I think I will periodically post in this series various arguments to build my case that board games would benefit from approaching design and production from a theatre perspective, as opposed to a purely product perspective or what have you.
The board game industry is often portrayed as having been passed and eclipsed by the video game industry. Reproducibility and accessibility, not to mention average price per unit, have a huge affect on this trend. This same trend is one we see with plays and movies. There are many areas where video games have more in common with movies than they do with board games, with many video games becoming essentially interactive movies.
Perhaps it is unfair to say that board games are more like plays than they are like video games, but looking at the requirements of these two hobbies can perhaps help predict what the board game industry can expect in the future.
Both plays and board games are analog. If given too much of a tech upgrade they cease to be what they started as. If you film a play, it becomes a movie. A digital board game is by definition a video game. The core of the game is still the same, but the experience has fundamentally changed.
Plays and board games are both live experiences bounded by a semi-fluid time frame. Unlike movies, the run-time of a play can vary from night to night. Plays and board games both change based on the consumers' input. Not drastically, but that variability is what makes live entertainment so unique. Video games have variability created by consumer input and can often be played with people in a shared room, but the focus is on the screen, so much of the live feel of social interaction is lost. Additionally, video games are not constrained by short time limits. Very few board games exceed eight hours in play time (although that would be short for Diplomacy), but very many video games do exceed eight hours to just finish the main quest line.
I'm going to move away from video games and movies and just talk about some of the overlap of board games and theatre. Both fields have a high number of hobby practitioners and a much smaller subset of full time professionals. Very few people working full time in either field make an impressive amount of money. Becoming a professional actor or board game designer has a minimum start up cost, which can push out people who aren't privileged with a decent main income or a strong safety net. This tends to show up as a diversity problem in both fields, which is especially embarrassing for theatre in that theatre has been an industry much longer and likes to publicly espouse its liberalness.
Both board game design and theatre design encourage practitioners to learn a little bit about a lot of areas of study: math, psychology, philosophy, art, history, etc. I have dabbled in the shallow end of structural engineering, computer-aided drafting, graphic design, electrical wiring, literary criticism, event planning, security, facilities management, etc. I'm not qualified to do any of those things full-time as a professional. Complex creative projects require learning a broad set of skills. Psychology is especially interesting. Board game designers talk about player psychology and how to get better feed back from play testers. Someone with a psychology degree can tell you why certain behaviors happen and how to predict player response based on a given stimulus. But actors and directors can tell you how to manipulate your viewer, how to make them cry or laugh or gasp. Tuning the production to evoke immediate an emotional response is purview of the theatre practitioner.
In other ways, board games are only just starting to move into areas theatre has been in for a long time. As I have stated before in this blog, there is some confusion in the industry about the rising production values of games. Some people believe the attraction is only the nice art or toy factor. But consider the consumer. Most television shows these days have an expectation of consistency of story, thanks largely to ability of viewers to watch the episodes in intended order. Thirty years ago (or less), this was not the case. Spotting production errors in movies has become a national pastime. Disney's takeover of Broadway has led to higher expectations for production values in musical productions. Consumers of media have increased standards for consistency and detail, which I would argue extends to board games. Ergo, consumers of board games are looking for high production values (good art and components) that display consistency and attention to detail. Integrated design will be the default expectation very shortly in the hobby. Narrative, art, mechanics, and components will all need to feel seamlessly part of a whole. One way theaters do this is by hiring artistic directors. An artistic director in the board game world would be different from an art director. Artistic directors guide every project from the time the company adds it to the production calendar until it is finished. Artistic directors ensure that the project is up to the company's standards of production but also that each element of the production is of equal quality with the others. Right now in board games, the person guiding the product vision seems to be the owner of a publishing company. As companies continue to consolidate and production standards continue to rise, I predict we will see a move toward hiring someone to function as an artistic director in publishing companies.
I would like to see board game designers viewed as artists and board game production more as collaborative art-making. Designers create experiences much like directors; they build stories like playwrights; they design settings like set designers. To contract a designer is to (hopefully) buy into their design vision. Giving the various artists in a production access to each produces tighter, better final products. This is something baked into theatre, although there are plenty of examples of productions where the artists didn't deign to collaborate and that is also evident in the final product. Limiting the scope of artists' input, however, is vital to meeting deadlines. I have personally been a part of theatrical productions where new large set pieces were added the week of opening. Knowing when to say no or limit input while still fostering collaboration is a delicate balance that some publishers (Stonemeier comes to mind) are better at than others. The easiest way to see a platonic version of all parts serving the whole is to look at designer/artist/publisher Ryan Laukat, who doesn't have to sacrifice artistic vision due to the lack of competing artistic opinions in the process. For the rest of us, treating designers and artists as collaborators on a 'designed experience' is the best way to achieve an integrated design.
Board games have for many years now been seen as practical problems with somewhat creative solutions. Creative math is still math. Mechanics and components are discussed from an engineering standpoint. Art is seen as either mere flourish or marketing. We have to move away from this. Theatre has plenty of engineering problems, which involve actual engines and programming, not facsimiles. Yet we categorize theatre as one of the arts. I think we have to change how we talk about board games from product development to art production. It's what we're already doing, so we should acknowledge it.
