A More Honest Rulebook

**HEY! This is SATIRE. But also, don't do these things, and hire a rulebook editor. **

Theme: Here's an overly long story that is only very tangentially related to gameplay. Someone on the dev team always wanted to write fiction and now this novella stands between you and finding out how to play. Characters in the story will not appear in the actual game. 

Components list: You had better not lose any; replacements aren't easy to get anymore. Just sharpie over anything that reads "Kickstarter exclusive." There are no instructions for how to put components back in the box. Everything fits if you throw out the expensive insert. 

Set up: Could be just a blurry picture with no labels OR just text with non-obvious names for components. No one knows which deck is the energy deck yet, and there is no symbol glossary. Hopefully, Rodney Smith has covered this game. 

Objective: The goal of the game is to get so involved in crafting and executing your strategy that your friend wins while you aren't paying attention. Most experienced player wins.

Determining first player: Come on now, this is the 21st century. Use an app and stop pestering designers to come up with something cute. 

To start: Did you read the rules before inviting people over? No? Bad news, you won't learn how to start the first turn, because instead you will first learn what every line of text on each card refers to. There is no quick start guide in the manual; the back page covers special edge case rules. Check BGG in a few weeks for a revised rules pdf. 

Order of play: Listed at length starting on page six. There is no turn summary in the rulebook or on the player aid (which is the only place the symbols are defined). 

End of game: Refer back to "Objective." End of game triggers listed at length in BGG errata. There's a round track and marker, but they're not listed in the components or set up. The game is over when the players give up in frustration. 

Scoring: Here's a bunch of numbers not listed anywhere else or very well explained. Hopefully someone recognizes the term triangular scoring. Bonus scoring conditions are only explained on the event cards. Most people just download the fan-made app. 

Variants: Read all the other rules. Now forget half of them and play this way instead. The fan-designed two player mode is better, but Rahdo didn't cover it. 

Card glossary: Just images of every card. Nothing is explained in depth. Still takes up the majority of the pages in the manual. 

Designer's notes: Cut due to lack of space. 

(Merry Christmas) 

The Other Complexity Creep

Complexity creep is the concept that over the course of development designs will take on more and more complicated mechanics (and edge cases) than would be suitable for ease of play or to attract new players. Designers, who know their own game very well, often do not notice how difficult a game is to learn until they play it with new players. Complexity creep is not a positive trait in design. 

And yet. 

As we build this hobby industry, I see complexity creep everywhere and not all of it is bad. Consumers are becoming more sophisticated in their gaming tastes. Publishers are taking on ambitious projects. Genres are blending together. I want to discuss some of the types of complexity creep I see outside of a design with too many mechanisms. 

The first is the rise of expansions. Expansions are essentially a way to introduce complexity in a controlled manner to players: "Here learn this game. Now learn a bit more for a new experience." Expansions allow designers to design games that are accessible to new players but also introduce additional depth down the road. However, too many expansions (and FOMO) can lead to a game feeling bloated or like the players are having to design their own play experience because playing with everything isn't feasible. 

I want to pivot a moment and talk about wine culture. Most people (in the USA) start drinking wine with wines that are light, simple, and cheap. Many people never move on to more sophisticated wines. People who are really into wine buy wines that are complex, bold, single estate, small batch, or otherwise more difficult to approach than a bottle of Barefoot. 

I hope the parallels to hobby gaming are obvious. Few hobby gamers start with A Feast for Odin. As the board game industry has developed, so have the tastes of the players. Some gamers will always prefer to stay with gateway games. But few players skip gateway games and go straight to heavy games. Instead, they experience their own version of complexity creep as they learn the language of board games and become able to easily parse more complex rules. There is nothing wrong with this tendency to drift toward more complex games. The difficulty comes when more complex tastes are seen as better, much like wine snobs. After all, few people would be playing complex games if they hadn't started with simple games. Getting people excited about something cool does not require tearing down something else.

I have seen some of this same complexity creep among reviewers, though to be fair most reviewers continue to express appreciation for gateway games. Instead, the struggle appears to be recommending new games when there are older games that are still in print and are better designed or cheaper. This complexity creep comes from having played 6,000 games and using that mental database as a standard to determine if a new game is good. This means the bar for a 'good' game rises for many reviewers over time. I'm not sure this is a bad thing either. As I wrote before, I think we need high quality criticism in order to progress as an art form. Your mileage may vary depending on what you see as the purpose for game reviews. (I like viewing detailed critiques of games because they makes me a better designer.) The biggest drawback that I see is reviewer fatigue from playing hundreds of games of varying quality. I doubt gaming fatigue produces better reviews. 

Complexity creep is something that happens in your brain before it happens in your design. Familiarity breeds boredom which leads to complexity creep. It happens in other areas outside of design in much the same way. However, just because more hobby gamers are buying complex games doesn't mean all hobby gamers are in the same stage of complexity creep. Where consumers are on the complexity scale has to be taken into account when designing games. Your target audience may not be ready for that unusual auction mechanic. Publishers, players, and reviewers need to continue appreciate gateway games as the building blocks of the hobby while also continuing to raise their standards for what 'good' design looks like. These expectations are vital to me as a designer because they create the loose framework in which I design. Games don't look like they did twenty years ago and that's great. But it is also (kind of, sort of) complexity creep. 

Design Schedules and the Creative Process

Every so often, I see discussions about how to build and maintain a design schedule as a freelance/hobby designer. A lot of that advice doesn't work for me, so I thought I would take the time to discuss a different approach. At the end of the day there is no right way; there is only what works for you. 

First off, I avoid a lot of activities in the design community that don't mesh well with my creative work flow. For example, a lot of time is spent in design communities on brainstorming design ideas. I am very selective about brainstorming. I usually try to only have three designs in progress at one time. If I have three in progress, I avoid brainstorming new ideas or any other similar activity that might result in a new design. My goal is to conserve my creative energy for the games I have in progress. When I do brainstorm, I usually spend some time quietly mulling over areas of design and/or themes that interest me until something sparks an idea. My version of group brainstorming would look more like a debate about mechanisms rather than throwing out a bunch of generic categories to see what sticks. While it may seem odd, my driving goal is to not get new ideas very often. 

If I do get an idea 'out of season,' I write it down, possibly even making a quick rough prototype, as soon as possible. I want any new ideas out of my head right away. I put these aside for when I have room for them. Usually I revisit promising ideas when waiting to hear back from a publisher on a design that's mostly finished. Then I shelve the new design again when I start working on revisions for the game with the publisher. The best way to stop working on an idea is to write it down. 

Similarly, I don't like game jams. I have a pretty specific process for generating ideas that focuses on emotions and themes I want to explore. Game jams are largely mechanics- and components-driven. Plus if I do end up with a good idea, it takes up creative space in my brain that I may not want to give it. I like some aspects of game jams, but I don't seek them out. If you aren't interested in design on demand, it's ok to skip game jams. 

Side note, along with brainstorming and game jams, I tend to avoid forum posts asking for thematic input on someone else's games. I will gladly give feedback on a game I have played. However, the brain space required to imagine the problem and then come up with a solution is not something I'm usually willing to do on social media. I don't want to deplete my creative energy, especially in a format where my feedback is less useful since I don't have all the context I need. I do respond if it's a problem I have wrestled with in my own designs, because I can respond from a shared experience perspective. I never respond to posts asking for help with names. 

Some people like contests because the deadlines help guide the creation process. I only enter contests if I have something in my queue already that seems like it would be a good fit. (Sometimes, that is just an idea of a game depending on the submission rules about how long the game is allowed to have been developed.) Mostly, contests have very specific rules about what type of games they are looking for. Given that I'm only ever working on three games at a time, I'm not very likely to have something for a contest. And as previously stated, I may not have room to add another game. The other reason I don't submit to contests is that, in my observation, contest judges expect more polished looking games than publishers do. I would rather spend time perfecting the rules and experience of gameplay than the graphic design. Plus, publishing pays more. One of the reasons people suggest entering contests is to be active and visible in the design community, but in my experience you can skip contests and get involved in other ways if contests aren't your thing. 

