the principles of design from a perspective of how they relate to board game design. If you want to read more on your own, the main reference I use is Design Basics by David A. Lauer and Stephen Pentak. Available here.

Principles of Design #3: Unity

Since this is a series about the principles of design, we should probably start talking about them. The first principle of design is arguably the most important. And the oldest. And my favorite.

Unity is when all elements work together as one harmonious composition. In other words, all the elements feel like they belong in the same world.

Aristotle, in writing about tragedy, wrote "the components ought to be so firmly compacted that if any one of them is shifted to another place, the whole is loosened up and dislocated; for an element whose addition or subtraction makes no perceptible difference is not really a part of the whole." (The 'classical unities' of theatre would be described two thousand years later based on what Aristotle wrote in the Poetics.) 

I firmly believe Aristotle's view of unity applies to board game design. The debate about toy factor and table presence needs a good dose of unity-focused design. Especially from designers. Publishers are going to sell games however they want to, but designers should be slow to embrace gimmick. This does not mean ignoring product-focused design! Designers should be designing for the overall gameplay experience including making a game desirable to not just to play but also to purchase. But there is a difference between games with table presence and games people only buy for the bits and never play.

Now that there are so many games on the market, the standards for a 'good' game have gotten higher. Game designers (supposedly) used to be able to design a set of mechanics and let the publisher take it from there. Designers now are responsible for designing (although perhaps not executing) the full play experience, which requires a different set of skills than what is required for developing mechanics alone. 

How unity can help your designs:

-Better integration of theme

-Fewer unnecessary mechanisms

-More immersive world-building

-Art that supports gameplay

-Components that add to the overall experience

Next post, we'll delve into ways to create unity.

In this series, I'm outlining the principles of design from a perspective of how they relate to board game design. If you want to read more on your own, the main reference I use is Design Basics by David A. Lauer and Stephen Pentak. Available here.

Principles of Design #2: Form and Content

The biggest divide in board game design is theme versus mechanics. Which is more important? Which comes first? I reject the premise that it is 'either/or' and contend that both are elements of a whole design, the success of which relies on all elements being well designed and integrated.

First off let's review the definition of design: Design is an aesthetic organization of elements; creative problem solving; the relationship between content and aesthetics (or form and function); and a way of communicating intended use or expected response.

Which brings us to how elements are divided in the Principles of Design. All of design consists of form and content. Content is the subject, the information, the thing you want to convey. Form is the shape the content takes, the way the content is conveyed.

In board game terms, content is the pieces, rules, mechanics. Form is the box, rulebook, components, theme, art, lore, and overall experience. It is possible for the roughest prototype and the glossiest published game to have the exact same content (by virtue of being the same game); the difference between the two is the form they take.

Both form and content are a part of design. A good designer should consider all elements of the game play experience. A well-designed game doesn't have to be fully immersive, but it should be fully designed. 

Now I am going to disagree with myself and say that if the theme is the heart of what you want your game to convey and why you are designing your game, that is your content and the mechanics are your form. It isn't about theme vs. mechanics. It's about what you are trying to accomplish and how you get there. If you feel you could cut an element from your game or change it, it's not your content. Content is your design vision. You should be able to write a one to two sentence design vision statement for your game. The elements mentioned in a design vision statement are your content. Everything else is how you get there, your form. Each individual element is also made up of form and content, in that each element should have a specific purpose and also aesthetics that help it mesh with the overall design. 

The rest of this series will detail the principles of design, so now seems like a good idea to introduce them: unity, emphasis, scale, balance, and rhythm. By using these principles, we can make better, more cohesive designs. 

In this series, I'm outlining the principles of design from a perspective of how they relate to board game design. If you want to read more on your own, the main reference I use is Design Basics by David A. Lauer and Stephen Pentak. Available here.

Principles of Design #1: What is Design?

I'm passionate about design. So are most board game designers (or designers of any type). Isaac Shalev called me a formalist. [Well, he said he was a 'formalist, too' if we're going to be pedantic.] Board games have made a push into formalism with encyclopedias and design courses where terms are codified and a lexicon is built. And I could not be happier about that.

When I see higher level board game design discussion online, I see a lot of 1) math, 2) the prisoner's dilemma, and 3) what I think of as 'engineering' discussion. What's the probability? How do we quantify our player's strategies? At what point will a mechanism break a game? I don't have an issue with these discussions. I believe that they are important aspects of design, in the same way engineering is important to architecture. My contention is that engineering isn't architecture.

Most often, though, what I see in online discussions is people reaching for the right words to describe why a design works/resonates or doesn't. This is the void I want to see filled.

Hi, my name is Sarah and I spent seven years in higher ed. studying theatre. I have taken six college level design courses. And I work in theatre, which is fundamentally about collaboratively designed experiences. Board games are also designed experiences and usually collaborative in some way. The advantage that theatre has is a 2500 year head start on building a lexicon (and an industry).

The principles of design are taught in more than just theatre classes, however. Visual design (or communication design) impacts any industry that has ever used the word 'presentation'. It's just that many of those industries are content with bad design. 

You could learn to draw horses really well by buying one of those "Learn to Draw: Horses" books or you could learn the basics of drawing, and in the process also learn how to draw horses or anything else you like. The same is true for design. Knowing the basics of design will make you a better (board game) designer.

So, what is design?

1. Design is an aesthetic organization of elements.

2. Design is creative problem solving.

3. Design is the relationship between content and aesthetics (or form and function).

4. Design is a way of communicating intended use or expected response.

 There are amazing board game designers out there who probably don't need to learn the vocabulary of design in order to be good designers, but they may struggle to explain what good design is. A sign of a mature industry is a common shared technical language. The language of design already exists and is only waiting to be adopted into board games.

In this series, I'm outlining the principles of design from a perspective of how they relate to board game design. If you want to read more on your own, the main reference I use is Design Basics by David A. Lauer and Stephen Pentak. Available here.