The board game industry is often portrayed as having been passed and eclipsed by the video game industry. Reproducibility and accessibility, not to mention average price per unit, have a huge affect on this trend. This same trend is one we see with plays and movies. There are many areas where video games have more in common with movies than they do with board games, with many video games becoming essentially interactive movies.
Perhaps it is unfair to say that board games are more like plays than they are like video games, but looking at the requirements of these two hobbies can perhaps help predict what the board game industry can expect in the future.
Both plays and board games are analog. If given too much of a tech upgrade they cease to be what they started as. If you film a play, it becomes a movie. A digital board game is by definition a video game. The core of the game is still the same, but the experience has fundamentally changed.
Plays and board games are both live experiences bounded by a semi-fluid time frame. Unlike movies, the run-time of a play can vary from night to night. Plays and board games both change based on the consumers' input. Not drastically, but that variability is what makes live entertainment so unique. Video games have variability created by consumer input and can often be played with people in a shared room, but the focus is on the screen, so much of the live feel of social interaction is lost. Additionally, video games are not constrained by short time limits. Very few board games exceed eight hours in play time (although that would be short for Diplomacy), but very many video games do exceed eight hours to just finish the main quest line.
I'm going to move away from video games and movies and just talk about some of the overlap of board games and theatre. Both fields have a high number of hobby practitioners and a much smaller subset of full time professionals. Very few people working full time in either field make an impressive amount of money. Becoming a professional actor or board game designer has a minimum start up cost, which can push out people who aren't privileged with a decent main income or a strong safety net. This tends to show up as a diversity problem in both fields, which is especially embarrassing for theatre in that theatre has been an industry much longer and likes to publicly espouse its liberalness.
Both board game design and theatre design encourage practitioners to learn a little bit about a lot of areas of study: math, psychology, philosophy, art, history, etc. I have dabbled in the shallow end of structural engineering, computer-aided drafting, graphic design, electrical wiring, literary criticism, event planning, security, facilities management, etc. I'm not qualified to do any of those things full-time as a professional. Complex creative projects require learning a broad set of skills. Psychology is especially interesting. Board game designers talk about player psychology and how to get better feed back from play testers. Someone with a psychology degree can tell you why certain behaviors happen and how to predict player response based on a given stimulus. But actors and directors can tell you how to manipulate your viewer, how to make them cry or laugh or gasp. Tuning the production to evoke immediate an emotional response is purview of the theatre practitioner.
In other ways, board games are only just starting to move into areas theatre has been in for a long time. As I have stated before in this blog, there is some confusion in the industry about the rising production values of games. Some people believe the attraction is only the nice art or toy factor. But consider the consumer. Most television shows these days have an expectation of consistency of story, thanks largely to ability of viewers to watch the episodes in intended order. Thirty years ago (or less), this was not the case. Spotting production errors in movies has become a national pastime. Disney's takeover of Broadway has led to higher expectations for production values in musical productions. Consumers of media have increased standards for consistency and detail, which I would argue extends to board games. Ergo, consumers of board games are looking for high production values (good art and components) that display consistency and attention to detail. Integrated design will be the default expectation very shortly in the hobby. Narrative, art, mechanics, and components will all need to feel seamlessly part of a whole. One way theaters do this is by hiring artistic directors. An artistic director in the board game world would be different from an art director. Artistic directors guide every project from the time the company adds it to the production calendar until it is finished. Artistic directors ensure that the project is up to the company's standards of production but also that each element of the production is of equal quality with the others. Right now in board games, the person guiding the product vision seems to be the owner of a publishing company. As companies continue to consolidate and production standards continue to rise, I predict we will see a move toward hiring someone to function as an artistic director in publishing companies.
I would like to see board game designers viewed as artists and board game production more as collaborative art-making. Designers create experiences much like directors; they build stories like playwrights; they design settings like set designers. To contract a designer is to (hopefully) buy into their design vision. Giving the various artists in a production access to each produces tighter, better final products. This is something baked into theatre, although there are plenty of examples of productions where the artists didn't deign to collaborate and that is also evident in the final product. Limiting the scope of artists' input, however, is vital to meeting deadlines. I have personally been a part of theatrical productions where new large set pieces were added the week of opening. Knowing when to say no or limit input while still fostering collaboration is a delicate balance that some publishers (Stonemeier comes to mind) are better at than others. The easiest way to see a platonic version of all parts serving the whole is to look at designer/artist/publisher Ryan Laukat, who doesn't have to sacrifice artistic vision due to the lack of competing artistic opinions in the process. For the rest of us, treating designers and artists as collaborators on a 'designed experience' is the best way to achieve an integrated design.
Board games have for many years now been seen as practical problems with somewhat creative solutions. Creative math is still math. Mechanics and components are discussed from an engineering standpoint. Art is seen as either mere flourish or marketing. We have to move away from this. Theatre has plenty of engineering problems, which involve actual engines and programming, not facsimiles. Yet we categorize theatre as one of the arts. I think we have to change how we talk about board games from product development to art production. It's what we're already doing, so we should acknowledge it.
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