Speaking of contests, some deadlines are what I call 'good deadlines' and some are 'bad deadlines.' Good deadlines propel your design forward in a productive way. Bad deadlines result in rushed work or a creativity block or just too much stress. For me, most contests and game jams are bad deadlines; most conventions and playtest nights are good deadlines. I like the accountability of showing progress to playtesters more than the need to have a finished product by a certain time. 

So far I've been outlining activities I avoid in my design cycles. My weekly schedule (as of the pandemic) is one day writing for this blog, four to five working on existing projects, and one to two days off. Time dedicated to design looks like solo playtesting, designing components in Affinity, building physical prototypes, learning TTS, researching a theme, researching games with similar themes or mechanics, researching publishers, and making sell sheets and videos. I very much consider research and learning new software parts of the design process. I generally consider non-solo playtests as taking place outside of my regular design schedule. What I do on a given day depends on where I'm at in the process. However, all of that goes out the window when I'm finishing something up for a publisher. During crunch time for a deadline, I skip the writing day and the days off and just work through until I have what I need to send to the publisher (usually this is an updated prototype). 

Part of the reasoning behind my regular design schedule is avoiding creative burnout. I find that alternating language-based tasks and visuals-based tasks helps me maintain a more regular schedule. The reason this blog updates so frequently is that I need to work on something design adjacent that is purely language-based in order to not get fatigued when working on my games. Alternatively, I use rulebook writing as a break from the more visual aspects of design. 

Creating time for your existing projects and working on them sustainably is the only way to finish anything. Finishing one project will teach you more than beginning a hundred projects. I manage this by avoiding spending my creativity on things that aren't my main projects and alternating my work to engage my brain in different ways. 

Types of Information: A Comparison of Boards and Cards

[Let me first say, as far as taxonomy goes I consider card games to be a sub-genre of board games, where the category 'board games' exists to differentiate it from other forms of tabletop games, namely tabletop RPGs. However, within the broad category of board games we find games that are mostly a single board and tokens and other games that are mostly cards. The purpose of this post is to look at the design spaces created by the different choice of components. I won't be looking at modular boards or tile games; those components fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.]

The primary purpose of components is to convey information. Different components are capable of better conveying different types of information. Public information may be either shared or personal, depending on how the information is intended to be used. Shared information is typically best presented by a board. A single board is easy to set up and is usually equidistant from all players. Information contained on a board is also typically constant information, information that does not change from game to game. Cards are more likely to be used to convey personal or private information- information that is only known to one player. Cards are also used for hidden information, information that is not known to any player. Because cards are easy to randomize by shuffling, they are well-suited for use in conveying variable information, information that changes throughout the game and/or from game to game. 

Pawns on a grid are capable of conveying much finer spatial information than cards in the same amount of space. Most games with a strong spatial component have a central board that all players use. Pawns also make use of a third dimension, visually separating the information conveyed by the pawns from the information conveyed by the board. Both boards and cards make use of spatial information as a way to direct a player's gaze to what area is important or more important than another area. As discussed in the post on scale, size can be used to indicate what information is more important than other information. Size can also be used to indicate how a component is intended to be handled, such as poker-sized cards versus jumbo cards. Players will assume the cards best sized for human hands are the ones that should be held. Location of information can indicate what order the information should be processed, although this changes from culture to culture depending on the directionality of a language's writing system among other factors. Most people process visual information in roughly the same order they would read a page. Orientation can be used alongside location to further refine the relationship between components. Cards that are laid orthogonally to each other often trigger differently depending on orientation. 

Another aspect of spatial information is how information (especially public information) is presented to players. Perspective is important for designers more so than players, especially when designing boards. Players play sitting down in a single location in the vast majority of tabletop games. A well-designed board should convey information to every player of average eyesight without a player needing to move around the table to get a better look. Cards are much easier to inspect and replace without upsetting the current play-state. Thus for cards, perspective is less of an issue. Distance is similar, but where perspective is about angle of view, distance is describes proximity to components. Scott Roger's zones of play should be considered here, as areas of play further from a player are generally more difficult for players to remember and interact with. As with perspective, components should not be so distant from players that they need to move around the table to see the information. And as always, how far a player has to reach for components will affect the rhythm of the game. Reach is a type of distance that focuses on how components are handled, not merely if they are legible. Any component meant to be shared should be easy for players to reach. This may require designing a space on the board for a card deck to live, for example.

Graphical information refers to all language, icons, and art (or illustration) printed on the game components. Language conveys both direct and indirect information. Large amounts of writing convey a different type of game experience than no writing. Lots of numbers and tables convey yet another type of game experience. Make sure that your game components are advertising the experience you intend. Writing on boards runs into the perspective problem detailed above. Cards are better suited for more and smaller text, although the size of the cards limits how much text can be included. 

Icons and graphics have the advantage over language in that they are easier to 'read' upside down and don't need to be translated when marketing the game to a different language group. The downside is that too many icons can become a language in themselves, one that has no native speakers. Ideally, icons should be used to speed up and smooth out information processing, not create a new barrier to entry. One common way to do this is to use the graphical design of a board to clearly show where other components should live on the board, reducing the amount of information players have to remember when learning the game. I'm not an expert on UI/UX, but I found this page to be a useful overview of concepts. 

Art can be used to set the mood, provide lore information, or merely organize mechanics in a more visually appealing way such as through a map of the area that players are attempting to control. Boards are better suited for landscapes, maps, and other large pieces of art that help establish the setting of the game. Cards are more appropriate for showcasing individual items or characters. In the case of cards, art allows players to identify a card faster than if the card was merely text. This is especially useful in set collection games, but the art must be distinct. I very much doubt even the most devoted fan would be able to match the spaceship illustrations to the cards in Space Base. 

Finally, component choices convey genre conventions whether we intend them to or not. By choosing to design around a single shared board or a deck of cards, we set player's expectations as to the weight and style of the game. Card games have the expectation of being lighter and shorter, generally. Similarity to other games with regards to art and components also sets expectations. A beige game board with lots of rectangular spaces used as some sort of action selection mechanic will convey "dry euro game with little thematic integration that takes three hours to play." Subverting expectations can be a good thing, but that is difficult to do with visual information, because components are static and don't change to match tonal shifts in gameplay. And you still have to know the rules before you can break them. 

To recap, types of information conveyed by components:

• General 
• constant 
• variable
• Use
• public (shared or personal)
• private
• hidden 
• Spatial
• size
• location
• orientation
• perspective
• distance and reach
• Graphical
• language
• icons/graphics
• art/illustration
• Genre conventions/player expectations 

That's a lot of information before even touching on specific rules or mechanics. Bottom line, the components you include in your game have a lot to say about what type of game it is, how you play, how accessible the game is, and how easy the game is to learn. A well-designed game's components convey all the necessary information about the game in a way that facilitates play. Well-designed components should not send mixed messages about their use. 

Theme in Small Games

There is a tendency within the board game community to use 'thematic' as a euphemism for Ameritrash/Amerithrash. This usage bothers me because it puts artificial limits on what we mean when we say "thematic games" and because I don't find Amerithrash games to be the pinnacle of 'thematic.' 

When it comes to narrative-driven media, I prefer movies, plays, and books that don't try to do too much. I love lots of detail, but detail needs to make sense and fit the narrative. Stories padded out with lots of detail just to add length are a bad writing choice. As I have stated many times on this blog, every element should serve the whole production. 

