Categorizing Experience-based Design: Intellect-Challenging Design

In this post, we're moving from emotion-based design to cognitive-based design. This is also the last post in this series. 

Intellect-Challenging designs (or intellect-driven designs, I'm still debating my nomenclature) include designs where strategy, tactics, competition, and out-thinking is prioritized. Intellect-driven games have an experiential core of challenging the players, usually in a way that rouses competitiveness. ‘Challenge’ from the eight types of fun is most typified in this category. As such, intellect-driven designs do not need to focus as much on emotional content, as there is less variety in the emotional experience across designs of this nature and also because those types of experiences will be best accessed through focusing on the intellectual challenge of the game. Intellect-driven games can still be seen as ‘immersive’ when the games introduce the possibility of players entering flow states. This is the type of immersion that Calleja refers to as ‘absorption’ in the player involvement model.

   

Intellect-driven games often have themes that are well-integrated with mechanics. Farmers harvest wheat; vikings conduct raids; cowboys herd cattle. The presence of theme is not a clear indicator of whether a board game is emotion-driven or intellect-driven. The clearest example of this is to compare Great Western Trail with Western Legends. Both are western themed games. Both have an emergent narrative of how good players are at being cowboys. However, Western Legends centers the experience of being a character in the old west and Great Western Trail prioritizes strategic play. One is a thematic transportation design, the other is an intellect-driven design. 

Adding theme does add emotional elements. There is a certain emotional content inherent to ‘cowboys on the trail.’ Emotional content (and theme) can add a layer of fun to a game without changing the design style. The same goes for art. We could all still be playing trick taking games with a standard deck of cards. Publishers publish card games to make money, but players buy them because they offer something a deck of cards doesn’t: emotional content presented via theme and art. A theme, even ‘pasted-on’ is appealing to players. Not every theme has to be fully integrated. Integration depends on the design style of the game. 

Simple emotion-driven designs may be easily confused for intellect-driven games. There is a fine line between simple strategy games (intellect-driven) and relaxing ‘cozy’ games (simple emotion-driven). A simple abstract game, such as Seikatsu, can bridge the two styles because the rules are simple enough to not require levels of concentration that preclude engaging with the game emotionally. On the whole though, I would classify these types of games as one or the other based purely on how players engage with the game while it is being played. Players playing intellect-driven games tend to be very focused on every action of the game. Intellect-driven games are usually very mathematically balanced and rarely have elements of luck.

One trap of design is believing intellect-driven designs are the only design space where innovation can occur. This results in prioritizing new mechanisms or new implementations of mechanisms above every other design consideration. Not only is the quest for the next hot mechanism a very long shot for any designer, but it frequently confuses what makes some games great. For some games, it's the challenge, but for others it's the emotional-engagement. 

Lastly, educational designs also fall into cognitive-based designs. These games may be referred to as 'serious games' because they fall outside of the entertainment aspect of game design. However, empathy-based games could sometimes also fall into the category of serious games because their purpose may not be entertainment. I'm not really qualified in the area of educational or "learning" games, so I'll leave this area of cognitive-based design to those that are. 

I'm sure there are more categories that could be explored in experience-based design, but I hope these are a good start to thinking more specifically about the types of experiences that can be created in board games.