I was honored to participate in the Board Game Summit for the all virtual GDC this year. My talk was pre-recorded and aired for participants on Monday, July 19th. This is Part 1 of the script for my GDC 2021 talk: Creating Resonance with Thematic Design. (Part 2 is available here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here.) The script has been lightly edited for ease of reading and annotated with links to other posts for additional thoughts on certain topics.
Hello, my name is Sarah Shipp and this is Creating Resonance with Thematic Design. My background is in professional theatre, so I approach game design from a ‘fine arts as craft’ perspective. I have about eight years experience doing theatre professionally. I’ve only been designing games for three years, but a few things have struck me about how board game designers view design compared to theatrical designers.
I feel that many board game designers, especially starting out, view game design as an engineering problem. But I contend that game design isn’t engineering; it’s architecture. Architecture needs engineering in order to build buildings, but architecture is also art. Game design needs math and probability and a solid technical foundation, but if we stay there then we will stop developing as a field. We need the language of art to move forward.
This is especially true when it comes to designing themes. Yes, I said designing themes. Thematic design is just as much about which thematic details you include as it is about how the mechanics relate to the theme. To that end, I’ve pulled from Classical, Renaissance, and modern thinkers to create a formula for resonance within thematic design. I use the term thematic design to indicate that I am designing both the theme and the mechanics, and I use the term resonance to refer to how players respond to the presentation or experience of a design.
I don’t use the phrase ‘experience design’ very often because I feel that it isn’t specific enough to the aspects of design [that] I’m talking about. You can design for experiences in a themeless, abstract game. I have an entire series of posts on my blog discussing different categories of experience design that I’ve developed if you’re interested in hearing more about my thoughts on that.
But what is resonance? Every designer wants to make a resonant game. This is one of the current buzzwords in the industry used to describe games that really stand out, but it’s a term no one can define.
Opera singers know that resonance is depth, shape, and clarity of tone. That’s also the dictionary definition. To create resonant themes, we have to strive for those qualities in our games as well. Or we can avoid themes that are amorphous, muddy, or shallow. Other terms you may hear when talking about resonance are evocative, sticky, or memorable. I originally stopped my definition of resonance as depth, shape, and clarity of theme, but I think there is a more useful definition for the designer.
I’m going to be talking about how to make themes that are more resonant. Mechanics can resonate with players but only to players who are already in the gaming ecosystem. Nobody outside of gaming knows what a worker placement game is. I personally didn’t learn the names of board game mechanics until I started designing, in spite of several years of exposure to hobby games before then. When someone asks what a game is about, we usually respond by telling them the theme. Resonant themes are the best tools we have to pull in new players to the hobby. By ignoring certain aspects of thematic design (by not treating theme as a skill that can be learned), you will severely limit your potential audience.
When asked, many designers will tell you that resonant games are ones where the mechanics and theme align. I think that’s putting the cart before the horse in terms of a good definition. First, we must understand what theme is.
Theme encompasses the setting, story, and tone of a game. Theme is expressed in a variety of ways in board games: illustration, components, mechanics, narrative description, and flavor text. I’ll be referring to these as a game’s elements.
Elements of a game can be motivated or unmotivated. I’m taking these terms from theatrical lighting design. A motivated element is one that has an in-world explanation for existing. Unmotivated elements may not be abstract, but they do not have a clear reason for existing. In theatre, light shining through a window is motivated- we imagine the sun causing the light on the stage, whereas if all of the lights suddenly shift to red, that is unmotivated- we cannot imagine a realistic reason for the light change. Iron ingot components in a game about manufacturing are motivated, whereas the same components are unmotivated in a game about butterflies. The player pieces in Monopoly fall into this category. In spite of their interesting history, they are not motivated by the theme of the game. Unmotivated elements are not inherently bad, but they can make a game feel themeless or like the theme is pasted-on. Motivated elements add resonance because they are a form of world-building. What you are saying when you include motivated elements is that these things exist in your game world for a reason. Some unmotivated elements are necessary, such as scoring conditions that can’t logically arise from the theme. The trick here is balance. There needs to be enough motivated elements to offset the necessity of including elements that aid rules comprehension and gameplay. If you don’t find this balance, the game will either be incomprehensible or the theme will feel pasted-on.
I refer to games where the theme and the mechanics mesh well and that work together to produce a complete experience as being thematically well-integrated. An element could be motivated and still not be integrated. When this happens, those elements will either feel superfluous or like the theme is pasted-on to them. Each individual card in the hand-building game Fantasy Realms is thematically motivated, but the experience of gameplay lacks a thematic cohesion. Cards go in and out of your hand quickly and for no thematic reason. Only when you finish the game can you describe the world you created. The focus of the game is getting the most points, not establishing a believable game world. Comparatively, in the deck building game Star Realms (no relation) each turn visualizes an episode of space commerce, combat, and politics. I won’t go into all the ways this game works thematically, because I’m going to be taking a close look at some other games. But I would recommend these two games as solid examples of the spectrum of how to implement theme. Both are saturated with motivated elements. However, Star Realms has an integrated theme; Fantasy Realms does not.
Thematic games don’t have to be sprawling epics to be considered thematic. Motivated, integrated themes will feel resonant even in filler length games. I think we as a hobby are prone to confusing thematic games with games that are narrative heavy and tell a complete linear story by the time you’ve finished playing. I reject that narrow definition. For me, a thematic game is any game where the players can feel the theme through the gameplay.
Part 2 contains my new definition of resonance and the tools to achieve it.
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