This is why I prefer small theatrical productions. Large splashy productions have more opportunities for failure, more details that have to fit together. Some Broadway shows (or Vegas shows because they have more money) are fine-tuned and perfectly balanced pieces of entertainment. But most that I have seen are uneven in quality- usually a few perfect moments surrounded by choices where it's clear that compromises had to be made. Hamilton has one of the most technically perfect scenes in musical history and also moments where songs were cut and the seams really show. Small theatrical productions have fewer moving parts and cost less. As a result, the quality has a chance of being more even throughout. The people working the show simply have more time to get all the details perfected. I've worked enough shows to know what I'm talking about. 

As far as I can tell, games have to exceed a certain size to be considered Amerithrash. If the mechanics are fairly simple, the game makes up for it in an abundance of plastic. There are too many details. The details themselves tend to be fairly thematic, but making every detail of a large game work together in a thematic way is inherently difficult. This is not a statement on the enjoyability of these games; this is a statement on the nature of creating a piece of art with a lot of moving parts. 

Small games offer a chance to really polish every detail. But that in itself does not mean that small games are a good vehicle for theme. However, if you approach a small design with the intention of creating a thematic game, you have the opportunity to make something that really resonates. A small design offers an opportunity for a strongly focused theme, such as in simulation games like Super-Skill Pinball: 4cade. I think simulations work best as small or simple games. For more ways to add theme in a small box, look at my post on resonance. 

I believe that small games can be as thematic or more thematic than large games. There are several benefits to designing small thematic games. As previously stated, it is easier to polish every detail. That may mean tweaking a theme for more resonance or creating more thematic components or focusing on integrating theme and mechanics. (A small design also means that the mechanics are easier to playtest thoroughly.) I find that lowering the rules overhead leaves me more space to take in the theme- in other words, fewer rules means fewer breaks in immersion. Lastly, fewer components allow for an uncluttered visual design and fewer icons leave more room for art. 

I believe that it takes more skill to add a single thematic detail than it does to add twenty to a game. Simple, effective design choices are the most challenging parts of mechanism design and also thematic design. Thematic choices that synergize with mechanics and produce a unified, integrated experience are not produced at the last minute via flavor text and art. A strongly thematic game is thematic even as an unpolished prototype. Throwing in lots of details gives the appearance of theme, one that often doesn't withstand scrutiny. 

So what is a better definition of a thematic game? I think that truly thematic games are ones that if you removed the art and flavor text and a bystander missed the rules explanation but watched the gameplay, that the bystander would be able to give an accurate explanation of what the game is about. The art, flavor text, and components simply need to match that narrative. Every piece should serve the whole, regardless of the size of the game. 

Resonance in Board Games

What makes board game themes resonate with players? 

Resonance is a quality of sound signified by the depth and reverberation of tone. In music, resonance is created by the shape and clarity of the tone, not just the volume. How do designers get their themes to reverberate across the hobby? By adding depth, shape, and clarity to their themes. 

The opposite of resonance is muddiness. Themes that lack clarity can create confusion, both of rules and narrative. While games should create puzzlement, they should not create confusion. By examining our themes in detail, we can clearly express what the intended game experience is supposed to be. 

Common qualities of resonant games are 1) theme and mechanics that align, 2) use of theme to explain the why of game play, 3) themes that are relatable to players on an emotional level, and 4) themes that fill a void in the market. I’m going to focus on the two middle qualities: using theme to explain 'why' and relating to players on an emotional level. Aligning theme and mechanics will be discussed as part of that, but I won’t be looking in depth at specific mechanics in this post. Also, I think if a theme resonates it will naturally seem to fill a void in the market, so you shouldn’t put the cart before the horse: work on your theme first, and the market will sort itself out. 

I have developed a short list of tools to tweak themes to help them resonate better by making them more relatable to players and by adjusting mechanics to make the rules and mechanisms more relatable to the theme. These tools are not the only ways to achieve resonance, but I think they are a good place to start. 

But first, I am going to pivot and discuss theatre for a bit. In 1570, literary critic Lodovico Castelvetro codified the three neoclassical unities of theatre: unity of action, unity of time, and unity of place. In sixteenth century Italy, this meant a play must have a single plot, one location, and take place in a 24 hour period. The idea was that the audience needed a clear grounding in the events of a play in order to follow what was happening. Theatre has largely moved away from this stringent formulation, but this is a good starting place for looking at game themes. I have borrowed the unities for my list of tools for resonance and added one more. My list of tools for building resonant theming is plot, location, time, and character. 

Note: You don’t need all of the things I’m going to suggest. Many times you may find you only need one or two to give your design the spark it needs to hook players. Also, this won’t be a comprehensive list of how to use these tools, just some broad ideas that should make the tools easier to remember. 

Let’s start with plot. The most impactful design choice you can make is to have the game objective and narrative or theme align. How you win the game should feel similar to how a character succeeds in the narrative. For example, in Sheriff of Nottingham the characters goals of making money at the market are closely aligned to the players goals of making the most points because most of the points are analogous to money the character has made. 

Game actions should help further the narrative arc, not just game objectives. This means that the actions players take should not just be thematic, they should feel important to the story. Every location in Tokaido makes sense to the narrative; none of them are naked mechanics poking through. A game like Space Base, on the other hand, is almost all naked mechanics with a lightly thematic setting. Space Base's mechanics may be better than Tokaido's, but the game isn't as emotionally resonant. 

Another way to add resonance through plot is to ground your story in a ‘universal’ experience. People like what they can relate to. This experience should provide the emotional impetus of the game, but you can layer whimsy on top of it. The movie My Neighbor Totoro is an excellent example of a whimsical setting that is still deeply grounded in the emotional reality of the real world. Adding depth to themes means adding layers of meaning and subtext, not simply a more detailed world. Ideas like friendship, sacrifice, and revenge add resonance. Made-up words and endless fantasy creatures do not. 

One way to avoid muddiness is by clearly indicating the location of the game-narrative. Stories are more accessible if listeners know ‘where’ events are taking place. This can be done through game board illustration, character movement, and game ‘physics’. Illustrations help remind players of the scene ‘around’ them. Character movement helps reinforce distances and topography. Tokaido gives the impression of a journey because the characters are moving across the board even though the 'map' is abstract. Game mechanics that incorporate physics like gravity help make the game feel more real, such as in Walking in Burano. Even components can provide a sense of location like the conveyor belts in Sushi Roll. It’s important to note that you don’t need a ton of detail to achieve the desired effect. A few details added very intentionally was all the aforementioned games needed to create a greater sense of location.

Another way to orient players within your game is to provide a sense of the timescale of the narrative (i.e. epochs, real time, seasons, etc.). Advancement of gameplay should align with the timescale you are using. Be aware that different scales produce different experiences. For example, a condensed time frame makes the action more immediate which adds excitement to a game. Civilization games lack that sense of immediacy. Does the game take place in one day? Does a round? A turn? Would adding what time of year a game occurs change your game in a meaningful way? One thing that made Viticulture stand out when it was published was how it used seasons to give a rhythm to the mechanics.

One of the best ways to tap into players' emotions is through character. Character goals should align with game objectives. Special powers should signal what a character desires or their strengths/weaknesses. Characters with narrative motivated goals and obstacles that are provided by game mechanics will seem more like real people. 

Individuals make more sympathetic characters/avatars than entities or corporations or factions. Games like Terraforming Mars don't interest me on a thematic level because players play as corporations. However, games with unrelated individuals are less resonant than games that give characters relationships. Relationships add depth and drive home meaning. I have already written about this, though so I won't dwell on it here.  

My favorite game that uses all four tools to great effect is the video game Untitled Goose Game. However, I believe that Tokaido is underserved in the hobby community when it is judged solely by its mechanics. Tokaido uses each of the tools I listed and creates a very resonant game that is very accessible to new gamers. Would a better game do everything Tokaido does well but also have more variety in gameplay? Sure. But if you want a single game to study how to add resonance without a Gloomhaven sized box, that game is Tokaido. Look at the theme: you play a person (character) traveling (plot) across Japan (location) for vacation (time). Helpfully, condensing the tools for resonance into a one sentence description is a good formulation for a hook. 

Resonant games have depth of theme, clarity of narrative, and a strong shape of mechanics that provide scaffolding for the theme. Plot, location, time, and character are tools you can use to create that depth, clarity, and shape. 

Good Criticism of Game Design

I love quality criticism. I started watching reviews of games to learn about games I don't have the time or money to play, but I follow a number of reviewers simply because I enjoy the quality of their criticism. Good playtesters give me the same feeling as good reviewers with one exception: now the high quality critique means I have work to do making my game better. When playtesting for specific feedback, one playtester who understands the core of your game and wants to see the gameplay match the potential of the design is worth more than a hundred playtesters who think your game is fun. I don't always love receiving criticism, but I do love a good critique. 

In my Design Practicum series, I have looked at each game a little differently. The purpose of that series is to illustrate how the design principles I write about in my other posts can be deployed when analyzing published games. In other words, I want a record in this blog of how I think about actual games and not only about game design principles. In my most recent practicum, a look at Monopoly, I made a list of criteria in order to organize my thoughts about the game. In this post, I wanted to look at that list of criteria and why I think good criticism incorporates all the categories on the list. 

Here's the list: quality, quantity, composition, dynamics, meta, and innovation. I didn't discuss innovation in my Monopoly post because what was innovative about the game now falls under history and not innovation. This list contains what I think should be covered by in-depth reviews of published games. Obviously, prototypes should not be judged by their art or components in the same fashion. But I do think that playtesters who understand the purpose of quality criticism become better playtesters. 

Games are a form of entertainment that cost money. I think it is perfectly reasonable to begin a critique with the quality of a game. Quality should encompass components, but also writing, editing, art, graphics, and even packaging. Each part impacts the experience of the game. And on the whole, I think the hobby- reviewers, designers, and consumers- are aware that all of these elements matter. 

Quantity comes after quality because quantity includes price point, and you cannot talk about pricing until you've established whether the game's quality should command a high or low price. Quantity also includes size of components and packaging, game length, number of players, number of components. Basically, anything with a number attached to it. These numbers matter in comparison to the price point but also in comparison to the average size of a dining room table or a Kallax shelf. In other words, is the physical existence of the game an impediment to its playability? 

Composition is where we intersect most with the principles of design: unity, emphasis, scale, balance, rhythm, and mood. All of these principles are elements of composition. In addition, composition looks at how components, rules, mechanics, and theme interact and align, how their quality and quantity affect the experience of play, and whether any simple changes could have reduced friction between these elements for players. I don't expect reviewers to use the same language I do, but good critiques should cover the totality of game composition, not just if the mechanics work. 

I include players' reaction to gameplay in dynamics as well as emergent strategies and players' interactions with each other. Also in this category is whether a game feels competitive throughout, whether it fits the weight it's marketed as (family, gateway, strategy, etc), and whether the game will continue to be interesting over multiple plays. Composition is about a game's relationship with itself; dynamics is about a game's relationship with the players. 

Meta-critique is the most underrepresented criteria in reviews that I see. Meta looks at how the game relates to the world outside of the game. This category looks at trends in game design and publishing, initiatives to grow the hobby, and the ethics around what sort of stories we tell in games. This category includes discussion of colonialism, diverse representation, and appropriation, as well as overused themes or mechanics, accessibility, and distribution models. My favorite reviewers are those that sprinkle in a healthy dose of meta to their reviews. This is the category that elevates a book review to literary criticism or a movie review to a masterclass in film studies. Games need this level of criticism to help legitimize the art form. I fully admit that not every review needs to look this deeply at a game. Most reviews are about helping consumers choose how to spend their money. But we need this level of critique as well. Higher level critique serves to educate the most engaged consumers and also holds designers and publishers accountable for the cultural impacts of their games. As a designer, I both want and need high quality critique from playtesters, publishers, and reviewers in order to become aware of my blind spots to my own designs. Currently, the games that get this level of critique are games that are complex, expensive, popular, or some combination of the three. There has been a recent push to review smaller, cheaper games this year in as much depth as the heavier games, which I hope continues. I believe that broadening and deepening critique of games will require a shift in how publishers and consumers think of games, not just reviewers. The number one thing I would like to see is designer's notes in every (or most every) game. By putting forward the idea that all hobby games are worthy of considering on a deeper level, publishers would effectively invite reviewers and consumers to consider their games as the art form that they are. 

I list innovation last because the hook of a game should always appear in the conclusion. Innovation covers whatever feels fresh or new about a game. Innovation is always a hook and most hooks feel innovative (whether they historically are or not). This category includes themes, mechanics, components, etc, but also dynamics, story-telling, and overall experience. Perfecting any aspect of a game can be considered innovative, even if you aren't inventing something whole cloth. Put another way, doing something for the first time and doing something well for the first time are both innovative. Let's stop pretending popular games aren't innovative because they didn't invent their mechanics. The first game to make a mechanic fun (or thematic) is just as innovative as the game that debuted the mechanic. Both are difficult design challenges and should be celebrated. 

Game design is art and criticism of art is necessary in order to one day write an accurate history of a particular art form. Good criticism educates consumers and holds designers and publishers accountable for their design choices. Good criticism leads to better games, a healthy hobby, and a future where board games (and other game genres) are accepted as the art they are. 

How to Creatively Reset Your Brain

 What is a creative reset? This is a tool for replenishing creative engery, not a tool to become more creative. It's what you need to do to avoid burnout or when faced with burnout. If you're feeling apathetic toward your projects or have developed a sense of loathing at the thought of being creative (especially on a schedule), you probably need to reset creatively. A creative reset is a break that allows you to rest and refill your creativity tank. 

How do you reset? In order to truly reset, you have to take a break from being creative on demand. So, during your reset time, you cannot work on any creative projects. Avoid thinking about them as well. Give your brain permission to rest. Resting is hard in our overstimulating world, so if you can you should avoid screens during your reset. At minimum, avoid social media. Do chores; do work; read a book; play a board game you're already familiar with. Do these things instead of looking at your phone, computer, or television screen. Listen to music if you have to have background noise. Take walks. Walking without a focus on exercise is a good way to let your brain relax. The ideal place to walk is somewhere quiet with lots of trees, but just walking a minimum of twenty minutes anywhere can work. 

If you have an idea, write it down to get it out of your brain, but avoid developing it during your reset. 

How long is the reset? The minimum for a full reset is three days. I have read reports from various places that that is how long it takes people going camping/off the grid to shift their mode of thinking away from being constantly plugged in to a more restful state. If you're already burned out, you made need longer. Ideally, a long weekend away in a cabin in the woods would tick all of the reset boxes. But I find that by forcing myself to reset in my usual environment that I am better able to regulate my behavior after the reset than if I just got back from vacation. Plus, a creative reset allows me time to do chores, contributing to lower stress in general. 

Remember, three days is for if you are approaching burnout and need a full reset. A week or more might be needed if you're already at burnout. Another, possibly healthier approach if you aren't near burnout is to pick a day of the week (yes, every week) where you focus on aspects of your life other than your creative projects. If you are a freelancer, this may involve explaining to people that you don't work on Tuesday afternoons or Sunday mornings (to pick an example from my freelancing days) if you don't want to wall off a full day. 

Don't curtail your reset if you start to feel better halfway thru. Fully commit to a timeframe and stick to it. Exhaustion is only a symptom. You'll know your tank is truly refilled when you get back to your projects eager to work and feel the ideas starting to bubble up again. 

The most important part: You have to give yourself permission to take a break from the thing (creativity) that is exhausting you. During these times, you will have to remind yourself that your job for today is to refill your tank. Most of a reset is just taking pressure off your self to always be turned 'on' creatively. Tell yourself it's ok to be 'off.'

If you're skeptical, give it a try. It's just three days. 

Mechanics Roundup: Acquisition (Cards)

I use action categories to help me plug in mechanisms around my core idea in order to flesh out a game and make it functional. Most often, I have idea for what players will do with components once they acquire them. It's the acquisition of resources that trips me up. Recently, while yet again testing different ways to acquire cards, I started a list of every way I could think of to acquire cards. Maybe it will help someone else as well. 

Card Acquisition

• Drafting: 
• pick-and-pass (ex: LRL; snake draft)
• from a pool, any card is free (flushable, sometimes)
• from a pool, cards slide down, place resources to skip a card
• I Cut; You Choose (hidden information, sometimes)
• Coloretto-style draw-or-draft
• Market:
• random pool (flushable, usually)
• from a pool, cards slide down to get cheaper
• from a pool, "I price; You Choose"
• complete information, all cards used
• complete information, market grows as cards are unlocked
• Personal player cards
• personal deck (pairs with a market for deck building; reset mechanism, sometimes)
• personal hand (reset mechanism, frequently)
• Drawing off a shared deck
• dealing a hand, all players get same number of cards (pairs with most things)
• draw n cards blind, into hand or otherwise 
• discard to draw
• pay to draw
• draw from discard pile
• search deck/discard pile
• Auctions/bidding (see BGG for types)
• Exchange between players
• trading
• negotiation/bribery
• Fulfill requirements
• turn in resources to get a card
• spend cards to get a card
• fail to fulfill requirements (ex: having cards is bad)
• Take an action
• action selection list ("take a card")
• worker placement/rondel (put a pawn on a card space)
• move token a number of spaces (land on a card space)
• forego an action to take a card instead
• Mancala-style set collection to claim cards
• Defeat other players in a contest
• trick-taking
• rock, paper, scissors
• other conflict resolution mechanisms
• Inherit cards from eliminated players
• Take that (steal a card from another player; included for completeness)
• Dexterity

Common traits to pair with card acquisition

• flushing 
• blind/open
• reset/ reclaim discards
• following (take the same action at a lower power)
• real-time
• race to complete/ "be the first"
• push your luck
• simultaneous
• variable costs

Obviously, I'm bound to be missing some. But I find having a list to go over when I'm stuck is helpful. 

Edit: This is something of a living list that I will add to as I think of things.             

Board Game Titles: A completely unscientific overview

It seems that every board game designer is on a quest for the perfect board game title. Design forums are filled with daily polls and requests for what title sounds best. Some days it feels like a good title is the holy grail of game design. In this post, I want to take a look at some common title formations and some tips for better title writing. NB: I'm largely ignoring anything subtitle related. 

Coming in at the top of the list is the well-beloved Adjective Noun. Seen in examples like Space Base, Star Realms, and Spirit Island, Adjective Noun titles are pithy and work well in conjunction with alliteration and/or rhyme.  This is my go-to title formation. Sometimes you can get away with adding an adjective or adverb, like Great Western Trail or Too Many Bones, but don't get carried away. Simple is better. 

A close second is Noun Preposition Object. This formation is for when Adjective Noun sounds too clunky. Examples include Sheriff of Nottingham, Mansions of Madness, and A Feast for Odin. The most common subtype here is "Character of/from Place." Garphill Games regularly combines this category with the first category to get "Noun Preposition Adjective Noun," such as in Paladins of the West Kingdom (or Chaos in the Old World by Eric Lang).  A reverse of the Garphill subtype would be A Few Acres of Snow or This War of Mine. Either can be a catchy formation, but I'd keep it pithy unless you're Shem Phillips. 

A similar formation is Verb Preposition Object. Examples include Roll For It!, Race for the Galaxy, Roll to the Top! There aren't a ton of these outside of "Roll..." titles, so there's room for innovation here. But I'd be careful to keep it pithy and tied to gameplay. 

Then there is the Noun and Noun formation. Popularized by Dungeons and Dragons, examples also include Tigris & Euphrates, Axis & Allies, and Wits & Wagers. Another great place for alliteration or rhyme. However, if you use this formation there is an expectation that the nouns will be closely tied to the gameplay. 

Now we enter into more dangerous territory. The first couple of categories fell under "hard to go wrong." The rest are "try at your own risk." And yes, the first half dozen that follow are single word titles, because getting the one perfect word to describe a game is hard and should not be attempted lightly. 

A common but tricky formation is the Idea-Noun. Examples include Photosynthesis, Wingspan, and Pandemic. These titles are processes or concepts that are difficult to illustrate (i.e. not a person, place, or thing). In some cases (Wingspan) the title may only be tangentially related to the core gameplay. Done well, these titles leap off the box cover and into your memory. Done poorly, you will likely have to add a lengthy subtitle just so players know what the game is about. (I'm looking at you, Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy.) 

While we're on nouns, let's blitz through (Real) Place, Person, and Thing. Anyone reading this could probably list off a dozen Place titles of board games (but also, Village and Citadels are examples of generic place names). If you go this route, make sure your game does the location justice and that the title isn't going to be confused for another game. Same thing goes with Person titles. Examples of Person titles are Trajan, Shakespeare, and Lorenzo il Magnifico.  I'd avoid naming your game after an object unless it's super evocative, like Scythe. Trains is a terrible title. 

For a truly risky title formation, use a Verb. Examples include Unlock!, Unearth, and Roam. While there is room for more Verb titles in the hobby, there is a reason most titles with verbs in them are parts of phrases. "Race" would be an extremely confusing title in this hobby. This is another formation to be avoided unless the verb is evocative and descriptive of gameplay. 

Honestly, the Adjective/Adverb formation is risky because of how tempting it is. Look at the examples: Azul, Imperial, Ingenious, Quantum, The Grizzled—don't they sound so pithy and fun? Well, not Ingenious, because that's setting expectations too high. And Imperial causes confusion with other games... Yeah, this is a hard sell. 

For the highest highs and lowest lows look to the Sentence Fragment formation. On the one hand, you have the common Prepositional Phrase, which usually works out. Examples include Through the Desert, For Sale, At the Gates of Loyang. On the other hand, Exclamations will make a game sound mass market. Examples include Just One, No Thanks!, and That's Pretty Clever! Sometimes, Exclamations don't always make sense, like with Camel Up or Sushi Go! Tread carefully here. Other subtypes can get trickier to pull off well, such as Conjunction Clause formations like ...and then, we held hands. Or the full sentence It's a Wonderful World.  Sentence fragments that start with a conjunction make poor titles in my opinion because they soften their approach (titles should grab customers) in addition to typically being too long. Longer definitely isn't better when it comes to board game titles. It's a Wonderful World only gets a pass because using a cliche allows us to store the title as a smaller chunk in our memory.  At the Gates of Loyang should be at least one word shorter. 

The following formations should be avoided because they make board gaming more opaque to anyone entering the hobby: Latin titles, like Ex Libris or Mare Nostrum; Fantasy Names like Valeria (this only works for established IPs); Compound Words like Zombicide, KeyForge, or RoboRally. These are very easy ways to make a bad game title even if you are an experienced titler. These types are in turn too obscure, too vague, and too weird. 

Of course the worst titles are the Nth Edition of a game like One Night Ultimate Werewolf Daybreak, a title so bad it is only rivaled by Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective in terms of being just a string of unnecessary, repetitive words. 

If you're very clever, you can twist a category into something new like how Above and Below and Near and Far turn Noun and Noun into Adverb and Adverb. Ryan Laukat deserves more credit for his consistently good titles. 

Collaboration in the Arts

In this mini-series on art, I've looked at where designers fit in as artists, the misconception that artists never finish their art, how craft relates to art, and the misconception that art primarily occurs as inspiration rather than skilled work. Finally, in this post I am looking at how collaboration works in the arts. 

Let's start with the misconception. When most people think "artist," they think of a person working alone on a project from start to finish. While many artists (especially visual artists) work this way, it is an extremely narrow vision of how artists make art. 

There are several types of artistic collaboration: collaboration between members of a group or collaboration between groups, but also immediate, back-and-forth, and pass-off styles of collaboration. (I'm just making up these terms to describe types of collaboration I have seen in the arts.) Collaboration between members of a group that is an immediate style can look like dancers practicing and refining a piece or like an improvised live performance; the feedback from collaborators occurs in real time. Collaboration between groups is the basis of most theatre productions. Lighting designers, scenic designers, directors, choreographers, etc. collaborate, usually in a back-and-forth style that involves a series of production meetings and emails, to create several designs (e.g. costume design) that all mesh together as a whole. Immediate style means the collaborators are in the same room while they work; back-and-forth means that collaborators meet to share progress. 

Pass-off collaboration is more linear. It looks like an artistic director selecting a play script and hiring a group of artists. Then the director (different role from artistic director) creates a concept for the show and sends it to the team. Then the set designer designs a set based on the script and the concept. Then the lighting designer takes the script, concept, and set design and designs the lighting. Many theaters use a more back-and-forth style, but I have seen linear style used as often if not more. In the case of linear style, usually someone on the back-end has collaborate using another style. In this case, the scenic artist and the assistant lighting designer might go back-and-forth about the exact colors to make sure that the realized production looks as good as possible. [Sometimes, these back-end collaborators aren't considered artists, like electricians or carpenters. This is where the arts vs. crafts debate results in the technical workers of theatre being devalued and underpaid even though they make artistic decisions all the time (usually small ones that promote cohesiveness of the production). I left this out of the last post, but wanted to clarify that artistic misconceptions do have real financial consequences.]

Why bring up collaboration? Two reasons. One, I want to point out the misconception of the solo artist. Even in the visual arts, many large works are produced by groups even if they are designed by one person. Often the collaborators are uncredited, as is the case in Renaissance art where a master painter had a number of apprentices working on a piece. We need to get over the solo genius myth. It applies to like two people in history. Everyone else had help. 

The second reason is that artistic collaboration looks a whole lot like how board games get made, even in the case of a solo designer. The designer passes the game off to the publisher, who sends it to the graphic artist and illustrator. This results in either linear or back-and-forth collaboration. 

The reason I wrote this mini-series on art is to argue that board game design is art. The only reason I can think of that would make designers believe otherwise is that they have a number of misconceptions about what art-making looks like, especially in a professional context. I believe that in order for the industry to continue to develop, we need to examine our place as entertainment (i.e. art) makers. We could learn a lot from our fellow artists, but we need to recognize them as peers first. 

Art Versus Craft

This is shaping up to be a mini-series on what art is. Last post, I addressed if a game designer is an artist. This post, I will look at the concept of 'craft' as it relates to art. Next post, I will discuss artistic collaboration. The purpose of these posts is to shed light on what counts as art and who artists really are. 

The barriers between art and craft involve a lot of misconceptions and prejudice. In the last post, I discussed the misconception around artists who never let go of their creations. There are several more misconceptions around the lines that get drawn between art and craft.

There is a duality to the concept of craft. One aspect is the Western image of skilled workers (usually male) making high quality products by hand. The other aspect is the relegation of crafts made by women to chintzy decor that is neither art nor quality handiwork. I won't be delving into this duality, but as I continue to discuss craft it will mostly be in reference to the first image, emphasizing skill and reproducibility. However, I think it is important to point out that the idea of craft/crafts has been used to denigrate women and non-western cultures. 

When discussing the perceived dividing line between art and craft, it becomes apparent that the line exists to divide skill and inspiration. Craft is seen as skill, something you can learn and perfect and repeat. Largely, I agree with this definition; crafts do require specialized knowledge with a number of levels of ability thresholds, whether it's knitting or wood-working. However, I would list crafts as a sub-genre of art. 

So, let's talk about art. Art is viewed as inspiration striking the artist and then flowing from them through their brush or pen or chisel and resulting in an effortlessly created masterpiece. (Unless they are finicky artists who adjust details of that work for decades rather than selling it.) But in my experience, most people see art as existing within the inspiration, the ideas, or "creativity" of the artist. Thus we get the image of the dreamy artist who always has their head in the clouds. Here's the truth, a really great idea may be what makes a work famous, but ideas are less than 10% of the effort required to make art. The rest is skill and tedium. 

If I want to paint a painting, I may first have an idea. But then I will research similar images to help me get proportions correct, sketch several possible poses, prepare my canvas, put down some reference lines, mix the colors I want to use, and eventually "start" painting. Later, I will have to clean up so that my equipment (in this cases brushes) stays in good repair. When does the art start? If your answer is when I start painting, you should know that if I were to skip to that step, the painting would turn out much worse than if I properly prepare. Good art is the result of hard work and detailed, often boring, steps. Also, I may have a knack for painting, but I didn't get decent at it until I took drawing and painting classes. Because art is a skill. 

If you think art is in the ideas only, you should know that good execution is worth a lot more than good ideas. And I do mean worth in the financial sense. Ideas don't feed artists; turning quality work in on time does. In board games, we say that no one will steal your idea because how the game is realized is where the value is. 

Another point to consider: artists cheat professionally. Vanishingly little art is made whole cloth ex nihilo. Artists recycle ideas and methods. They trace, copy, borrow, and steal from other artists. Yes, it is unethical to do so in a way that is noticeable in the final product, but as long as the end result is unique to the artist, any shortcut is time and money saved. Most people don't think of artists this way, partially because if customers knew about all the shortcuts they might not want to pay as much for a piece of art. The downside to maintaining an air of artistic mastery is that the public has come to view art as an intangible process that occurs largely due to inspiration (also intangible). Art is a skill. Art is a craft. Crafts are a form of art. 

There is a small point to be made that the perception of art is that art-works are one-offs and reproducibility reduces the impact of art. However, Edvard Munch's The Scream exists as four paintings and is easily one of the most recognizable pieces of Western art. 

I think one of the reasons board game designers are resistant to being labeled artists is because they understand the skill and tedium involved in their craft. What they don't realize is that skill and tedium is present in every other form of art. Don't take my word for it. Ask any professional painter, musician, actor, photographer, dancer, or poet if their job requires skill or contains boring elements. 

Are designers artists? A complaint in 3 parts

Recently, in a panel of established board game designers, these statements were made: "You're a game designer, not a game artist," and  "I don't think of myself as an artist; I think of myself as an experience designer." Obviously, these views are not espoused by this blog. But I would like to spend some time unpacking why. 

Who gets to be called an artist?

First, let's look at what practices fall under the heading of "fine arts:" painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, architecture, music, poetry, theatre, and dance. Art house cinema could also be included. I hope we can agree that all of these things listed are art. 

However, fine art or high-brow art implies the existence of low-brow art. In this case, I do not mean poor quality art, but rather art that is accessible to the masses, both thru its reproducibility and it appeal. Spoiler alert: low-brow art is more commonly referred to as entertainment, as in "Arts & Entertainment." People working in 'art' fields often have the same skills as people working in 'entertainment' fields. Frequently, they're the same people. Patrick Stewart is both a trained Shakespearean actor and a superhero movie actor. 

For what it's worth, I believe board games to fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, due to the limits of production, cost, and consumability (learning rules limits the number of games people can play in day). Neither fine art (except for certain games as art installations) nor low-brow art (except for mass market games).

Saying that only the people whose work is in museums and art history textbooks get to be counted as artists is gate-keeping. Rigidly defining what counts as art always leads to the arts losing funding. For the purposes of this blog, if the purpose of a work is creative expression then it is art. And yes, mechanics-driven designs are still creative expressions of a designer.

Are designers artists?

If you want to read my definition of design, go here. I hope we can all agree that graphic designers are artists. Architects are just building designers. Choreographers design dances. The use of 'design' as a term usually signals that functionality or practical concerns were a large part of the creation process. I fully admit that part of the confusion is that design means something different in STEM fields. But games are not feats of mechanical engineering; they are entertainment. And entertainment is art. And in the arts, designers are artists. Whether they want to call themselves that or not. 

Why does it matter what term we use?

In the examples at the top of the post, the designers were responding to a question about how to balance perfecting your game versus just handing it off to publishers/getting it finished. The implication of the question and the responses is that artists are ego-driven and don't know how to deliver product on time. Or, more charitably, that people who describe themselves as artists (instead of designers) are that way. Either way, this perpetuates stereotypes that result in disrespecting and harming professional artists. 

The word for an artist who never finishes a project is 'amateur.' I don't mean that to be derogatory, either. Professionals turn things in on time and get paid. Amateurs tweak and fiddle and don't get paid. Both are valid if your goals line up with your strategy. Assuming artists are all perfectionists is tantamount to calling artists amateurs. Which is pretty insulting to the illustrators and graphic designers who work on board games. It's also insulting to artists who design board games. The conflation of artist and amateur also feeds into the stereotype that we don't have real jobs and thus are not deserving of real benefits and protections. 

Board game designer is an exact term that is useful. Board game artist is a hazy term that could mean a number of things. But just because 'chemist' is more exact than 'scientist' doesn't mean both can't be true at the same time. 

In conclusion, by staunchly refusing to call designers artists, you are saying something about designers and about artists and how the two ideas need to be kept separate. I work in a field professionally that has a similar dynamic. In spite of having 'artist' in my job title, I may not be included as part of the creative team. I'll delve into this more in my next post on art vs. craft. However, the take away is that how members of creative teams are viewed affects how much they get paid. So I have a financial interest in educating people about harmful stereotypes in the arts. 

Artists aren't (necessarily) amateurs. Designers are artists. 

Development Directions and Ways to Stand Out in a Crowded Market

The saying goes that these days a game needs to be great not good in order to succeed. In this post, I'd like to look at some of the ways a game can stand out from the crowd and the possible downsides of different methods. 

Innovation is a surefire way to generate excitement about a game. Innovation in the board game sphere is generally seen as related to mechanics (or components that help implement mechanics). On the one hand, it is incredibly hard to develop completely new (or new feeling) ideas that work really well. Innovation is very hard. On the other hand, too much innovation in a game can be a bad thing. Too many novel mechanics can make a game hard to learn and hard to play because players don't have a foundation of similar elements as a jumping off point. Generally speaking, the rule of thumb (according to Geoff Engelstein and others) is one innovative element per game that players have to learn. Another downside to innovation is that often the first design using a certain mechanism will get improved upon by later games, so innovation does not guarantee an evergreen title. Keep in mind that innovation requires researching what is already out there so you know how your game is different. 

Many games are developed with niche audiences in mind. Having more complexity in a game is a strong draw to dedicated gamers. Combining lots of mechanisms can make a game feel innovative even when it isn't. These games are more likely to get in depth reviews (for good or ill) and common knowledge says that BoardGameGeek has a bias towards rating heavier games more highly. The downsides are that heavier games are harder to design, develop, and playtest. Adding complexity to games also adds cost more often than not. Because the audience is fairly narrow, any heavy game that doesn't stand out in other ways is unlikely to be picked up by a publisher. 

Increasingly, gamers are drawn to games that tell stories. Adding story elements to a game increases player investment by raising the stakes—instead of playing to beat your friend, you are playing to help your character triumph on the battlefield over their foes or save the world or build the best town or...  Story can alleviate some rules complexity by spacing it out and contextualizing it. Stories can keep more casual gamers engaged in a game they might otherwise 'check out' of. Story-based games tend to suffer from either too much writing or bad writing or both. Chapter breaks can feel disruptive to game play. Often the writing feels unnecessary to gameplay or worse, unrelated. Rule of thumb: hire good writers and show restraint. 

Integration of theme and mechanics is a relatively new area of focus. Games are praised when they feel like the theme. Integrated themes contextualized rules without adding lots of text. Strong theming can bolster the emotional arc of gameplay. Good integration will add some cost due to custom components (cubes rarely feel thematic). Thematic integration requires designers to understand both game systems and their emotional content to avoid ludonarrative dissonance. The biggest downside is the lack of design language in the hobby around theme and its implementation. This is an area ripe for exploration and a major focus of this blog. 

On the publishing side, higher production values have raised consumer standards for buying games. To stand out in this arena, games must have quality art, graphic design, formatting and editing, components, and packaging—boxes, inserts, and punch boards. Obviously, this can be expensive. However, consumers feel better about spending eighty dollars on a game if it looks and feels like a quality made product. High production values should not be confused with more components. The amount of components should be in support of the content of the game. More content that exists only to add more components is widely panned as 'bloat.' Finally, while table presence is important to a degree, games that feel gimmicky are eroding players' trust in flashy games put out by untested publishers. There may always be a market for an overproduced Kickstarter game, but I predict a bubble burst in the near future. 

Ideally, a good product would contain multiple of the above considerations. However, trying to be excellent at everything is a recipe for failure. Instead, focus on one area and incorporate that into your design vision. Work to avoid common pitfalls and weaknesses of similar games. If your game still isn't standing out, try refocusing by exploring other directions. (Maybe your story-based game works better as a thematic integration game.) Cut what doesn't work and focus on what does. Once you are sure of your focus, playtest to see if the experience is there. Don't just playtest mechanics; test your theme or story or components. 

There is no one formula to make a game that stands out from the crowd, but there are many paths to explore on your journey. 

Design Practicum: Monopoly

 Yep. In this post we're diving into the design choices in Monopoly. Because while it's easy to dismiss it as "just so very, very bad," becoming a better designer means being able to think critically about design choices, good or bad. There is a lot to talk about with Monopoly, so I am going to break my critique into categories. If you have already read one too many reviews of Monopoly, skip down to my conclusion. 

Quality: This is one of the most mass-produced games. As a result, most of the components are middling-to-bad by hobby gamer standards. Notably, the best components, the tokens, are also the most iconic to the game. Additionally, the art and graphics really aren't up to hobby standards. 

Quantity: Monopoly is a price point most families can afford. The physical size of the game is about right for what it is, but the shape of the box is pretty bad. I'd wager most families are like mine and kept games in a hall closet with the winter jackets, as the only place they would fit in the house. The problem with that is accessibility- games that are hard to reach won't get played very often. This ends up reducing the prospective value of the game. The number of players works for most families, but playing at either 2 or six could make the game overly cutthroat although for different reasons. Finally, the game is too long for what it is. More on that in a bit. 

Composition: Let's get it out of the way and state that most players learn to play by oral tradition and that those 'house rules' actually make the game worse. That said, the intention of the game appears to be focused on auctions and trading of properties. The real estate theme fits the mechanics of auctions and trading, but the rest of the mechanics are not thematic. The mechanics are split between the highly random—roll and move, chance/community chest cards—and the highly economic—auctions and trades. To modern sensibilities, this mishmash of mechanics feels disjointed. While the auctions and trades bring a much needed dose of strategy to the game, the lack of structure around trades especially makes even the economic parts of the game feel random. Players can choose to simply not trade with someone if they are bent on having one player lose. The looseness of the rules around trading (and to a certain extent, auctions) also helps explain why so many play groups have 'forgotten' these rules. This is compounded in the second half of the game, after auctions have ended and trading is the only strategic recourse left for players to build monopolies. Returning to the idea that the game is too long, most players will know they have lost long before they go bankrupt. In Monopoly, it is possible to spend 30 minutes knowing you will lose, then another 30 after you have lost watching everyone else finish playing the game. Modern games have generally come to the consensus that playing the whole game with a hope of winning is the more fun way of playing. (Many of the bugbears of modern board game design—roll and move, player elimination, runaway leaders, high output randomness, king-making—are present in Monopoly.)

Dynamics: The arc of gameplay moves mainly through three emotions: boredom at the repetitive mechanics, frustration when landing on a bad spot, and anger that other players won't trade with you. This is punctuated by moments of joy when the dice finally go your way. Strategic players will tell you that the most skilled player will win every time, and they're right. But due to runaway leader mechanics, that means only one person playing (at most) will enjoy the game arc of seeing their strategy succeed. For fans of complex strategy games that may not be a defect, but Monopoly is marketed as a family game. Family games designed in the last decade are usually under an hour to play and lack the complex economic systems of Monopoly. This game is supposed to be for players age 8 and up. While some of the mechanics are child-friendly (roll and move), if you are playing to win or even to finish a game your child will likely experience the same boredom and frustration that many adults experience when playing. In my estimation, Monopoly fails as a family game. What about as a strategy game? Here, the design shows more promise. The freeform trading makes more sense in the context of competitive players used to similar mechanics in other games. The lack of art and good graphic design is also less out of place for a certain category of strategy game. The length of the game, 60-180 minutes, places Monopoly on the shorter, lighter end of the strategy game spectrum. Where Monopoly  falls apart as a strategy game is the high level of randomness. One could argue that Merchants of Venus, famous as a heavy-strategy roll and move game, has enough systems to balance out the randomness of the dice. Monopoly is too light to overcome its high level of randomness. Yes the most skilled player will always win, but the experience of doing so falls short compared to other games of similar complexity or mechanism. (The fact that Monopoly is rated as less complex than Azul on BGG is a rant for another day.)

Meta: The mixing of the theme of cutthroat real estate management and the presentation as a family game contributes to the muddy feeling that is the experience of playing Monopoly. I would argue that this disconnect is a large contributor to the 'house rules' phenomenon— families are attempting to make the game feel more friendly. This oral tradition makes the game even longer, preventing many players from ever discovering the strategy of gameplay. This in turn results in fewer board games getting played by families who 'bounce off' of Monopoly. After all, based on their experience board games are long and tedious. And after around 90 years on the market, many casual players are not able to distinguish 'familiar' from 'fun.' This is doubly true for players who haven't played a game published since 1990—they don't know how board games have evolved to be faster, easier to learn, and more accessible to families. 

Conclusion: Monopoly is a middling strategy game with mismatched mechanics and poor production quality masquerading as a pretty bad family game. However, there are plenty of people who love it and play competitively (including in tournaments). While I don't enjoy it, I do enjoy plenty of other games that are poorly designed. Enjoyment of 'low quality' entertainment is widespread in every form of media. Whether enjoyment of a piece of media renders discussions about its 'badness' moot is best left alone for now. The facts of the matter are that there are thousands of games better than Monopoly but people are still allowed to like what they like. 

Abstraction, Representationalism, & Choice

Today, I am not burying the lede: Do not expect your audience to do the work you are unwilling to do. 

I hope a major take away from this blog in general is to pay attention to the details, because a design lives and dies by whether all the details serve the whole experience. This post is a specific admonition regarding the thematic content of a game design. 

Let's define some terms. In this post (but not everywhere in the board game world), abstract will be used to mean themeless. Representational refers to images/ideas that are not abstract. Representation refers to who is depicted by themes and how they are depicted. 

There are two modes of lazy thought in theme/narrative crafting. One is that everyone can imagine themselves as the main character, regardless of what that character looks like. (I won't be delving into this, but there is a lot of interesting literature on diversity in children's toys and childhood development if you've never explored the idea.) The other is that in order for everyone to be represented, no one should be represented. This is the idea I want to explore in this post. 

First off, this argument only comes up in discussions of the representation of marginalized people in board games, never with white male characters. The inconsistency automatically makes this argument suspect. However, there are few lessons we can mine by taking this argument in good faith and seeing if it has anything to offer. 

Let us assume that those arguing for greater abstraction are not actually arguing for fully abstract games. It seems unlikely that the argument is meant to extend to Agricola, Scythe, or Pandemic, stripping them of any and all theme. Rather this argument is presented as way to avoid specific character details in board game design. If you never see what the main character looks like, you can imagine yourself in the lead role. (Reminder, do not expect your audience to do the work you are unwilling to do.)

The first problem we are presented with in this scenario is boring art. You can't have character art if you are avoiding depicting characters. And not every game calls for aliens or anthropomorphic animals. Imagine Agricola with sheep wearing clothes tending smaller sheep in pens- all right for a kid's game, but absurd in a game for adults. (Again, designs with European-looking characters rarely receive this call for abstraction.)  A lack of character art that represents what the characters are doing in the game can do a game real disservice. Some games require representational imagery. Art helps explain and contextualize the rules. Not every game can be abstract, especially when theme/art helps reduce the time it takes to learn the game, in addition to adding a layer of fun on its own. So clearly, we cannot simply do away with character art altogether OR make every character a rubbery alien. What then? (Do not expect your audience to do the work you are unwilling to do.)

Some people will insist that diversity should make sense based on the world-building of the game. To these people, I invite them to research the difference between soft world-building and hard world-building.  There is no rule that says that every detail of your world has to make perfect sense to the viewer. In fact, a certain amount of fun can be lost if you insist on purity of lore over making choices that make the game better. 

The flip side is simply adding in representation in the art alone. Many publishers are doing this and I don't believe there is anything wrong with having more visibly diverse characters. Mostly harmless; somewhat helpful; doesn't go far enough.

Now we are getting to what I really want to address. The benefit of having representation in games is not merely so players feel seen. We can adjust the character art of the same zombie/pirate/space games all day long and never really see something new in the hobby. The real benefit of diverse characters is the opportunity for diverse stories. Yes, there are huge pitfalls if you try to tell a story using someone else's culture—(I have seen people using the 'abstraction' argument to people trying to design games that represent their own culture; not to mention, people praised for cultural appropriation.)—but that doesn't mean the only other option is abstraction. In addition to cultural consultants, co-designers, and research, there is also going out and talking to people. Especially if you are reading this, you have access to a huge diversity of thought and experience via the internet. Do the work to tell better stories. 

If you choose to stick closely to your lived experience, you still have stories to tell that no one else can. Designing games—telling stories—where you have something to say that hasn't been said before is ART. Make art. Make art only you can make. Engage your themes. There is a reason certain themes are so popular. (Zombies address our fears of overpopulation, for instance.) Understand the emotional connection of theme to audience/player. Board games are about relationships: player to player, score to score, area to area, piece to piece. There is design room within the constraints of a board game for more emotion, more theme, more stories, more relationships than what we have seen thus far. (See also: any other post on this blog.)

However, do not expect your audience to do the work you are unwilling to do. You cannot have a deep, resonant theme or a good story or an exciting game if you do not put in the work. Do not hope your audience will fill in the gaps for you. Here's the thing about audiences—they have a choice in how to engage. Some will only engage with your design as if it is abstract. Some will read every word of the lore. Some will engage critically, like a reviewer. Some will compare your game to your body of work. Some will compare it to other offerings in the genre. Some will only engage in the binary of fun/not fun. You cannot control how every player engages with your game, but by choosing to abstract you remove options of engagement (and potential fun) from your players. 

I believe that in order for board games to continue to grow and evolve that games need art, need stories, need emotion and meaning. My advice: do the work.